Whitesbog 8/6--Little Blue Heron (Rare)

Little Blue Heron, Great Egrets, Middle Bog

Digiscoped

My whole route around the bogs has changed now that the breach between the Middle and Upper Bogs has been filled in. Actually, there are a number of possibilities, most of them sketching out a figure eight around the two drawn down bogs, and I haven't settled on any one of them yet as the best. Today, because the morning was heavy with fog, I started out sans camera and scope, figuring the lighting conditions were terrible for photography and that all the scope would do would be to enlarge gray mist if I tried to look at anything in the middle of the bogs. With my binoculars  I could at least do edge birding, then come back for the optics when the fog burned off.

At the northwest corner of the middle bog this decision bit me. I came upon what I assumed was the same flock of 16 Great Egrets I had seen the previous day, all standing in one of the remaining pools, when I saw another white bird standing off to the side of them. With my binoculars I could see that it wasn't a Great Egret and when I approached closer I could see that it wasn't a Snowy Egret either. It was the season's first Little Blue Heron at Whitesbog, an immature bird. And also the first "rarity" at Whitesbog for the season, as Little Blues don't make it into Burlco very often, though they are a regular and expected visitor to the bogs this time of year. I saw my friend's truck driving up one of the roads, so I walked back toward him, knowing he'd want to see the Little Blue too. We stood around and talked for a while and, as the fog already seemed to be lifting, I walked the thousand or so steps back to my car, got the scope, got the camera and went back to document the Little Blue. It was very cooperative until it was not. When the whole flock of egrets upped and moved to the middle of the bog, it did too.

Pectoral Sandpiper

The predominant shorebird in the bogs today was Semipalmated Plover, following by Least Sandpiper. I saw one Pectoral Sandpiper on the edge of the bog as I was driving in, associating with a Lesser Yellowlegs. Later, as I was about to leave, I saw what I thought was the same bird again and took some photos of it. When I looked at them, I wasn't so sure, because, though it was much larger than a Least, which Pectorals superficially resemble, the tell-tall "vest" field mark didn't look like it came down low enough on the breast to me. I put the picture on my eBird list as "Shorebird sp" and asked for help. Within 10 minutes Bob Auster texted that it looked good to him for Pec (eBird can be scary) and 5 minutes later I got an email from the county reviewer saying too that it was a Pec. You have to account for variation in your identifications. Everything else about the bird said Pec to me, but I got hung up on the classic field mark.

Probably because the bogs were drained in the spring, there is a lot more grass in the bogs than usual. This can be problematic for shorebirds for two reasons--shorebirds want mud and grass can hide what shorebirds are there. But, I think it may actually encourage the so-called "grasspipers" like Buff-breasted Sandpiper and American Golden-Plover to stop over in the bogs, since they prefer a dryer, greener habitat. We'll see.

As it was, a decent day on the bogs:

33 species

Mallard  9

Mourning Dove  6

Yellow-billed Cuckoo  1    Heard

Semipalmated Plover  25    most in Middle Bog

Killdeer  6

Least Sandpiper  25

Pectoral Sandpiper  1

Semipalmated Sandpiper  1

Spotted Sandpiper  6

Solitary Sandpiper  5    Middle Bog

Lesser Yellowlegs  2

Great Blue Heron  3

Great Egret  16

Little Blue Heron  1   

Green Heron  2    Behind Union Pond

Northern Flicker  1    Heard Union Pond

Eastern Wood-Pewee  5    Heard

Eastern Phoebe  3

Eastern Kingbird  4

American Crow  2    Heard

Fish Crow  1    Heard

Purple Martin  40

Tree Swallow  20

Barn Swallow  10

Carolina Wren  1    Heard

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher  1

Gray Catbird  12

Brown Thrasher  2

Chipping Sparrow  2

Song Sparrow  5

Eastern Towhee  3    Heard

Red-winged Blackbird  25

Common Yellowthroat  2