Colliers Mills 4/1--Brown Thrasher

Brown Thrasher

I guess it's going to be one at a time. I went to Colliers Mills early this morning, figuring the woods would fill in the lacunae on my year list, but as so often happens, the only new bird for the year was just a few steps away from my car. As soon as I got out, I was hit with birdsong from all points, mostly the familiar species, but there were more songs at a more rapid pace than you'd expect. And the songs were repeat twice. I walked back into the little maintenance yard hoping I could find the source--figuring it was a mimid I looked at the tops of all the trees and soon found my FOY Brown Thrasher. It's funny how you just know sometimes that the bird you're hearing is not the familiar one, but a close relative--to the naive ear, mockingbirds and thrashers sound pretty much the same, but once you become attuned to the difference, the thrasher is clearer, more articulate, and (this is the easiest part) mimics other birdsong twice, where a mockingbird tends to go thrice. Would that I could parse warbler song so easily. 

The rest of the list had a couple of interesting species on it--the Red-headed Woodpeckers were easy to find today and no playback required, and on Turnmill Lake I found two Horned Grebes, one of them already in full breeding plumage. Horned Grebes are very unusual at Colliers Mills--I thought they might be the first ones I'd seen there, but looking at my patch list, I found that I first saw them, on Turnmill, on March 31, 2015. I suppose every 11 years makes them infrequent. 

Horned Grebes

31 species
Canada Goose  7
Wood Duck  3
Mallard  3
Ring-necked Duck  2
Mourning Dove  4
Killdeer  1
Ring-billed Gull  1     Flyover
Horned Grebe  2
Great Blue Heron  1
Turkey Vulture  1
Belted Kingfisher  1
Red-headed Woodpecker  2
Red-bellied Woodpecker  3
Northern Flicker  7
Eastern Phoebe  1
Blue Jay  6
Carolina Chickadee  7
Tufted Titmouse  6
Brown Thrasher  1
Northern Mockingbird  1
American Robin  13
Field Sparrow  2
Dark-eyed Junco  4
White-throated Sparrow  1
Song Sparrow  1
Swamp Sparrow  1
Eastern Towhee  1
Red-winged Blackbird  7
Brown-headed Cowbird  4
Pine Warbler  10
Northern Cardinal  5