Red Crossbills at Briery Branch Gap

April 15, 2018May 15, 2018 / Ezra Staengl / 3 Comments

We stood at the intersection of Briery Branch Road and 85, near the summit of Reddish Knob, watching and listening to the red crossbills feeding all around us. Crossbill flocks roved about the mountaintop, chattering and singing constantly. Some birds dangled from the cones of table mountain and pitch pines, using their long, sturdy, crossed bills to pry the seeds out from deep within the cones. Other crossbill flocks gathered in the dirt road not more than five feet in front of us, squabbling and moving constantly as they ingested little bits of gravel to aid in their digestion.

Red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) eating rocks in the road.

Red crossbills are fairly rare throughout most of Virginia — they are most common during irruption years, when large numbers come north during the winter — but they can usually be found in the tall mountains along the VA/WV border in Rockingham County. The crossbills are present all year round, including the breeding season, and have raised young successfully in the Reddish Knob Area before.

The red crossbill is an extremely complex species. Many subspecific taxa, commonly referred to as crossbill “types” have been named, and it is possible that some of them will be elevated to species status in the future. Indeed, just this past year the Cassia crossbill — endemic to one county in southern Idaho — was split out from the red crossbill. One of the most variable features of crossbill types is bill size, as it seems different types have evolved different bills to allow them to specialize on different conifer species. The types also differ in body size and call.

The red crossbills at Briery Branch Gap had previously been recorded and identified as Appalachian red crossbill (type 1), but I wanted to make sure our birds were as well, so I took some recordings. When I got home, I sent my red crossbill recordings to Matt Young, a scientist who’s been studying them. He told me that I had recorded both type 1 and type 2, the ponderosa pine crossbill, which had not been documented in Virginia recently.

Red crossbill (Loxia curvirostra), type 1 or 2

Seven young birders had met for the Blue Ridge Young Birders Club field trip to Briery Branch Gap early in the morning at the Rockfish Gap Hawk-watch. The trip to Briery Branch was uneventful until we got to Airport Road, just south of the town of Bridgewater, in Rockingham County. Suddenly, three massive, lightly-colored birds crossed the road in front of us. I only got to see them for a few seconds before they were obscured by the trees, but I had enough time to make out their huge, black-tipped wings, light bodies, tiny tails, and massive bills. They were American white pelicans, a 2nd county record.

We encountered the flocks of red crossbills as soon as we got to the pull off for Briery Branch Gap. It was by far the most I’ve ever seen at once, and the best views. After the crossbill show, we walked up forest road 85 in search of other mountain birds. Pines, hemlocks and oaks grew over a dense layer of mountain fetterbush next to the trail. Blue-headed vireos, dark-eyed juncos and black-capped chickadees sang from the branches. We walked into a field surrounded by red spruce and eastern hemlock. A few more red crossbills flew over our head, accompanied by American goldfinches and pine siskins. Black-and-white warblers sang their whispery, greasy wheel song. Someone flushed an American woodcock, which flew twenty feet and then landed deep in a fetterbush colony. We decided we should turn around so we’d have time for a few stops in the valley on our way home.

For some reason, the field at the end of Lumber Mill Road in Dayton is one of the most reliable places in the valley for the introduced Eurasian collared dove. Why the doves prefer this particular manure-covered field to a million exactly like it all over Rockingham County is beyond me. We found three Eurasian collared doves perched on the powerlines next to the road.

Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto)

Our final stop of the day was Oakwood Pond, where we found two pectoral sandpipers. We headed home, happy with our morning’s birding.

Our group photographing the red crossbills.

Salamanders at Maple Flats

April 7, 2018May 15, 2018 / Ezra Staengl / Leave a comment

The Maple Flats area in southeastern Augusta County is home to a strange array of flora and fauna. Many organisms occur in and around the Shenandoah Valley Sinkhole Ponds at Maple Flats but no where else in Virginia. Plants that usually grow in northern bogs and the southeastern coastal plain can be found growing side by side there. A few species of animals also have disjunct populations that live in the sinkholes.

Maple Flats is underlain by dolomite, a calcareous (calcium rich) rock formed during the Cambrian Period. On top of the dolomite lies a deposit of more acidic quartzite weathered from the nearby mountains, which is responsible for the many plants found growing at Maple Flats that typically grow in more nutrient poor soils. Over time, the dolomite is dissolved by water, leading to its collapse and the formation of the sinkhole ponds.

