Tagged With: Birds

Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)

Photograph taken on Friday, May 01, 2026 by Henry
Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)

Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)

Cathy and I happened to be driving to Hyattsville today to drop off a package for a friend and decided to go to Greenbelt Park and then Lake Artemesia. Greenbelt Park is nice, but a fair drive from home, so not somewhere we are likely to go unless we’re already in the area. Lake Artemesia is also nice, although with the train tracks running beside it, it wasn’t as quietly peaceful as it might have been. Still, for a suburban park, it was nice and there were a lot of folks enjoying it. We saw a few birds including an oriole (but I didn’t get any photos of that). This eastern bluebird Sialia sialis posed nicely for me on a post as we were returning to our car.

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Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)

Photograph taken on Tuesday, May 05, 2026 by Henry
Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)

Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)

Today we walked through Flower Valley Park and then along Rock Creek to Lake Frank. On the Rock Creek trail we heard and then saw this eastern towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus). We hear them quite often but don’t usually get to see them, much less when they are so openly visible and close. When we got to Lake Frank we saw a family of wood ducks (Aix sponsa) with quite a few ducklings, an osprey (Pandion haliaetus), and the quite a few solitary sandpipers (Tringa solitaria). It was very humid and warm, but as usual, we were glad to get out into the woods.

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Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea)

Photograph taken on Sunday, May 10, 2026 by Henry
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea)

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea)

Today’s walk was along the C&O Canal from Violet’s Lock, upstream from Great Falls. It was raining as we drove there but stopped before we got to the parking area. As we started walking, however, the rain picked up again and we returned to the car to get an umbrella. We were glad we did, because it rained quite hard for a while. I don’t mind getting wet so much but I worried about my camera and long lens. After the rain stopped, the birds started singing and we heard quite a few. We saw a Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula) and I got some photos of that, but it was a long ways away so they aren’t that great. This one, of the blue-gray gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea), though, I think is nice.

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Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)

Photograph taken on Sunday, May 17, 2026 by Henry
Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)

We walked on Seneca Bluffs Trail today, parking in the area on Montevideo Road between River Road and Rocklands Farm Winery. We walked downstream, although for most of that part of the trail Seneca Creek isn’t very visible. This section of the trail is on the top of the bluffs in fairly deep woods. We heard quite a few different birds, including several vireos. One bird that we didn’t hear but then suddenly saw, was this yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus). It flew across the trail ahead of us and landed behind some branches. I got a few pretty poor photos of it there before it flew to this more exposed location. The strong back-lighting takes away considerably from the photo, but I was still excited to get what I got. These are not the easiest birds to spot in the woods.

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Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

Photograph taken on Tuesday, May 19, 2026 by Henry
Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

We don’t actively follow the birding web sites but Cathy happened to be looking at one yesterday and it mentioned that there were some swans on the pond near the Blue Mash Trail. We figured our chances of them being there today were low, but not zero, and we decided we’d go there, anyway. As expected, there was nothing on the pond. We did see orioles, however, and quite a few tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor), mostly around the bluebird boxes, most of which seem to have been taken by the swallows. This one let me get quite close and this is a full frame photo.

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Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe)

Photograph taken on Monday, June 01, 2026 by Henry
Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe)

Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe)

We returned from the wedding yesterday and early this morning Brian and I took Allie to BWI Airport for her flight back out west. Later in the day, Brian, Lisa, Cathy, and I went to Great Falls. We walked to the Olmsted Island overlook and saw two great blue herons (Ardea herodias) down below the falls. From there we walked to the area of the C&O Canal known as Wide Water. It was a lovely day, a bit warmer than the day of the wedding, but still not so hot that it was oppressive.

As is fairly common when the four of us are together, Cathy and Lisa walked ahead of Brian and me, partly because I stop occasionally to take pictures. Aside from the herons (and we saw a few more on the canal), we didn’t see many birds. Just as we were getting back to near Great Falls Tavern I got three shots of this eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe), which is fairly common but still nice to see. Phoebe’s have a special place in my heart, because there have been phoebes nesting on boards that my dad put up under the eaves of our cabin pretty much every year since it was built. I also have an ancestor who was named Phebe, although I know that it was spelled differently.

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White-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis)

Photograph taken on Tuesday, June 02, 2026 by Henry
White-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis)

White-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis)

After visiting Cathy’s mom early this afternoon, we took a walk from Sandy Spring Friends Meeting down past the actual spring and then to where the trail to Woodlawn Manor crosses the creak at the bottom of the field. It was the heat of the day and fairly warm so we weren’t too surprised that we didn’t hear, much less see many birds. We heard a few down by the creek but we saw nothing. As we were heading back, however, we saw movement and stopped to watch a group of at least four (and maybe five or six) white-breasted nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis). They were on a tree at first and then two of them were on this wooden fence. The one on the left is the adult and it was bringing an insect to the juvenile on the right.

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Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

Photograph taken on Sunday, June 07, 2026 by Henry
Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

After church today we blew off some things we felt we should do and instead went for a walk at the Agricultural History Farm Park. We started, as we usually do, at the shade and demonstration gardens. Then, instead of walking over towards the barn and house, we walked down to the small stream that runs into Rock Creek just below the bridge for the road into the park. There is a place where a trail fords that stream and leads to a trail around a large field and also connects to the Redlands Rock Creek Trail after crossing Muncaster Road. It was quite hot today and we tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. Around that area there was a fair amount of bird activity and it was fairly shady, so we loitered there for a while.

Cathy turned on the Merlin app, which at one point heard a cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum). Although I didn’t really expect to see one, it suddently flew across the trail and landed in the shade of a juniper. It’s quite back-lit, making this the best I could do, but it’s pretty clear what the bird is, anyway.

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