Feeling like Summer

I spent about 3 hours birding Lake Creek Trail yesterday morning, starting at the Parmer Village community. It's starting to feel like summer. The weather was bright and hot, and numbers of north-bound migrating birds are tapering off. The only migrants I found were 1 Least Flycatcher, 1 Mourning Warbler, 1 Pectoral Sandpiper, 4 Spotted Sandpipers, and 1 White-rumped Sandpiper. Summer birding takes on a different focus than in the spring when all kinds of birds are passing through the area. Species diversity is lower and birding becomes more about appreciating the summer and year-round resident species we have here, like these 2 Inca Doves in their fresh breeding colors that were foraging near the last dam.

Among the other summer birds I found were juvenile Barn Swallows being fed by their parents (sometimes in mid-air), a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher chasing off an American Crow, a few Eastern Phoebes (the only flycatcher that you can find in the neighborhood year-round), a male Black-chinned Hummingbird, and 2 White-eyed Vireos.

I encountered 2 or 3 Blotched Water Snakes on the creek and got this picture of one. Our creek has lots of water snakes in it and I think Blotched Water Snakes are the most common kind. They eat anything they can catch in the creek, including fish, frogs, and crawfish. They grow to be 3-4 feet long, and they are non-venomous. Back in 2007 I posted about finding one in the process of swallowing a large bass and I put up a series of pictures. Here's my blog post and here are the pictures. Be warned, the pictures are a bit gruesome!