We stood shivering in the 22 degree early morning air, looking out on the partly frozen Potomac River.  To our left, we could see the smokestacks and apartment buildings of the District of Columbia, while across the river to our right the thick forests of Maryland loomed.  A thin coating of snow lay on the ground, extending out onto the ice of the Potomac.  Far out on the unfrozen parts of the river, a few-hundred ducks huddled, periodically diving or dabbling.  Occasionally, a group of common mergansers flew overhead, their green or brown heads contrasting sharply with their white necks and bodies.  A sleek, camouflage covered boat drifted out onto the river, carrying two duck hunters towards the distant rafts of ducks.  Stirred to action despite the cold by the fear that the hunters would scare the ducks out of sight, we resumed scanning through our scopes.  Two lesser scaup and a few ruddy ducks dove up and down near the sides of a large group of over fifty canvasbacks.  Mallards made up most of the second, larger raft, with other dabbling ducks like American black duck and gadwall mixed in.  Behind these ducks, on the very horizon of what we could see clearly, more diving ducks drifted and dove.  Logan said that he had a long-tailed duck, one of the rare species we were looking for here, in his scope.  I looked in his scope and saw it, but before anyone else in our group had the chance, a gunshot sounded out on the river and all the diving ducks lifted off and flew far across the river into Maryland.

We walked down the road to the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, where we hoped to see more ducks and other birds.  To our left stretched acres of the last freshwater tidal marshes next to the Potomac, and to our right grew a beautiful mature swamp forest.  As we walked in, the thickets and clumps of vegetation along the path were hopping with song, white-throated, and fox sparrows.  Swamp sparrows flitted and chipped in the marshes.  The path eventually emerged out of the woods and onto a little peninsula that stuck out into the river.  We saw many more ducks from here, mostly diving ducks such as lesser scaup, ring-necked duck, canvasback, redhead, and common mergansers, and of course, the ever present mallard.  Baxter, Shea, and my brother Theo decided to walk across the peninsula on a boardwalk to check the other part of the river.  They soon called that they had a long-tailed duck.  The rest of us rushed over the boardwalk, heedless of the slippery snow that coated it.  There turned out to be two female long-tailed ducks, quietly swimming about on the other side of a small cove, barely ten yards away.

The diffuse winter morning sun lit the ducks from behind us, creating a gorgeous medley of rich colors.  One of the ducks seemed to have a belly itch, because it kept turning upside down in the water and preening its belly in a rather comical fashion.  It would sit upright in the water, and use its feet to keep it from falling over, making it swim backwards in a vertical position.  Here is a video Theo got of this preening behavior.

 

 

On our walk out of Dyke Marsh, we counted 10 fox sparrows, which is the most I have ever seen at once.

Our next stop was the Laurel Hill Equestrian Area, to look for a clay-colored sparrow.  We followed the directions we had been given from the parking lot back down the road, past huge clumps and tangles of blackberry vines and grasses.  Soon we came to one such tangle, which happened to be the one the clay-colored sparrow favored.  As we walked around it, we saw a flock of white-crowned sparrows foraging next to the road.  The clay-colored sparrow was immediately apparent, as it was about half the size of the white-crowned sparrows.  Whenever the clay-colored sparrow got too close to a larger white-crowned sparrow, there would be a brief scuffle, followed by a flurry of snow, and the clay-colored sparrow would have to move further off.  Despite its low status in the flock, it behaved fairly well for us, and we all got great looks and photos.

After a quick lunch, we headed over to Pohick Bay Regional Park, another place on the Potomac, where a Eurasian wigeon had recently been seen.  We walked out onto the river on a snow coated boat dock, set down our scopes, and began to scan.  Hundreds of gadwall formed the majority of the duck flock, with good numbers of American wigeon mixed in.  A humongous American coot flock swam a little bit further out.  Two horned grebes hunted behind the ducks.  We soon identified the Eurasian wigeon by its red head, and we all had descent scope views.

After a brief and uneventful stop at Occoquan Bay NWR, we drove to the Dulles International Airports parking garages, where we wanted to look for a continuing snowy owl and two rough-legged hawks.  From the top of the parking garage, we had an uninterrupted 360 degree view of the airport’s runways, but unfortunately this meant that there was no where to hide from the relentless wind.  Northern harriers and many short-eared owls hunted over the fields in the waning light.  Max soon found the snowy owl in his scope, perched on top of a distant airport terminal.  The 2017-2018 winter is shaping up to be a large snowy owl irruption, with birds already found in Franklin, Rockingham, Isle of Wight, Suffolk, King William, Accomack, and Loudon Counties this year.  It is very exciting to see these majestic northern owls so far from their home, using large farm fields and even airports as hunting grounds.  We stayed until the increasing darkness and the cold wind finally pushed us out, but despite seeing many red-tailed hawks, we could not find the rough-leggeds.  We got in the cars and started the long drive back to Charlottesville.