2/12/18 Centennial Woods
I accompanied two TAs, Alex and Kevin, on the WFB 130 bird walk through Centennial Woods this past Monday afternoon. We left the Aiken solarium at 3:00pm in the afternoon and began our trek down to the UVM property. Before we entered the woods, we spotted a fairly large bird passing over at a high altitude. Even with the binoculars, we were not able to identify the species due to the distance it was from us. Kevin suspected it was a juvenile Peregrine Falcon, but from my previous experience with raptors I do not think it was a bird of prey. My reasoning stems from the type of flight pattern it was exhibiting. Raptors generally tend to soar without flapping in a high altitude range. This unidentified species used it's wings to flap fairly frequently in a "flap and glide" motion.
We noticed immediately upon entering the habitat that the woods were strangely silent that day. No spotting or vocalizations were heard until we descended the trail and reached the stream bridges. In this fairly open field, we heard a Black-capped Chickadee in a tree close to us chirping back in forth to another Chickadee individual across the way. We could not spot either individuals. As we progressed to the heavy canopy, pine tree section of the forest we came upon a much more investigative Black-capped Chickadee. Our group first heard it's iconic song and then later spotted a male in the pine tree above us. He changed his position onto an adjacent pine tree with a distinct "roller coaster" flight pattern for a short distance.
We continued onward on the trail and a flock of three American Crows flew over-head. Their flight pattern was very distinct with continual slow flaps in a straight line. There was not a moment of soaring observed, which helped identify this species as an American Crow instead of it's nearly identical sibling, the Common Raven. The American Crow's tail feathers form a fan-shape and their wing tips are more blunted in shape than the Raven's. This wing physiology alludes to a more repetitive flying motion, rather than soaring, We were also briefly visited by a female Northern Cardinal sitting in bush in the open field during our walk back. As we left the woods, we encounter a college couple blasting music relatively close to the park entrance, and therefore did not expect to see anymore species for the day.
