Birding Posey-Webb Camp Road and Posey-Webb Camp Highway in the hills west of Harrisonburg, 11/1/14

  


Lincoln's Sparrow, Posey-Webb Camp Road, Catahoula Parish

   It was cold (34 degrees f.), clear, and calm early on the morning of November 1st. It really felt like a sample of the winter to come. This is the kind of morning when I find myself eager to get out in the field and do some birding. I had decided to use this morning to check out the bird life along a couple of roads in northern Catahoula Parish that fall along the middle section of my BBS route, the Enterprise Route. I have been surveying that route for a few years now, and know the summer birds along there quite well. However, I've not birded the location outside of early June and was eager to initiate a new ebird location or two dedicated to certain sections of the route that I could bird throughout the year. The stretch of territory along Posey-Webb Camp Road and Posey-Webb Camp Highway seemed the smartest area to start with.
   Before we go further, it might be helpful to explain the what and where of this obscure place that I chose to bird. These roads are in the vicinity of the Chalk Hills, in the southern edge of the eastern extension of the Kisatchie Wold, in the generally northwestern to north-central part of Catahoula Parish. The south end of Posey-Webb Camp Road turns off of hwy 126 roughly a mile or so north of that road's junction with highway 8 near the Manifest community. I started the birding coming in from the south.

Posey-Webb Camp Road, looking north towards the 'Y'.

   Posey-Webb Camp Road (P-W Camp Rd.) runs roughly south-north from hwy 126 to its junction with Posey-Webb Camp Highway (P-W Camp Hwy). Now, P-W Camp "Highway" isn't a highway really, but a narrow, twisty blacktop that runs generally east-west through the hills west of Harrisonburg, east of Aimwell, and north of Manifest.
   At first I wasn't getting any sounds of birds. When I finally did, I stopped and started the list and time and effort information at that point. The theme of mixed woodland flocks was introduced at the first stop, with chickadees, kinglets, Pine Warblers, and others all moving through the pines together. It would continue to be the case through the morning that when in woody areas there'd be gaps with few or no birds punctuated by hot spots with a flurry of bird activity, dominated by the little arboreal songbirds.
  

Carolina Chickadee, Posey-Webb Camp Highway.
Part of a mixed flock.

   Traveling north on P-W Camp Rd, one moves from a situation with young pine woods on either side to one with a scrubby cutover on the west and the thicket / young woods continuing on the east. The views are nice here, especially where the early morning sun was able to hit some of the colorful fall foliage that has started to appear in the creek bottom on the far side of the hillside cutover. However, there wasn't much bird activity at this point. A group of American Crows circling a prominent tree in the distance drew my attention, and sure enough there was a Red-tailed Hawk perched in that tree. It eventually flew and landed nearer my position, but still too far for a good photo, though I did snap a few blurry ones.

Red-tailed Hawk, P-W Camp Rd.

   Further along the road, the woods and scrubby growth open out onto a 1.5 year old cutover on the high ridge where P-W Camp Rd approaches P-W Camp Highway. The ground cover here is sparse in places, but just old enough and dense enough to support some of the weedy habitat-loving species I was hoping to see, such as Song Sparrow and House Wren. I scanned the cutover's numerous snags and isolated trees, hoping to see the form of a bird perched in some of them. In doing so, I was hoping to find some species encountered in such situations such as kestrels, flickers, and buteo sp. Northern Flicker obliged.
   P-W Camp Rd forks, forming a 'Y', and each of the forks meet P-W Camp Highway a short distance further, just over the crest of the ridge. I took the west fork and parked at the junction of the P-W C Rd and Hwy. On the west side of the road was a calling Song Sparrow and calling House Wren, on the east, another House Wren, quite close and some times pausing in the open where I could see it. I turned east on P-W Camp Highway and soon stopped, between where the two forks of PWC Rd meet Hwy, to i.d. several small birds. One that was seen turned out to be a Chipping Sparrow, and a couple of more of its kind could be heard. I continued east and into the woods and older pine thickets.

Eastern Phoebe, Posey-Webb
Camp Highway

   I stopped at a likely looking spot just west of where the road crosses a small hardwood creek (an upper branch of Hawthorne Creek). The vein of hardwoods running through the less productive pine plantation should have a denser and more diverse bird population than the surrounding habitat. It did. A short time after starting my screech-owl imitations, the first little woodland songbirds started making there presence known. Soon, I had attracted one or more individuals each of Carolina Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Eastern Phoebe, R-C and G-C Kinglet, Carolina and Winter Wren, Orange-crowned and "Myrtle" Warbler, Hermit Thrush, Northern Cardinal, White-throated Sparrow, Brown Thrasher, Blue Jay, and Red-bellied Woodpecker. I managed to get photos of some of the birds, though the glare from the angle of the sun made them a little less crisp than I would like but it was still a lot of fun trying.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet, P-W Camp Hwy.

