Field Ornithology 2020 - Day 2

I spent the morning from a little before 7 am to a little after 10:30 am at Geprags Park. On the drive there from South Burlington, I saw a Red-Tailed Hawk perched in a snag overlooking a complex of fields. I pulled over to try to get a picture and when I got out it flew away, but then I heard male Bobolinks. I tracked them down and saw males chasing a female.

Then I made my way to Geprags Park where I birded for awhile but then needed to return home to get work done. I started off in the shrubland habitat area, followed a trail up into the woods, and then came back down through shrubland and ended in the fields where I got a female bluebird and some sort of butterfly -- a swallowtail of some kind, I believe. A friend joined me for about an hour and highlights included seeing Blue-winged Warblers collecting nesting material, and IDing the songs of two Yellow-throated Vireos -- a life bird for me. We had trouble deciding Yellow-throated from Scarlet Tanager song but after much consulting my recordings (using headphones of course!), we felt confident it was Yellow-throated Vireo and not Scarlet Tanager. Later that was reinforced by hearing and SEEING Scarlet Tanager males singing which was amazing as well.

I documented most of my trip on eBird and then spent the remainder of the time in the field focusing on getting recordings and video.

My eBird checklist for the day can be found here:
https://ebird.org/vt/checklist/S69308895

Posted on May 19, 2020 06:51 PM by lizamorse