Report 3rd Sat. Birding Mar 21

Our Third Saturday Bird Walk in March took place at Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, led by Rachel Glaeser and Bryan Ribelin, who are long-time, active Arboretum volunteers. We were also joined by Patrick Wegner, Habitat and Trails Manager. The Arboretum is part of the larger Howard Buford Recreation Area, a distinctive intersection of ecosystems, which includes riparian areas, oak savanna, and conifer forests. The weather was cool and cloudy for most of the walk, with a few spots of sunshine.

Our group of 19 met at the education building, where we were able to scope a red-tailed hawk sitting on its nest near the river.  Then we began our walk out along the river trail. Birding was somewhat slow for the first two hours, with an orange-crowned warbler being the only migrant along the path, although violet-green and tree swallows were active overhead in small numbers. We also encountered several brown creepers, and occasional black-capped chickadees and ruby-crowned kinglets. We checked for the resident barn owls in the silo just north of the water garden. but saw only recent signs of occupancy. (We did, however, end the walk with two species of owls on our checklist.) We continued on to the “beach” area along the river, but it was oddly quiet. Further upstream, we saw a pair of common mergansers and three hooded mergansers dive occasionally. We paused at the oak meadow to watch a pair of American kestrels hovering over the field, and then headed back north. As we were about to enter the water garden, a brilliant male rufous hummingbird began foraging at the fresh-blooming Oregon grape. The short walk through the water garden produced several chestnut-backed chickadees, a Townsend’s warbler, a black-capped chickadee actively excavating a cavity, and two Hutton’s vireos. From the water garden we walked up the hill in search of a northern pygmy owl that had been tooting all morning. By sound, we must have been almost directly under it, though we were never able to see it. While we were looking for it, one of participants noticed a great-horned owl resting in a conifer, and we all had good looks. We finished our morning walking down the zigzag trail, where several golden-crowned kinglets and a flying wild turkey were the final birds on our checklist. Many thanks to Rachel, Bryan and Patrick for sharing their expertise and love of this special place.

The full species list can be found here:  Bird List: https://ebird.org/checklist/S311616187

photos by Louise Bartels and Richard Turk