This was the most productive single spot of the day in terms of species diversity, and possibly also number of individual birds. The Winter Wren and Orange-crowned Warbler were especially nice as they were FOS species for me this fall.










Northern Cardinal, Posey-Webb Camp Hwy.

   I turned around a little further east on J D Hardy Rd. I was feeling pretty satisfied with the morning's birding so far and was considering whether to keep up the effort while retracing my path back out or not. When I got back to the junction with P-W Cmp Rd, a brilliant and somewhat tame male American Kestrel answered this for me. I watched the charismatic little falcon on his perch for a few minutes, snapping pictures that were subpar due to the angle of the sun, until a passing car caused the bird to fly. Fortunately its next perch was in good view of where I needed to drive along P-W Camp Rd. Just after turning onto this road and parking I heard the familiar high-pitched calls of a flock of Cedar Waxwings. Try as I might, I couldn't get a visual on them from my limited view through windows and windshield as they apparently flew over the truck. Ebird would flag this observation as being early.


Male American Kestrel, corner of P-W Camp Hwy
and P-W Camp Rd.

   I continued attempting to photograph the kestrel along a number of perches in the narrow strip of cutover west of the west fork of the road. Several times he would swoop down and apparently snatch some small prey item and return to a perch. I watched carefully through binoculars as he appeared to eat what he had caught, but whatever he was preying on was too small to make out, too small to be something like a sparrow or a mouse. Of course kestrels prey heavily on insects, but I thought that the weather was too cold (upper 30's f. by this point) for grasshoppers and the like to be out.



Here's the kestrel after returning to his perch with some
small prey item, Posey-Webb Camp Rd.




   While watching the kestrel at a stop just north of the 'Y', I heard an intriguing sparrow-like chipping. A few 'pshh's later, and a bold Lincoln's Sparrow popped up in the edge of the cutover vegetation just yards from the passenger-side window. The bird was unusually obliging and stayed in this spot for a couple of minutes at least, and I managed to get a number of good photographs, nice and up-close with good light conditions.

Lincoln's Sparrow, Posey-Webb Camp Rd.

A Song Sparrow had also come to see what the fuss was about and hung around a little while, giving me more nice sparrow pics, including one of my favorite pictures of the day.








Song Sparrow, Posey-Webb Camp Rd.

   Eventually I decided to leave the sparrows and kestrel to their business and drove on south, leaving the way I had come in.
   This was an excellent start to what I hope will be a winter season of good birding.
The complete species list for the trip with additional photos is below.

Scrubby cutover and hardwood creek bottom west of
P-W Camp Rd.

ebird location name: "Posey-Webb Camp Road and Posey-Webb Camp Highway area"

Parish: Catahoula

11/1/2014

7:40 am to 9:45 am

Traveling count: 2.8 miles

Conditions: 34 to 41 degrees f., clear, calm at first but soon becoming breezy.

Turkey Vulture - 1

Red-tailed Hawk - 1

Mourning Dove - 5

Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1
Northern Flicker - 3
Pileated Woodpecker - 1

American Kestrel - 1

Eastern Phoebe - 2

Blue Jay - 4
American Crow - 17

Tufted Titmouse, P-W Camp Hwy.

Carolina Chickadee - 5
Tufted Titmouse - 5

Brown-headed Nuthatch - 3

House Wren - 2
Winter Wren - 1 (FOS)
Carolina Wren - 10

Golden-crowned Kinglet - 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 10

Eastern Bluebird - 7
Hermit Thrush - 6



Song Sparrow, P-W Camp Rd.

Brown Thrasher - 3

Cedar Waxwing - x unknown number (FOS)

Orange-crowned Warbler - 1 (FOS)
Pine Warbler - 6
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) - 3

Eastern Towhee - 4
Chipping Sparrow - 3
Song Sparrow - 2
Lincoln's Sparrow - 1 (FOS)
White-throated Sparrow - 7

Lincoln's Sparrow, P-W Camp Rd.

Northern Cardinal - 13

blackbird sp. - 16

Lincoln's Sparrow, P-W Camp Rd, Catahoula Parish

 

 Happy Birding!

Jonathan Clark