Birding on Broadmeade Walk

About a dozen people joined me this morning for the group walk. We met at 7:30 at the Parmer Village end of the trail, and we were very lucky to enjoy overcast skies and a nice breeze for the entire walk. After covering about a mile of trail in a little under 3 hours, we found 41 species of birds. The most unexpected and fun bird observation we made was this family of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks which was in the pond formed by the penultimate dam on the creek. This is the first time I've seen any evidence of any duck species breeding on Lake Creek Trail. Most of the wild ducks we see here are only here in the Winter. Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are one of the few year-round resident ducks in central Texas.







My next favorite observation of the morning was this Wandering Glider dragonfly. This species can be very hard to show to a group because it hunts on the wing and rarely lands. I was lucky to spot one land in the creek bed between the Parmer Village pond and the last dam on the creek. Then I was lucky again to find it in my spotting scope which enabled everyone to get a great look at it. This is a species you can find all over the world.



In the T&C Playing Fields we noticed that a juvenile Great-tailed Grackle was caught in the netting of a batting cage. A few of the group raised the netting and eventually caught the tired bird and got it out. In this photo you can just see the bird in the top right corner of the cage.



Here's our complete bird list on eBird.

And here are a few more photos on Flickr.