For Gone Pishing, It Was All About the Owls

Each year during the Birdathon, Gone Pishing (Allison Gallo, Bryan Henson and Jane Yocom) looks for owls. Bryan has a saying that every day that you see an owl is a great day (or at least a better day than you were previously having).  Who doesn’t love to see an owl, except its prey? Each year, when the team sees the first owl of the Birdathon, the question is: will this be the year we have a four-owl Birdathon? And every year the answer has been no.

Almost every year our Birdathon plans end up contending with the potential for bad weather. This year was no different. Forecasts predicted a lot of rain during our Birdathon weekend, so we adapted and started on Friday, hoping that on Saturday the rain wouldn’t be too bad.

We started off Friday morning, as we have many years now, at our friend Sharon’s house. The morning began with the calls of a Wild Turkey and slowly developed into a decent list of birds including: Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Blue-headed Vireo, Grasshopper Sparrow, Louisiana Waterthrush, Black-and-white Warbler, Cape May Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Northern Parula and Scarlet Tanagers.

Then we headed to Sweet Run State Park. We were happy to find many of our hoped-for birds there: Kentucky Warbler, Cerulean Warbler (woo hoo! last year we didn’t find any Cerulean Warblers), Yellow-breasted Chat and Bay-breasted Warbler. From Sweet Run, we went to several spots and picked up one bird here and one bird there. The highlight of those stops was finding Bobolinks; their metallic singing is always a joy to hear. At a pond in Leesburg, we found some shorebirds along the muddy shores with Least Sandpiper being the best bird there.

More quick stops  yielded only one or two more birds before the rare bird group chat alerted us to a first for our team’s Birdathon. A Snowy Egret was seen at the airport pond, so we hightailed it over there to check out the rare visitor. We headed to our next stop, Bles Park, and found some Wood Ducks, a Cooper’s Hawk and a baby Barred Owl — owl number one. But that one’s easy to get. Barred Owls frequently call at dawn and dusk, and if you stay out long enough, you’re probably going to hear one.

We then headed to Algonkian Park and we found Red-breasted Mergansers on the Potomac, and Common Nighthawks flying in the distance and a baby Great Horned Owl — owl number two. We’ve had Great Horned Owls on our Birdathon before, but not as frequently as Barred Owls.

As it got dark, we decided to try to for an Eastern Screech-Owl, and we were super happy when one flew right over our heads — owl number three. None of us could remember having seen a Screech Owl during a Birdathon.

At this point, we had seen three owl species, and it was looking like the elusive four-owl Birdathon was a possibility. The only owl we had left to see was a Barn Owl. Of course, seeing a Barn Owl in Loudoun County is not that easy to do.

The next day was rainy, so we ended up driving around a lot and picking up one species here and one species there until another rare bird alert came in. Bruce Hill, Loudoun birder extraordinaire, found a Black-bellied Plover. We raced to the pond where he found the plover and soon a big group formed as different birders from all over the county pulled up to see the bird. For all of us that was a new Loudoun County bird, and for Jane it was a lifer. Thanks Bruce!

We ran into another team (the Fully Palmated Birders) at Loudoun Water and found a Horned Lark. We left there and headed back to Algonkian Park hoping to pick up some more warblers. We only found three more warblers: Prothonotary Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler and Blackpoll Warbler, but we added several new birds for our count:  a Bank Swallow, a Veery, a Swamp Sparrow, Yellow-billed Cuckoo and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

It was starting to get late, and it was time to look for our Barn Owl. We have a friend who has Barn Owls that hang out in her silo, so we pulled off the four-owl Birdathon. Any day you see an owl is a great day, but seeing four species of owl in two days was amazing. The Barn Owl was our last new species of the day and a great end to a great Birdathon.

We found a total of 122 species of birds in the two days, had lots of fun, raised over $3000 thus far to support Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy, and we saw many of our birding friends along the way.

Read about the adventures of the other teams on the 2024 Birdathon Team Summaries page.