Birding on Broadmeade Walk

Beautiful cool weather and being in the peak of spring migration right now were probably the two factors that made this month's group walk on Lake Creek Trail the largest in awhile. Over 20 folks met me at 7:30 this morning and we spent over 2.5 hours covering about half a mile of the trail, from the Braes Valley parking lot downstream to the second low water crossing in the Town and Country playing fields. We ended up finding just a few northbound spring migrants:

• a stunning male Yellow Warbler at the tip top of a hackberry tree
• at least two Wilson's Warblers
• three Least Flycatchers
• a heard-only Yellow-breasted Chat
• a briefly seen Gray Catbird
• a heard and then seen male Mourning Warbler
• an Indigo Bunting
• a beautiful Mississippi Kite
• and about a dozen Least Sandpipers

I didn't get many photos this morning since I was busy leading the larger than average group. But I did get this shot of the Mississippi Kite:

Another fun observation was of a Common Buckeye butterfly sunning itself on the layer of algae on the surface of the water in the creek. It was a common butterfly in an uncommon setting:




An unexpected bonus was finding a female Golden-fronted Woodpecker. This is a southwestern species that is very similar to the eastern Red-bellied Woodpecker. You can find both in certain places in west Austin, which is one of several examples of east meeting west in central Texas birding. But I've never seen a Golden-fronted in our neighborhood before this morning. It was the 225th species I've found here!

Here's our complete bird list.

And here are the same photos on Flickr.