Mostly sunny,
mid-70s, calm
In the city of Rye, New York
lies the only extensive salt marsh in Westchester County. With over 150 acres of woodlands, open
fields and an estuarine marsh, the site has recorded more than 300 species of
birds. We have visited this site
in late fall and winter and have found it to be quite “birdy”, but, at the cost
of sounding like a broken record, this is the doldrums of summer.
I spent almost two hours
hiking through all three habitats and was hard pressed to find anything out of
the ordinary to report to you in today’s blog. I attempted to call in a variety of rails to no avail. The woodlands did yield several nice
Northern flickers and numerous robins, but little else. We were greeted upon entering the trail
heading down towards the water by a little chipmunk that peeked out at us from
behind a tree stump.
I walked down to the marsh and
hiked across the wetlands hoping for herons, egrets, waders, or whatever. What I got was a little of
whatever. A lone Northern
rough-wing swallow was perched above the marsh on a dead snag. I have gotten use to seeing quite a few
swallows of various species lately as they get ready to head south, but rarely
are they solo. The rest of the
year, that would not be uncommon for the “roughie”, but he seemed out of place
being here all alone.
As I walked back, I heard a
call note from the reeds right next to the trail. He was close, but buried in the vegetation to the point
where I really had to strain to find him.
The only way to get him in focus was to switch over to manual and
over-expose him. It was only then
that I realized that the bird was a young Brown thrasher. The mosquitoes found me before I could
really get my best effort in, and I being the wimp that I am succumbed to the
pressure and headed back up to the relative sanctuary of the cool woods.
I came back towards the nature
center via the trail that parallels the open fields hoping for sparrows and
butterflies. I did manage to find
a trio of Spicebush swallowtails all making an attempt to get nectar from the
same Bull thistle blossom. With
acres and acres of thistle to be found in these fields, why they insisted on
jockeying for position to get the best seat at the table I’ll never know.
Hopefully, we’ll return to the
marshlands here in Rye later this year and allow it to give a better account of
itself once the migrants begin to show up. The doldrums can’t last much longer!
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