Eastern Wood-Pewee (Contopus virens)
We walked north on Hoyle’s Mill Trail today, picking up the trail west of the soccer fields in South Germantown Recreational Park. After some woods, the trail crosses a grassy meadow and near the far side of that, before going back into the woods for the rest of the walk, I got a few pictures of this eastern wood-pewee (). We hear them all the time in the woods and their call is quite distinctive.
They look pretty similar to the eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) and Acadian Flycatcher (Empidonax virescens), both of which are fairly common in our area. By sight, especially at a distance, I’m not always able to tell them apart, but fortunately their calls are distinctive.
We continued on the trail when it met the unused Hoyle’s Mill Road until a little way after it crossed Little Seneca Creek. If we had continued, we would eventually have touched White Ground Road before continuing roughly parallel to that, crossing Clopper Road, and leading to Little Seneca Reservoir. We walked that section on September 25, 2021, when I photographed a differential grasshopper (Melanoplus differentialis) for the blog.