This windy, cool April Saturday morning 18 folks got together to tour around the Greenstone Hollow property owned by Hartford Audubon and see or hear 24 species of birds. We spent about 1-½ hours walking to the paths which parallel Ridge Blvd on the north and south sides. During that part of the walk we also saw and talked about the new project at Greenstone. This project, lead by Vicky Margiott, involves planting 35-40 native species of trees and shrubs in part of an area on the property that is currently just mowed lawn. After that first half of the walk, about half of us continued into the north part of the property where we continued to see new birds for another 1-½ hours.
Highlights:
First half of walk –
– 3 male and 1 female Wood Ducks which were seen by a few of the early arrivals before they got to nervous with the crowd and took off. A pair of Mallards, however did hang around for us to get a better look.
– Lots of male and female Red-winged Blackbirds
– Eastern Bluebird pair seen from Cathy’s bench in a tree in the south beaver pond.
– Yellow-rumped Warbler seen in the same tree.
Second half of walk –
– 3 Ruby-crowned Kinglets who were busy feeding very close to us in Kinglet Woods for really good looks.
– 3 Palm Warblers in bright spring plumage. Once again, quite close and lots of great looks! A couple of pictures below.
– A nice group of Black-capped Chickadees feeding in the cedar trees
– 3 White-throated sparrows feeding on the ground.
Here’s the entire bird list of the 24 species seen.
4 Wood Duck
2 Mallards
3 Turkey Vulture
1 Downy Woodpecker
1 Hairy Woodpecker
1 Northern Flicker
1 Eastern Phoebe
6 Blue Jay
2 American Crow
7 Black-capped Chickadee
3 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
2 Carolina Wren
2 Eastern Bluebird
1 American Robin
4 American Goldfinch
1 Chipping Sparrow
2 White-throated Sparrow
1 Song Sparrow
4 Swamp Sparrow
30 Red-winged Blackbird
1 Brown-headed Cowbird
3 Palm Warbler
1 Yellow-rumped Warbler
2 Northern Cardinal
Chris Fisher, Trip Leader
