Sunday, February 14, 2016

The Great Backyard Bird Count!

This weekend (February 12-15) is the Great Backyard Bird Count! So I decided to do something I haven't done in awhile: bird the entire length of Lake Creek Trail. I started a little after 8:00 this morning at the Braes Valley end and spent over 4 hours covering the 2.5 miles of trail and some surrounding off-trail areas. It was one of those fun cloudy days when the bird activity seemed to continue all morning instead of slow down by 10:00 AM. I don't know why this sometimes happens on cloudy days. (Maybe it's because the insects that the birds are catching don't speed up as much since the sun isn't out?) I ended up finding 52 species of birds, a great count for our trail.

I was most excited to find a Merlin that briefly perched alongside the creek in the middle of the T&C playing fields. These falcons are uncommon winter residents in central Texas and I think it has been at least two years since I've seen one in our neighborhood!

Merlin


There was also an Osprey hunting over the dammed up areas of the creek that I managed to get a photo of. This winter resident hawk that specializes in hunting fish was also a species I haven't seen in the neighborhood for a couple years.

Osprey


I was pleased to find a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks starting to build a nest in the willow trees near the Braes Valley trail head. This is the spot they nested in last year too.

Here's my complete bird list from this morning.

No comments: