Over this semester’s spring break I returned to my home in Arlington Virginia. My week was spent with friends, family, and in the woods. the first notable natural encounter from my break happened while driving through my suburban neighborhood. As I was cruising down the road a bird glided up right in front of my car and perched on a telephone wire thirty yards ahead of me. Since my eyes are attuned for movement in the sky and I’m always on the lookout for birds I immediately, and rather dangerously, pulled over to the side of the road and came to a screeching stop. I pulled out my trusty camera and bird book I carry with me everywhere I go and saw this beautiful guy.
This is a coopers hawk. The same bird I was able to watch hunt and eat another bird. After that amazing experience I feel a connection to coopers hawks. So I leaned up against my car and simply observed. It is amazing that this creature I associate with the wild lives in and around my backyard in a largely metropolitan area.
The place I would call my sit spot over the break was in a wildlife refuge in Maryland called Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. I will be spending my summer there interning. The internship involves raising an endangered species of crane, the whooping crane, and releasing them into the wild. So, I decided to visit the refuge. The refuge is huge, along the Patuxent river, and near the Chesapeake bay. It is a relatively swampy area with lots of marshland and forest lining the river, much like my spot in centennial woods. However, the composition of flora and fauna was quite different. White pines were replaced with red pines, red oaks replaced with white oaks, and where maples dominate the Vermont forests beech dominate the Maryland ones. There were more birds there as well from ring necked ducks, to northern harriers. The migration reaches Maryland first.
It was a beautiful spring day in Virginia when I went out to the refuge. Virginia is two to three weeks ahead of Vermont for spring. The part of the refuge I visited had walking paths for visitors and was around a centralized visitor’s center. There are two large ponds and a river that the paths follow. I was lucky enough to see many ring necked ducks, some golden eyes, some mallards, a redwing blackbird, and a northern harrier!
I can’t wait for my place based knowledge about Patuxent to grow over the summer. And to develop new sit spots there.