ML647032141

观察细节

At about 10:55 I stopped at a pullout at the NE corner of Garden Pond to scope for ducks: (33.4351403, -81.9474614). Light was best here to sift through waterfowl. I had barely set my scope down when I heard an aggressive rustling in the Cutgrasses along the shore behind me. Although it sounded like a mammal, I made out movement in the form of a black shape. My initial impression was that an Anhinga or Common Gallinule was perched in the Cutgrass clump and was making a racket. But in one nanosecond, that all changed. An Ani gloriously revealed itself to me, and the hand trembles started. I knew immediately that I needed to do 8 different things, so I grabbed some doc shots as I fired up the speed dial to get the word out. Moments later, the bird flew across the shore beside me and commenced vocalizations. I was fortunate to grab a snippet of the call on Merlin as I tried to stealthily pursue the bird while it worked gradually west along the shore of Garden Pond, always staying in the Cutgrasses. For 10-15 minutes, I continued to shadow the bird, encountering it at various access points along the shore. At times the bird would kind of sally upward, only to return to the Cutgrass to look around or sun for a bit. By 11:05 I had lost track of the bird. My best guess is that it simply huddled down in some denser grass, as I did not see it depart. Sam Murray and Milton Hobbs joined me about 45 minutes later to resume the search, but we have so far been unsuccessful in relocation. Shoutout to Ewan Pritchard's third eye, which manifested this bird, not where he was looking at Altamaha for one this morning, but a couple miles up the road in our Merry vortex.