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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andrew Whitehouse" data-source="post: 1203604" data-attributes="member: 3550">So mid-morning yesterday I headed to Newark airport to further my develop my carbon footprint to almost Jos-like proportions.  I flew to Indianapolis and then travelled an hour or so south to Bloomington, Indiana where I was meeting with a couple of bird sound researchers.  Once I’d arrived at my motel, I headed off towards Griffy Lake, which is an extensive wooded reserve on the northern side of town, around a mile or so from where I’m staying.  I wasn’t exactly sure where to go and ended up spending quite a while wandering various ‘unofficial’ trails through quite dense and tall woodland.It was pretty quiet in the woods, and hard to see much of what there was.  I glimpsed a couple of Red-eyed Vireos and saw what I suspect must have been a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, but the views weren’t really that conclusive.  A few parties of Carolina Chickadees flitted through the treetops.  What was a bit more conclusive was a waterthrush I stalked down by the edge of a stream.  Despite most views being of the bobbing rear of the bird, I eventually saw enough to be convinced it was a Northern Waterthrush.  They’re tricky though – I get the impression these are birds you really need to have your eye in for.  I  had a nice view of a humbug-striped Red-bellied Woodpecker along the road and down at the dam there were lots of Northern Rough-winged Swallows swooping low over the water.  A walk along a trail south of the lake turned up another Northern Waterthrush and a Canada Warbler.  On the pumping station by the dam, there was a female Eastern Bluebird fly catching and an Eastern Wood-pewee was doing something similar from a fence wire.  The highlight was on the walk back through a wooded residential area, where three Common Nighthawks silently drifted out towards the lake as dusk fell.This morning I took a different route towards the lake and found a number of marked trails through some very lovely woodland.  On the way there, I saw my first ever Brown Thrasher hopping along the edge of the road, and a White-tailed Deer stared back at me from the verge.  Into the woodland and things started fairly quietly but soon I heard an interesting song consisting of a rapidly repeated two-note phrase.  Now I’ve been trying quite hard to learn a few songs before I came out here and soon I was suspecting this might be a ‘target bird’.  It remained out of sight initially in fairly dense trees but then I caught a movement in front of me: a bright yellow and black-masked Kentucky Warbler.  I was doubly pleased, not just to see a new bird but to have suspected correctly what it was from the song.  Nearby I had good views of a calling bird scuttling through the low cover.As the sun came up, more birds began to sing but most remained out of sight.  Having listened back to recordings, I’m confident I heard the beautiful and wistful strains of a Wood Thrush singing.  Overhead, a couple of Great Blue Herons cruised over and two more White-tailed Deer looked inquisitively at me as I approached, their breath smoking in the cool morning air.  A pair of Downy Woodpeckers were busy feeding young at a nesthole and a chipmunk scuttled over some fallen branches.  An emphatic repeated song alerted me to an Ovenbird and as I was looking for it, I caught sight of another brownish warbler in low vegetation.  Rather excellently, this was a Worm-eating Warbler, all black and toffee-coloured stripes.  A really good bird – a bit more like the subtle European warblers than these brash American types.  Down a ridge I heard a buzzy ascending song but it was always too distant to see the bird making it.  I’m almost certain this was another local warbler speciality – a Cerulean Warbler.  I shall go back to have another look later.The walk back was productive too.  All morning I’d heard a number of birds giving a high-pitched song and had strong suspicions as to what they might be coming from.  These were confirmed when I had good views of a Tennessee Warbler in some low roadside scrub, as it sang to another that was somewhere out of sight in the woodland.  In another roadside tree a lovely deep blue Indigo Bunting gave its pleasant chirping song and I saw a couple of beautiful American Goldfinches perched up in a garden.  A chestnut-capped Chipping Sparrow was walking about a lawn and then a pair of Eastern Kingbirds swooped from the low branches of a conifer to pick up insects from near the ground.</blockquote>

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