9/16/2015

Today, on September 16, 2015 we left the dock at 7:00 a.m. to head to Lake Hope. Our first location at Lake Hope National Park, we pulled off the road and headed out onto a trail. We were surrounded by various foliage, from lower bushes into smaller trees reaching up into high forest so we were able to see a various amount of birds flying at all different heights. It was 55-60 degrees out with clear skies and low humidity compared to other days. We stopped at an area in the trail where there was a good amount of open ground to spread out and look out into hillier area or denser forest. We saw a good amount of Cedar Waxwing in the flocks and sitting at the tops of trees, I noticed them to be dead trees and later learned that this is common for the CEDW. There were bird calls and songs going on everywhere. We traveled to different areas at this different location, getting into more open areas, inclined, and possibility to see a good distance in a variety of sized trees and distance from us.
Some of the birds heard and seen were:
CEDW
RBGR
BLJA
EATO- was able to see close hopping through the lower trees at this location
WIVO
MAWA
DOWO
SCTA
TRFL- told that it is very hard to tell the difference between specific ones(adler or willow) and can be identified by the trail flycatcher
PIWO
as we were walking to a new location, there seemed to be a lot of silence. Alayna had seen an Accipiter, guessing for a Sharp-Shinned Hawk or a Cooper's Hawk and being predators in the area we were able to notice that it got very silent among all the birds.
A large amount of Warblers were heard, we were looking in our Field Guides extremely often to try to see the different characteristics and able to identify them. It takes a good talent to find the birds in the binoculars and notice all these different characteristics and is definitely something that needs to be continued to be worked on.
On our way back to the vans an ESOW responded to Brandan's calls which was extremely cool.

Around 9:30 a.m. we arrived at The Hope Iron Furnace location. A large open area that condensed as you walked further in. Still very open with a lot of brush and smaller trees leading to the condensed forest. Walking up, we immediately saw many Warblers flying through the smaller trees and plants. Species heard being HOWA, AMCR, INBU, CACH, DOWO seen hopping up the one tree.We were all able to see and hear the Gray Catbird (GRCA) in the lower brush area.

We started walking the trail to get closer to the water and saw a Red-Tailed Hawk sitting in a tree. We observed it holding its wing, Kelly said it could be injured or possibly heavy molting and as it tried to fly it struggled and seemed to be falling a bit branch to branch until it flew into the brush. WODO were seen both in the lake swimming and also flying. Additional birds seen and heard in this area were
PIWO
WODU
RSHA
PHOE- on a dead tree in the water, black under beak and bobbing its tail up and down so we were able to identify it much easier
BEKI- seen across the lake, had the red belt across meaning it was a female
TUVU
YTVI
PIWA

Everyone was able to hear and see a large amount of birds on this trip and it definitely helped with learning more calls, getting more comfortable with calls we have previously been hearing a lot and also a great way to learn more about identifying and what to look for. An overall extremely successful trip!