Crozet, VA 3/24/2020

Old Trail

All photos are © Marshall Faintich

Dense fog finally lifted around 10:15 this morning, and then we had a couple of hours of sunny skies before clouds moved back in. The sunshine was both a blessing and a curse! It was great for birding, but all of the trails here in Old Trail became loaded with people, making birding difficult, and "social distancing" even more difficult. I was only able to do some birding for a little more than an hour, and ended up with 18 avian species. Even though the number of species was low, Red-shouldered Hawks were amazing!

I started off on the trail along the creek in Creekside, and saw a few species, including the back of the Red-shouldered Hawk in her nest on the other side of the creek. As I approached my car after hiking there, I heard Red-shouldered Hawks pitching a fit, and saw four hawks there. At least one of them was a juvenile.

Photo Unavailable
Red-shouldered Hawks

Photo Unavailable
Red-shouldered Hawk

Photo Unavailable
Juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk

I then drove over to the street on the other side of the creek for a shot of mama on her nest.

Photo Unavailable
Red-shouldered Hawk on nest

Next stop was the golf course pond, where I saw an adult Red-shouldered Hawk that flew to the east. I then headed over to Western Park, and saw six Red-shouldered Hawks there! At least three were juveniles, and I think that the other three were adults. At one point, all six were in the air at the same time. With mama most likely still on her nest, that made seven of them this morning; maybe even more, if these were not the same hawks I saw at Creekside. The juveniles did a lot of practice fighting, and one of them was missing a lot of its tail feathers.

Photo Unavailable
Two adult and two juvenile Red-shouldered Hawks