Notable Wildlife Sightings at White Memorial, 10/24 & 25/2011

Rusty Blackbird photo from

www.borealbirds.org

Four-toed Salamander photo by Dave Rosgen

Eastern Red Bat photo from

www.lakecountyspecies.org

This past Monday and Tuesday, 10/24 and 25/2011, produced a fair number of notable wildlife sightings on White Memorial property. Tops among these were an Eastern Red Bat which I saw flying around Ongley Field between 6:00 and 6:10 p.m. on Monday. It then headed off to the south. This is a rather late date for this Connecticut species of special concern. The nearby Activity Field produced a Field Sparrow and a Purple Finch for notable birds earlier this day. On Tuesday, Nicole Morin and I visited the salamander cover boards along the Windmill Hill and Butternut Brook Trails for their final inspection of the year. One of the Windmill Hill boards yielded a Four-toed Salamander, which I think is only the second one of this species found under a board in this plot since we established it about 7 years ago. The rest of the boards in this plot produced a total of 11 Red-backed Salamanders on this visit. About half of these boards were awash in floodwaters a month ago. Interestingly, the cover boards at Butternut Brook, which were completely inundated last month, produced absolutely no salamanders on this visit. However, they did harbour at least 40 earthworms. The Windmill Hill boards had only about 15 earthworms under them. Farther along the Butternut Brook Trail we encountered a nice flock of 18 Rusty Blackbirds feeding under the shrubs in the swampy area. They are a regular, but uncommon fall migrant through this area.

Cedar Waxwings

Cedar Waxwing photographed by

Bob Stanowski using Digiscope

This past Saturday, 2/5/11, while going down to the Bird Observatory behind the Museum to fill the feeders, Samantha Foster and I heard, and then saw, a group of Cedar Waxwings perched in the Mountain-ash tree near the Observatory's door. Unfortunately for them, all of the berries had been eaten off of this tree last fall by Cedar Waxwings, American Robins, Gray Catbirds, Northern Flickers, and other frugivores. That was also the last time that we saw any decent sized flocks of waxwings. According to our records stored in ebird, the highest number of waxwings reported on the Property last year was a flock of 90, seen one day in September. After that, October's high count dropped to 32, November's to 17, and December's to 8. They were reported 35 times in September, 26 in October, 13 in November, and only once in December. We didn't see any on the Property last month. Given the lack of berries remaining anywhere around here this winter, we doubt that we will see this species much this month. The flock that we saw took us by surprise, as I wasn't expecting them, given the lack of food. They didn't stay above us for long. The whole flock, which ended-up consisting of 20 birds flew to the big Norway Maple in the Activity Field, then back around over us, then off to the south. They could be in New Jersey by now.