Fantastic Friday Night, 05/17/19

Some evenings are better than others. Tonight was one of the better ones; and it was made even more so because I went out with little or no real expectations. I met up with Kyle Dudgeon at Wallkill River National Wildlife refuge; we were trying to get together one last time before he headed 0ut west for the summer. As we pulled into the lot, the evening started off pretty well as the rain subsided and a huge double rainbow appeared.

The evening that followed was just flat out fun. We had a close encounter with a VIRGINIA RAIL (my FOY). Kyle got an incredible shot of the bird; it’s hard to express how good this guy is, the bird was visible for probably less than 5 seconds, Kyle was hand-holding a 500mm lens with and extender, and he gets the killer shot at the top of this post. Honestly it blew me away. An American Bittern was calling on an off all evening, as were several Sora. I sifted through a collection of shorebirds, finding Killdeer, Solitary Sandpipers, Lesser Yellowlegs, and Greater Yellowlegs. A Black-crowned Night-Heron flew across the marsh in the distance (another FOY). We could see that there were many COMMON NIGHTHAWKS feeding at the pool in front of the platform, so we headed back there and enjoyed what I can only guess was 30+ Common Nighthawks and countless swallows feeding on insects over the marsh. At times we had nighthawks flying just feet away from our heads – it was incredible. We heard a SANDHILL CRANE calling and then watched as 3 cranes flew over the marsh, putting down in the south side of the loop. A young Bald Eagle cruised down the west side of the loop, also heading south. What a night!