July 12, 2026

Where: Dyke Marsh Wildlife Reserve

When: 7:00 am

Bird Species: northern cardinal, American crow, mallard, fish crow, osprey, red-winged blackbird, house sparrow, mourning dove, Carolina wren, osprey, blue-gray gnatcatcher, downy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, Carolina chickadee, common grackle, brown-headed cowbird

Things I Thought About:

• Dyke Marsh is the second hottest eBird hotspot in Fairfax County, but I’ve never had especially great luck here. It’s right on the Potomac, and the trail is an out and back with no open spaces, really, except to the river. What you see is what you get, there aren’t any side trails on the woods side.

• What is most likely, based on every conversation I’ve had out here, is that this is an eBird hotspot only when viewed from the water. There are three nice older gentlemen out birding this morning who confirm this. None of us have seen or heard the least bittern today, and we all pull out our phones and show each other photos of bitterns we have seen. I have only the one, from April, but they show me a least bittern they saw here in February, from kayaks
• Imagine getting in the Potomac in a kayak in February. Couldn't be me. Literally couldn't be me, I would have no idea how to do that.
• We spend another few pleasant moments sharing photos of herons we have taken, in much the same manner as I imagine military staff share challenge coins.
• Antlers always look uncomfortable to me. I'd do very poorly in a folk horror religious cult.

• Before smart TVs, when I was a girl, pay channels like HBO and Playboy were just another channel on the cable box, but scrambled, so you couldn't see the visuals. You could hear what was on, often. I remember once listening to the entirety of White Nights, waiting breathlessly for those rare occasions where the signal would settle into images for a second at a time, a third of the screen showing dancing feet. That's what looking at these deep woods on the right of the trail on this gray morning feels like. I can hear the soundtrack clearly; the chickadees and gnatcatchers, a cardinal, light drumming from some variety of woodpecker, and am just standing here patiently, waiting for the view to resolve into some identifiable image.

• Even though they make them where you can sit on top now, I think perhaps the window has closed on me learning to kayak.
• These ospreys are raising a family on what appears to have been a floating tiki bar.

• No luck on the bittern, and the experience of having to pee here was one of the more harrowing of my middle age to date (only feet of clearance to either side of the trail, fully exposed to either the path or to the water and as likely to encounter witnesses in either direction, and struggling to reassemble clothing in a hurry while sweating from every pore. Do not recommend.)
• Nevertheless, it's always good to see some ducks.

BOTD: Mallard. These beauties weren't even in the reserve proper, they were just hanging out by the marina near the parking lots. I was walking around, imagining owning a boat, and saw and heard this little guy crying in the grass. "Young man, where is your mother?" I said sternly, I suspect out loud.

Then she came steaming up with the kid in the photo up top, and they both chirped and quacked and cajoled at the one on the grass until he basically tumbled himself into the water, and off they went.