August 29, 2026

Where: Huntley Meadows Park

When: 6:55 am

Bird Species: American robin, mourning dove, eastern bluebird, barn swallow, red-bellied woodpecker, downy woodpecker, ruby-throated hummingbird, osprey, American goldfinch, blue-gray gnatcatcher, least sandpiper, greater yellowlegs, wood duck, solitary sandpaper, killdeer, great blue heron, great egret, double-crested cormorant, mallard, tufted titmouse, white-eyed vireo, gray catbird, northern cardinal, yellow-billed cuckoo, eastern wood pewee

Things I Thought About:

• My goal for today is about being where I am, no outside thoughts, just really taking in the moments, so allow me to say this: Ed Wood, Halloween, Parenthood, Constantine. Planning for the rhyming film festival continues apace. Now, to the park.
• An absolutely beautiful morning, breezy and bright. I can see a lot of leaves that have already turned red and amber. Two weeks ago, it was easy to mistake a bright yellow leaf in the mid-story for a bright yellow bird, but now it's quite obvious that the Earth is turning and starting to swap out its closets for fall.
• Things I can feel: the breeze, an ache in my left foot which is new, but shockingly, the only thing that hurts today. Things I can smell: nothing, for like two weeks. My fall allergies have always been worse than my spring ones. Things I can hear: constant burrrs and chirps as the birds are revving up for the day, and a gnat buzzing at shocking speed and volume near my ear.
• There is a hummingbird nectaring quite close to the path, and they are so small and so fast and the sun is not yet high, but as I confidently say to the gentleman next to me "I'll just snap away, and one of them is bound to be good." This was extremely incorrect. Oh, well.

• It would not be true at all to say it feels like fall, but there is a definite sense of things in motion, of leaves turning color, of birds leaving for the trip, and making room for the ones that come back. A much smaller flock of barn swallows are staging in the same trees as the last time I was here. Swamp mallow roses bloom in the morning and fall off by the afternoon, and I think the great height of the flowering must have happened over the course of the two weeks I couldn't get out here. There are only a few big blossoms showing for today's bloom, but some late summer ironweed is popping up purple here and there. The marsh grass in the back pond had turned a deep mahogany brown.

• The common yellowthroats and indigo buntings are gone. It's like someone has changed the album; all summer the early morning boardwalk soundtrack was topped by those recently migrated summer songbirds. Now that line has dropped out of the sheet music and the thrumming cicada drone that has played accompaniment all summer is now the backdrop to the high whining shorebirds and the loud, barking screeches of herons.

• I spy the tiniest little green tree frog on a reed, and two phoebes fly by, looping and chasing each other. As can sometimes happen, I am suddenly overcome by an extravagant feeling of well-being.
• What is that bird? Oh, a catbird. There are plenty around Huntley, but I rarely take their photo. My brain is my mother saying, "We have catbird at home."

• A man comes on the boardwalk and as I am looking at a nice handful of big gnatties, he reaches out over the edge and pulls a great hank of hanging foliage up and looks around under it. I don't know why this is so shocking to me; it's like hiking a lady's skirt up in front of everybody. He is a park entomologist and shows me what a lacewing egg looks like. Lacewings are very good for a swamp, turns out.
• It is shocking how much I am learning about plants and bugs and frogs and other non-bird natural subjects this year. Still very bad at identifying the trees on my condo complex property, but I'm getting awfully good at swamp.

• Is swamp witch still a job?
• There is a killdeer on the far side of the pond again, and in a fit of good mood ambition, I lay full out, stomach down on the boardwalk to get the best shot I can manage. This is something I haven't done since maybe last November.

• Incredibly, despite my oldness and heaviness and menopausal joint deterioration, I did not experience getting back up again as that uncomfortable or difficult. My body feels better today than it has in over a month, and the only thing I have done differently this week is drink 40 ounces of water each day. It gives me no pleasure to report this.
• Oh, from the front I momentarily thought this was some sort of warbler, but then he gave me more of his back and it is definitely a vireo. Beautiful bird, but still no warblers yet.

• On my way out, I spy the yellow-billed cuckoo, still around this late, and I thought this was going to be the last bird I listed today and that maybe that heron would be BOTD, but the bird of the day had yet to reveal itself. Head on a swivel, pals, you never know when it's going to happen.

BOTD: Eastern wood pewee, père et fils. Although in truth I have no idea of sexes here.

So as I said, I was fully done for the day, I had even been into the visitor center to use the restroom and was on my way back to the car, when I heard a pewee quite close. It was surprisingly easy to find him, he was staying very close to the path, and he had a big old bug.

He stayed pretty close, noshing away, and then when he had finished about two-thirds of it, he suddenly swooped to the ground, then back up to the tree above, no bug. I had just thought, "did he drop it?" when I looked down and saw that little handful of a baby. Look at him. Look how fuzzy.

By the time I had registered that this was a feeding, the adult had left. I gave myself 10 minutes. I will stand right here, feet away from this little fuzzball, and if the adult doesn't come back in ten minutes, I'll leave. He didn't come back, so before I left I pointed him out to a family with two small daughters, who completely lost it when they saw him. Very gratifying.

Sorry to go on so long, but I had such a great morning. I think I took over 400 photos today, and I only deleted 26 in the first run-through. Many thanks to Wendy in the comments who very sensibly said, "Maybe you need to clean your lens," when I fretted about my camera's performance. It truly had not occurred to me. It didn't solve the problem of me being a pretty mediocre photographer, but it did solve the problem of "smudge."