Birding on Broadmeade Walk

Nine folks joined me early Sunday morning for the monthly group walk on Lake Creek Trail. We met at the Braes Valley parking lot and spent about 2.5 hours covering less than a mile of the trail. The birding was an interesting combination of slow but good. Even though the birds were few and far between, and usually hard to see for more than an instant, we ended up accumulating a great list of 41 species including some migrants and post-breeding wanderers.

Post-breeding wanderers are usually first-year birds that are wandering around outside of their usual range after breeding season. The ones we saw were both brief observations of birds flying over us. They were both first-year wading birds. The first was a juvenile Tricolored Heron and the second was a juvenile White Ibis. Both are coastal birds that often wander inland in the late summer.

Migrant songbirds we eventually found included a Yellow-breasted Chat briefly seen by only a few of the group, a green Painted Bunting, 2 empidonax Flycatchers, 2 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, 2 Yellow Warblers, a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, 2 Orchard Orioles, and 2 Baltimore Orioles. Most of these were brief or distant looks and I only got a few photos. One was of the cuckoo:



And here's one of the Baltimore Orioles, a female:





We had the most exciting migration experience on our way back. On the footbridge and then again a little further upstream, we spotted several Swainson's Hawks and Mississippi Kites soaring. They were ultimately headed south but as we watched them they followed the creek downstream. Here are a couple photos:





What a fun morning! Here's our complete bird list. And here are a few more photos on Flicker.