New Egypt 2/25--Ring-necked Pheasant

Ring-necked Pheasant photographed thru windshield

Since it finally stopped raining and the Mets were way ahead in a meaningless spring training game, I decided to get out of the house and do some mid-afternoon birding. I went out to New Egypt, hoping that the flooded fields out there would have attracted some early shorebirds like snipes or Pectoral Sandpipers, but nothing like that was evident--just longhorns up to their knees in mud and a big flock of Mallards acting like the puddle ducks they are. 

I did see the Sandhill Cranes again. Because they like to feed in the tall grass in the back of the corn stubble field, near the power line tower, they are devilishly hard to see--they blend in perfectly, especially on a gray day like today, but after a few sweeps of the scope I was able to find first one, then the other walking through the brown grass. Their red caps really stand out, even from a distance. I walked along the hedgerow, hoping for a new sparrow for the county, but all I came up with were Song Sparrows and a White-throated Sparrow, along with finches, blackbirds, and the resident mockingbird.

I was about to leave when I saw a couple of birders up the road getting out their scopes. Thinking I'd be helpful and tell them they were at a bad angle to find the cranes, I walked up there, only to find that they had the birds in their scope. At first I thought that there must be more than 2 cranes there, since the position they were in seemed so different than from where I saw the birds, but after I got back to my car I realized that the birds were more or less in the same place as I had seen them a half hour earlier--I was just looking at them from a more oblique angle. With all that, from the more straight-on viewpoint I had the second time, they are still hard to see, gray on gray in gray light; the red caps really help.

I drove away and about a half mile up Brynmore, I saw a bird on the side of the road which quickly resolved itself into a Ring-necked Pheasant. I am willing to count this bird on my year list for these reasons:

• It was not in or just outside a WMA
• It is not hunting season
• So any bird that has survived this long is wild enough for me.

I took some rather impressionistic photos through the windshield. Mostly the camera focused on the grass in front of the bird. By the time I got out of the car to try to take a cleaner picture, the bird has disappeared into the woodlot bordering the road.