The changing weather seems to have displaced many of the shorebirds reported
earlier in the week at Pickerel Creek.  A flooded field along the road to
the check station yielded only a single solitary sandpiper.  (Gee, that
seems appropriate....)  Only a couple of least sandpipers were visible near
the observation tower; hiking dikes further to the east produced a nice
group of five or six stilts within a mixed yellowlegs flock, along with a
couple of pectoral and more least sandpipers.  We also turned up a spotted
sandpiper in the area, along with a couple of solitaries.  Many areas that
were dry to just muddy now have standing water as a result of heavy rains
yesterday.

The ponds at Willow Point apparently have been given over completely to deep
water habitat.  No shorebirds were in sight, although eagles were downright
abundant.  If anyone from ODW is reading this, can you comment on plans (or
lack thereof) for shorebird habitat management here?  This site certainly
has great potential and, in fact, has given us some excellent shorebirding
recently, so we can hope for a drawdown.

The larger ponds at Killdeer Plains also were full -- that is, full of
water, not of birds.

On the non-shorebird front, swallows are congregating in huge numbers at
various locations along the bay.  Pickerel Creek in particular hosted many,
many tree swallows, with a considerable number of banks and the occasional
barn.  An impressive concentration of these species was found at the end of
the check point road.

--
Bill Heck

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