Oakledge Park March 27, 2020 5:00 pm

After driving back to VT from MD I wanted to spend some time outside and not in the car. It was a beautiful afternoon, around 51 degrees and sunny with an 11 mph wind. With Covid- 19 causing closings I wasn't sure if Oakledge Park was still going to be open but it was packed! Oakledge has a nice main walking path with sparse trees that leads to a small beach area. While there are a few other paths, I stayed in the sunlit beach path.

No birds were wading in Lake Champlain while I walked along the beach. The wind was causing the water to have white caps which could have led to there being no geese or ducks. In the trees lining the path, there weren't any birds I could see. The people of Burlington were keeping Oakledge park lively this Friday afternoon which might have kept some birds away.

Walking back towards the car was when I saw the first bird. There was a gull soaring solo above the main park walkway. I couldn't hear it making a call so it wasn't making any vocal communications with other gulls. I did notice the black wings tips on the Gull which can help cool the bird's wings. The heat is concentrated on the feather surface and then taken away by the wind.

By the car, there was a small clearing close to the edge of a wooded area. In the clearing, I could hear a lot of bird calls from various species. I couldn't see any of them and the recording I took was very poor. The birds were most likely calling because of the heavy traffic of pedestrians walking through the woods. Calls are normally used to alert birds of possible threats.

The second and last bird I saw looked like an American Crow but was too far away from me to accurately ID without binoculars. I'm terrible at ID-ing birds during walks but I guess the more walks I go on the better I'll get! The Blackbird was perched on a branch but wasn't resting. It kept messing with its wings so I can assume that it was grooming itself.

After, watching the blackbird for a little bit I left Oakleadge park around 6:30 pm. I only saw 2 birds on my walk: the Gull and the Blackbird.

Publicado el 28 de marzo de 2020 por