Many of the sinkholes at Maple Flats could also be called vernal pools, as they dry up in the summer, protecting the numerous species of amphibians and insects that depend on them from predation by fish. All the salamanders in the mole salamander family, including tiger, spotted, marbled, Mabee’s, Jefferson’s, and mole need good quality vernal pools to breed in. Other species that occur only in vernal pools include wood frog and fairy shrimp. Spring peepers also commonly breed in vernal pools, but they can tolerate other types of wetlands.

Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)

The eastern tiger salamander, which has a fairly large range in the coastal plain up through the mountains of Kentucky has a disjunct population in the vernal pools at Maple Flats. Tiger salamanders are state endangered, have very few other populations in Virginia, and most of them are far away in the coastal plain. Eastern tiger salamanders spend most of their time deep underground, coming out only on warm, wet nights in February to breed. They stay near the vernal pools for a few weeks afterwards before they disperse back underground. Some friends and I decided to go to Maple Flats in late March to look for tiger and other salamanders.

When I stepped out of the car into the warm, damp spring air at Maple Flats I felt good about our chances of finding salamanders. If I was a salamander, I’d be out on a day like today. I breathed in the damp air, smelling the gentle spring scent of the forest. We started down the dirt road — overgrown in the summer by black huckleberries and common greenbrier. To my right a trickle of water ran through the sandy soil underneath a canopy of black gum and oaks.

Seepage Swamp

A pine warbler sang, the musical trill of its voice coming from an old pitch pine growing next to the trail. Looking up, I caught a flash of bright yellow as the pine warbler flitted in between dense clumps of pine needles. It sang again, and Tucker noticed the chip of a second pine warbler coming from across the path.

We came to the first sinkhole, a deep pit in the landscape, but barely twenty feet wide. We made our way down the steep banks to the water’s edge, listening to the faint chorus of spring peepers in the background. The water in the pool was crystal clear — I could see every leaf at the bottom. A northern cricket frog hopped across a rock in front of me, pausing long enough for us to see every wart on its back.

Northern Cricket Frog (Acris crepitans)

Emily said she had heard that this particular pool sometimes held fairy shrimp, a species of fresh water crustacean that lives in vernal pools, but none were present that day — perhaps it was too early in the season.

As we walked back toward the trail, I reached down to lift a log as I had been doing all morning. To my surprise, I saw a three-inch long marbled salamander curled up under the log. Further down the length of the log, the head of a second marbled salamander poked out of its burrow. The silvery blotches along the salamanders’ damp backs sparkled in the sun.

Marbled Salamander (Ambystoma opacum)

Like tiger and spotted salamanders, marbled salamanders breed in vernal pools, but unlike the other mole salamanders they breed in the fall instead of the spring, so I hadn’t thought we would see one. I guess they were out to feed near the surface in the damp weather. I carefully put the log back, making sure not to crush the salamanders.

We set to work flipping over rocks and logs, always restoring them to their original position after looking underneath, slowly working our way toward the next pool. We found a few more marbled salamanders, but nothing else for a while. Suddenly, Theo yelled, “I have a salamander, but I don’t know what it is!” By the time we got there the salamander had disappeared into the ground. Theo said he was pretty sure that he had seen a slimy salamander. I moved a particularly large log off the ground. Underneath lay a particularly large salamander. It was longer than my hand and fairly chunky; its body was black with tiny white spots. I didn’t know until I picked it up, but its body was also covered in thick super sticky slime. I called over my friends and showed them the slimy salamander as we discussed its ID.

Slimy Salamander

Around 10 species of slimy salamander live in the Southeastern US, and most of them look very similar. Lucky for us, only two species, the white-spotted and northern slimy salamanders live in our area, but they are almost impossible to identify. We settled on a tentative ID of white-spotted slimy salamander, based on habitat. If anyone has any insight into the identification of slimy salamanders at Maple Flats, please let me know.

Slimy Salamander

After we let the slimy salamander go, I was beginning to worry we weren’t going to find a tiger salamander, as I felt like we’d flipped every good-sized rock in the area already. We decided to walk around the pond in search of more promising salamander habitat. The pond on our left was a large artificial one, half filled with water and half covered in a dense thicket of buttonbush. Four green-winged teal flushed suddenly out of nowhere as we rounded a bend. On our right lay another pond, probably also artificial, this one full of water and bordered by smooth alder. I saw a small trickle of water running through patches of lush Sphagnum moss in front of us. A few minutes later, we’d found a northern dusky salamander under a log in the seep. On our way back up to the trail, someone kicked over a rotting log. Underneath lay a large sleepy spotted salamander, its eyes covered by a dirty membrane.

Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)

Two mole salamanders in a day was exciting, especially since the spotted was a lifer for my friend Tucker, but where were the tigers?

We spent the rest of the day walking to Spring Pond, the largest of the ponds at Maple Flats. We never did see an eastern tiger salamander, but we did see six other interesting species. Next year, I think it might be better to go earlier in the year.

Birding Highland County

June 5, 2017June 5, 2017 / Ezra Staengl / 1 Comment

One of the first field trips I took with the Blue Ridge Young Birders Club was in January 2014 to Highland County, looking for Golden Eagles, Rough-legged Hawks, and American Tree Sparrows. Highland, a green, hilly county on the West Virginia border, contains a large wintering population of Golden Eagles. I remember feeling a little intimidated by the older boys, who were so skilled at bird ID and so patient and generous with helping me see the birds. My 7 year old brother was bored because he wasn’t that into birding yet, so he threw a snowball at the club’s Vice President. Andrew responded with good humor and soon everyone was involved in a memorable snowball fight that helped me and my brother feel even more welcome. We saw about 15 Bald Eagles that day. At the time, they excited me almost as much as the single immature Golden Eagle we saw having a vicious air battle with a Bald Eagle.

After having been to Highland for four winters in a row now, I desperately wanted to go in late May to see some of the breeding birds that are more common further north yet reach the southern limit of their range there. Last year, I waited until June to go, and most of Highland’s rare breeding birds like the beautiful Golden-winged Warbler and Black-billed Cuckoo had already stopped singing. This year, the date of the Blue Ridge Young Birders Club annual trip, May 21, finally worked for me. As we descended into the Blue Grass Valley, we started seeing Bobolinks and Meadowlarks by the road. This area of Highland is mostly endless farmland, so it can be a great place to look for field birds in the spring, and Golden Eagles in winter. We made a few brief stops at little streams that flowed out of the lush, rolling green hills. At one stop in the Forks of Water area, we found a Warbling Vireo, its boisterous, bubbly song intermingling with the sound of the swiftly flowing creek. Other stops in the valley included a graveyard for Willow Flycatcher and a large cattle pasture for Vespers Sparrow (which we didn’t get, but we did have good views of a Savannah and Grasshopper Sparrow).

As we began to climb up toward the West Virginia border and Margaret O’Bryan’s house (the location of one of the best breeding colonies of Golden-winged Warblers in Virginia) the vegetation became more brushy, with young trees and shrubs instead of pasture. I was most excited for this part of the trip, because Golden-winged Warblers were the only regularly occurring, eastern warbler that I hadn’t already seen.

Golden-winged Warblers are one of the rarest breeding warblers in Virginia. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Appalachian population has declined by 98 percent since the 1960s, to only 22,000 estimated breeding individuals in 2010, the steepest decline of any North American songbird. These declines are most likely the result of the loss and degradation of the shrubby, early successional breeding habitat that Golden-winged warblers favor, as well as loss of wintering habitat in the tropics. Another problem is that Golden-winged Warblers frequently interbreed with extremely closely related Blue-winged Warblers. Scientists worry that the much more abundant Blue-winged Warbler could be swamping Golden-winged genetics.

Despite the recent steep decline, I am hopeful that we may still have breeding golden wings in Virginia 50 years from now. For one thing, the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group and other conservation organizations have taken significant conservation actions, such as habitat restoration that could make a difference. Also, new research by the Cornell Lab shows that hybridization probably shouldn’t be considered a threat to Golden-winged Warblers because they have been interbreeding with Blue-winged Warblers for most of their evolutionary history. In this view, the species distinction may be artificial, and the two “species” sharing genes may have helped them survive and adapt to changing conditions.

We parked by the edge of the road just short of the O’Bryan property. As soon as everybody was out of the cars, as if on cue, the high, buzzy song of a Golden-winged Warbler came over the hill. We all scrambled across the road trying to spot it from the tops of the dense, green foliage it likes. As it sang again, Andrew (the same leader from that first Highland trip but soon off to college) spotted it in the top of a tree in the valley below. It was a gorgeous, pure Golden-winged adult male, the fulfillment of a birding dream for me.

Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera)

Thrilled with such early success, we continued up the mountain and over the West Virginia border, where we saw our second Golden-winged Warbler. Two Golden-wings in two different states! The next part of the trip took us into the George Washington National Forest along the VA/WV border, looking for warblers like Canada, Magnolia, and Blackburnian, all of which we eventually heard. At one stop on a dirt road high in the mountains, I found American Lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria pseudomajalis), a life plant for me.

American Lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria pseudomajalis)

We descended into the Straight Fork area, where a complex of beaver ponds, creeks and open mountain meadows crossed the road. This area is one of the best spots in Highland for Northern Odonates, which reach their southern range limit in Virginia and a very good site for Alder Flycatchers. It wasn’t long before we heard the distinctive “free beers” song of Alder Flycatchers echoing around the stream. Finding them wasn’t too difficult, but wasn’t that interesting, as they look almost exactly like Willow Flycatchers. Still, it was nice to properly experience this uncommon breeder that I have never seen before. The odes were not nearly as good as they could have been, possibly because of the cloudiness of the day, or maybe the time of year, with none of the really rare species and only some of the more interesting common northern ones present.

Our last stop was for Mourning Warblers at a fire road in the national forest. Last June, two of them had aggressively responded to imitated chips here, and I was excited to try and repeat that. We started walking down the fire road. Suddenly Andrew tensed and told us to be quiet, indicating he had seen something. He peered into the wall of greenery in front of us, and finally said he had a Black-billed Cuckoo. We rushed forward and demanded he tell us where it was, validating Andrew’s caution in waiting to announce the bird before he’d ID’d it. The Cuckoo, surprisingly tolerant, other than being in nearly impenetrable brush, let us get great looks and abysmal photos. I have been fortunate enough to see a Black-billed Cuckoo in Virginia before, on migration, but for some in our party this was a Virginia lifer. We never did see the Mourning Warblers, but what a great way to end a fantastic trip!

Briery Branch Gap

April 11, 2017April 15, 2018 / Ezra Staengl / Leave a comment

I finally made it up to Briery Branch Gap, on the Virginia-West Virginia border, again. It’s the only place in Virginia where Red Crossbills are seen regularly. The last time I came up here, in March, we didn’t see any Crossbills, even though large flocks of them had been seen recently. Snow covered the ground that day, but the air was warm enough (about 50 degrees), so we figured we’d be fine. As we started up the trail, a group of huge, noisy, monster trucks came roaring through the six inches of muddy slush and snow carpeting the narrow dirt road. Well, so much for being dry, but the sun was still shining and it was still warm (relatively), so we kept walking. As we got up to the campground where the Crossbills usually are, a dark, ominous, storm cloud started to roll in from West Virginia. The temperature dropped noticeably, and it started to drizzle. I did my best to ignore these signs, despite faintly remembered warnings about rapidly changing mountain weather. The further we hiked, the colder it became. We navigated around huge pockets of mud colored slush covering deep pools of frigid water. My foot slipped into one of these pot holes. It started to rain — cold, hard, persistent rain, soaking our long sleeve shirts and threatening to ruin our cameras. We turned and ran for the car, which was, unfortunately, at least half a mile away. Both of my feet were numb. I couldn’t feel them as I ran clumsily down the mountain. Right as we got to the car, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The temperature rose twenty degrees and the snow started visibly melting. I had a hard time believing that just a few minutes ago, we were in the middle of a winter storm. Looking down at the thick blanket of dark clouds in the valley far below us, though, I could see where the storm had gone. Needless to say, no Crossbills that day, but I did enjoy seeing interesting high-elevation plants, such as Mountain Fetterbush and Red Spruce, and strange, introduced, exotics, such as Red Pine and Norwegian Spruce.

This time, in April, the snow was all gone. We got out of the car and ate lunch. As we were finishing, we heard the distinctive flight call of a Red Crossbill in a large Chestnut Oak just on the other side of the hill. I tried to find the bird, but ended up walking in a big circle. Fortunately, my brother spotted a male sitting on top of a little clump of sumac a few feet from us. It stayed still and let us photograph it for awhile, before flying onto the road right in front of us, to peck at the gravel. Crossbills are very approachable when they “gravel,” and this one was no exception, as I was able to get within ten feet of it.

Photo credit: Theo Staengl

After the Crossbill flew away, we had a nice, thankfully rain free hike (not that we were so unprepared this time!), up the road for a couple of miles. We saw the usual high elevation species, like Red-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee, and Common Raven. There were also many Fox and Chipping sparrows. When we got back to the car, we heard two Blue-headed Vireos singing. We quickly found these beautiful birds and enjoyed looking at them until we had to go.