a dry intermission

Between last night's rain and this morning's thundering, drenching thunder storms there was a dry intermission that was long enough for me to do a full morning walk. As I left the pond and headed into the marsh, I heard a sound that I can only describe as a cross between an odd-ball crow and a Green Heron. Two good-sized squawking herons came low overhead. I thought they would drop into the pond but instead they veered left heading into the trees on the west side of the pond. I reversed direction, heading back to the pond and, moving cautiously, I was able to get a view of two adult Yellow-crowned Night-Herons perched elegantly on the top of a low Red Cedar. My neighbor, Mike Higgiston, had expressed a serious interest in this species but before I could call him and let him know the two birds took off. Sorry, Mike.

Not long after and more or less in the same area, two or three Eastern Kingbirds, calling to one another, showed up. My first impression was that there was a adult and a young bird, the adult perched at the tip of an oak and the supposed young bird slithering through the lower branches of a Pitch Pine. Later I saw two adults perched high so there may have been three birds in all. Another possibility is that what I thought was a young bird was a female on a late-season reconnoiter for a nest site. As I've mentioned before, Kingbirds have nested at the edge of the marsh in the past and might do so again.

At Saturday's Linnaean Field Trip, there were a number of interesting insects which I neglected to mention in my trip report. The butterfly list included American Copper and Eastern Tailed Blue and there were Halloween Pennant dragonflies at Calverton. Also, the same stocky medium-sized reddish-brown dragonfly that I have been seeing here was also present at Cupsogue and I am more convinced than ever that this is the Spot-winged Glider. It is a sustained flyer that rarely perches and it migrates 'in swarms' from the south so it is logical that it would appear in numbers on the barrier beach as well as at our place on the north side of the bay.

Eric Salzman