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| Pheasant Branch Creek Trail, Middleton |
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The Pheasant Branch Creek Trail
begins just south of the Pheasant Branch Conservancy at Century Avenue near
Branch Street in Middleton. It is a paved trail that follows the wooded
corridor along Pheasant Branch Creek. Our favorite part is the section
between Century Avenue and Park Street. Though parking is much easier on the
Park Street side, today we entered from the Century Avenue side. If you are
mobility impaired, this end of the trail does not have a long grade like the
Park Street side, where the climb back to street level can be difficult. The
trail between Century Avenue and Park Street is about a half mile long. There
are park benches and rustic log benches along the route.
Today, our foursome was joined by
Nancy Marshall, another colleague and bird enthusiast. Nancy has a keen ear and
recognizes many of the calls we hear. We
especially like birding the Trail during the spring warbler migration, but we
had heard the fall migration had begun and wanted the new challenge of
recognizing warblers without their breeding plumage. We did see a few little birds here and there
flitting around in the dense foliage, but had no real opportunity for
identification much less photography.
At about the half-way mark we
decided to turn back. A small clearing with seating next to the creek provided
a congenial spot to sit and rest and bemoan our bad luck. All of a sudden,
however, the day was rescued by the appearance of a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk
hunting in the area. We even saw it
swoop down and make a kill. Swift and thrilling, it was over before we could raise
our cameras. We had other excellent opportunities, though, for viewing and
photographing the bird perched.
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| Juvenile Broad-winged Hawk, PBT, 19 August 2012, 8:53 AM |
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| Juvenile Broad-winged Hawk, PBT, 19 Augut 2012, 8:41 AM |
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| Juvenile Broad-winged Hawk, PBT, 19 August 2012, 8:52 AM |
A Belted Kingfisher appeared and
flew around calling excitedly, but didn’t land, probably because of the
hawk. Another bird that did present
itself clearly to us was an Eastern Wood-Peewee. We struggled a bit with identifying it
because small flycatchers are so similar, and its call seemed off, but a couple
of more experienced birders confirmed the identification and said it was giving
a warning call because of the hawk in the area.
The same birders helped us sort out which hawk we had been seeing. The collegiality among birders is yet one
more pleasure of this hobby. We paused
mid-morning to tailgate with coffee and donuts before moving on. Donuts
courtesy of Nancy. Linda poured.
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| Eastern Wood-Peewee, PBT, 19 August 2012, 9:10 AM |
We moved on to check out Tiedeman
Pond and Stricker Pond, also in Middleton, but there was not much to see, so we
moved on to Pope Farm Park off of Old Sauk Road. This is a beautiful spot with views of
restored prairie as well as corn and sunflower fields. We saw common birds such as mourning doves,
tree swallows, and goldfinches at a distance, but the main event was actually a
picnic breakfast we all contributed to. We
will return to this site some early morning in the fall in hopes of seeing
birds that
prefer open fields.
