Blackwater NWR day trip 

On Saturday, March 5, Art Schiavo & I attended a PSO birding trip in Blackwater NWR located near Cambridge. Maryland. http://www.fws.gov/refuge/blackwater

The scheduled meeting time was 8am in Cambridge leaving us time for breakfast at the Comfort Inn before the event. We arrived at the 7:50am to find almost 20 people in attendance including the tour leader Chad Kauffman. After introduction the birding started in earnest, with rafts for Canvasbacks, Greater/Lesser Scaup, Snow geese, Long Tailed Ducks, Common Loon, Bufflehead, Surf Scoter and Golden-eye seen for the parking lot area and adjoining park.....that we drove a short too.

Snow geese

Surf Scoter

After spending about 1 hour at the inlet area, we traveling to Blackwater Visitors Center. Upon arriving at the visitors center, we had a Kestrel and several Horned Larks in the parking lot area. After a short visit and tour of the VC, we headed for the wildlife loop tour road. A section of the road was closed due to nesting wildlife so we did not get to travel the tire the entire route.

 Our first stop was the woods trail area, where we walked a short trail looking for brown-headed nuthatch...we had no luck on the trail, so we decided to walk the closed section of the tour road (which was allowed) and after about a 1/2 mile we where rewarded with several looks at not only brown-headed nuthatch, but excellent looks at several brown creepers and golden crowned kinglets.

Brown Headed Nut (photo from All about Birds)

We then proceeded to along the wildlife drive, stopping several times to observe waterfowl and other species including: Bald Eagles on nest, Snow Geese, Tundra Swans, Northern Shovelers, and American Wigeon plus many other species.

Snow Geese in flight

The wildlife driving tour took us about 3 hours to complete ending at around 1:30 pm.....Art & I decided decided to start for home while the rest of the tour group was going to make make at least one more stop in the Cambridge area and then stop at the Chesapeake Environmental center (where we stopped on the way down) before returning.

We ended the the trip with 66 species and several FOY's (first of year species). I plan to return to Blackwater NWR later in the year with Quttapahilla Audubon Society..more to come on this trip.

Not all that wander are lost.