Good Morning! Right after everyone packed up and left, a group of Great Blue Herons could be seen perching up in the very top of one of the towering dead trees out in the pond. Very cool indeed! Hopefully you found this morning’s orientation helpful. Next week’s will feature more birds and more opportunities for putting those newfound (for some) skills to use.

A couple of reminders from the orientation session:

• Take a look through your Sibley’s guide before our next meeting on Tuesday. Get a sense of the diversity of shapes and sizes of birds and their various parts and field marks. It will also help you find a given bird in the book when looking for it!
• You are about to become the expert on two species of birds for the next couple of outings. Read the info on the back of the cards and think about the field marks for that bird-how would you describe them? You can listen to your species’ songs or calls online at All About Birds (click the link in the sidebar). There’s a section with a bird guide and each species account includes a recording of the bird.

Our bird list from this morning (generated automatically after I entered the observations into eBird), only consists of birds seen by me–in the future we will make this list as a group. Feel free to put any other birds you saw that aren’t on the list in the comments…

Location: Sapsucker Woods, CLO
Observation date: 3/27/08
Number of species: 19

Canada Goose 15
Wood Duck 6
Mallard 6
Hooded Merganser 2
Common Merganser 2
Great Blue Heron 6
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1
Mourning Dove 2
Downy Woodpecker 1
Blue Jay 3
American Crow 2
Tufted Titmouse 1
American Robin 3
Cedar Waxwing 16
Northern Cardinal 2
Red-winged Blackbird 9
Common Grackle 15
House Finch 2
American Goldfinch 3