a lighter flight but a good one

This morning's flight was lighter than the flights of the past couple of days but even more interesting. There was a definite sparrow flight including White-throated Sparrows, Song Sparrows, Chipping Sparrows and two new birds (both new for the year): White-crowned Sparrow and LINCOLN'S SPARROW. I'm putting the latter in caps because I've seen it out here only two or three times before: finely streaked breast over a buff wash (with the wash extending up the face above the malar stripe) and contrasting with the white throat; reddish cap divided by a whitish strip (both red and white flecked with black), a wide gray supercilium or eyebrow, eye-ring, white breast and belly. I found my first local in Maple Swamp in '09 and the first one on the property only a year ago. I suspect that this bird has been here before but it is not the easiest bird to pick out in dense shrubbery (we don't have much in the way of open grassland and most of our sparrows are working the marshy ground under the edge vegetation; this bird had the decency to walk out in the open onto hurricane debris and then perch on a bare branch for further close inspection.

The number of Yellow-rumped Warblers in this flight was noticeably fewer but there were again Blackpolls mixed in along with a number of Ruby-crowned Kinglets, the first of the season that I've seen. I also heard what I thought were Golden-crowned Kinglets but I never saw them. In the raptor division, there were the usual Osprey but also a very sleek, handsome and deadly-looking Merlin zipping in and out of the woods.

Eric Salzman

P.S.: Yesterday I wrote about a most improbable event: a Canada Warbler flight in a V formation. Oooops. Of course, I meant Canada Goose. Thanks to the alert readers who, unlike this correspondent, can tell a hawk from a hernsa and a warbler from a goose!