Lots of Waders and a few Sparrows

On Saturday morning my girlfriend and I birded Lake Creek Trail for a couple hours, starting at the Parmer Village model homes. I highly recommend seeing this part of the creek right now because there are dramatic numbers of large wading birds using the creek bed here. They make an exciting sight! The birds are a mixture of summer residents, first-year wandering birds, and southbound migrants. I estimated there were at least 30 Snowy Egrets, 13 Great Egrets, 3 Great Blue Herons, and 3 Tricolored Herons. With them all I was most excited to find a single juvenile White Ibis. It's a new bird for my neighborhood list, bringing my total up to 195 species! The photo above shows 14 of the Snowy Egrets, and the Ibis is with the 4 egrets on the left. Here's another picture I got, showing just the ibis.

Near the last dam this Great Blue Heron and Tricolored Heron were perched up in a dead tree. The Great Blue Heron was panting in an interesting sunning posture I've seen just a few times before.


Today I took a long bike ride around the neighborhood and I couldn't resist taking my binoculars with me. In this same area I was 2 species of native sparrows. One was a Clay-colored Sparrow on its way south, and the other were 2 Savannah Sparrows. This species winters in this exact spot, so these birds might be returning winter residents, or they might just be on their way further south. They were the first Savannah Sparrows I've seen this fall.

2 Gray Pictures

I slept in this morning, but I finally got out of the house at around 10:00 AM and spent a couple hours birding Lake Creek Trail. I started at the Braes Valley parking lot and I found 36 species of birds including some cool fall migrants. The first migrant I saw was an Olive-sided Flycatcher, making long sallies out from the top of a willow tree to catch insects. The bird was visible right from the parking lot, but I got this picture when the bird moved a little further down the trail. It was far away but in this photo you can see the 2 white "saddle bags" that are sometimes visible on this species.

Another migrant I found was a single Swainson's Thrush in the willow trees by the creek. This was the first time I've seen this species since the spring. Other southbound migrating songbirds I found along the trail before the footbridge were a few Baltimore Orioles, and Mourning, Nashville, and Wilson's Warblers.

I followed the trail through the T&C playing fields which seemed more crowded than usual today. And right where the trail crosses the creek bed I looked up and saw a single Mississippi Kite soaring. This is a migratory species of hawk, and they are quite elegant. Even though the hawk was quite high when I took this poor photo, you can clearly see its distinctive silhouette of long narrow wings and a long tail. They often migrate in large flocks, which can be quite a sight! But this one was alone.

Rain!

What a difference a week makes! I spent the week of Labor Day in Big Bend National Park and came back on Saturday to a very wet and much cooler Austin. That night I got an email from Marie Jackson that the rain had clogged up Lake Creek's drainage by the last dam on the hike-and-bike trail with debris. In the past Marie and her husband Miles have cleared this out themselves, and I greatly admire their attitude of stewardship over their corner of the trail. But now Marie and Miles are hoping that Williamson County can help. If not, we will try and organize a group effort this Saturday morning.

I got out of the house late on Sunday to bird and see effects of the rain. Here are a few pictures of all the debris that needs clearing. It's located near the end of Saddlebrook Trail. (The picture below is a link to a set of pictures on Flickr.)

Even in the early afternoon the birding was good! I found 38 species, including interesting migrants like Baltimore and Orchard Orioles, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Bell's Vireo, and Yellow Warbler. On the creek I estimated there were 40 Snowy Egrets. All those white birds made an impressive sight. And I was excited to see the first migrant sparrow I've seen this fall, a single Clay-colored Sparrow just downstream of the T&C playing fields. Here is another Flickr set of pictures I got, starting with a Pied-billed Grebe that was in the Parmer Village drainage pond.

NASWC Bird Walk

This morning 11 of us met at the Lake Creek Trail parking lot for the September NASWC Bird Walk. It was quite pleasant. There was some color in the sky when I arrived a little after 7:00 AM, and I don't think the temperature got above the mid 80s during the 2 and a half hours we were out. We found 39 species and here are the highlights:

• A female Summer Tanager was in the willow trees by the parking lot.
• Many epidonax flycatchers were around, and we got a couple good looks at the most common species, Least Flycatcher. I got this picture of one.
  
  
  
• We had good luck with Warblers, finding 2 American Redstarts, a Yellow Warbler, at least 2 Wilson's Warblers, and 1 first-year Mourning Warbler.
• We had pretty good luck with vireos too. After hearing White-eyed Vireos for most of the morning, most of us finally got a pretty good look at one on our way back. And we got decent looks at a couple Bell's Vireos as well.
• On the footbridge we could see a flock of Roller Pigeons in the distance, most likely circling over the house of their owner. Occasionally we'd see them tumble in mid-air while they flew.
• On our way back we found this tiny Gulf Coast Toad on the trail.