Birding on Broadmeade Walk

On Sunday morning about a dozen people joined me at the Parmer Village end of Lake Creek Trail for the monthly group bird walk. We got started at 7:30 and spent about 3 hours finding 40 species of birds. Spring migration is winding down and the birds have changed their priorities to reproduction. We saw lots of evidence of this on our walk. The most exciting for me was hearing and then seeing a singing male Painted Bunting! As we walked upstream in the creek bed beside the trail we started hearing a Painted Bunting song ahead of us. It continued from the same area near the last dam on the creek. And when we reached the dam we were rewarded with great looks at this small colorful bird singing. I've never had a group get such good looks at this species on Lake Creek Trail. Here's a photo I got:



On last year's June walk we also heard and saw a singing Painted Bunting, but it was a first-year male that was all green. (The males don't get their multi-colored plumage until their second year.) Who knows, maybe this was the same bird!

Some young birds we saw included juvenile Northern Mockingbirds and Northern Cardinals.
Here's a poor photo of a group of three juvenile cardinals. See how their bills are all different shades! They don't get their bright orange bills until they mature.



Out on the playing fields we found several Eastern Bluebirds including at least one juvenile bird, and this adult female holding nesting material. We saw her enter an open end of that yellow plastic tubing where we assume she's building a nest.



Along with the warmer weather the dragonflies are returning, and we saw a couple of these dramatically patterned Halloween Pennants in the creek bed between the Parmer Village pond and the last dam:



And by the eastern edge of the playing fields we found this small Leopard Frog that still has a bit of its tail from when it was a tadpole:



Here's our complete bird list.

And here a few more photos on Flickr.