Birding on Broadmeade Walk

About 12 people joined me this morning at the Parmer Village end of Lake Creek Trail. The morning started heavily overcast with a slightly cool breeze out of the south, temperature in the low 70s; and it stayed almost exactly the same all morning. Periodically there was just a tiny bit of rain in the air. We spent 3 hours covering about a mile of the trail, and we found 44 species of birds. Here are a few highlights.

The rarest bird we found was a single Sedge Wren that made a brief appearance near the Roosevelt Weed downstream of the last dam. Unfortunately I was the only one who saw it before it disappeared in the brush. We couldn't coax it out with a recording.

From the last dam we saw 2 male Belted Kingfishers.

At the small bridge just east of the playing fields we got to hear and briefly see a singing House Wren. These small brown birds have surprisingly fast and complex songs. We don't get to hear these songs very often since House Wrens are just in central Texas during the winter.

Most fun for me was what we found in the single large baseball field in Town and Country. Surrounded by soccer fields, mostly in use, this baseball field was full of Killdeer, nearly 100 of them. And mixed in were 3 Least Sandpipers and 6 American Pipits. All these birds were resting, or actively foraging for insects in the short grass. In addition there were 2 Eastern Bluebirds and maybe a dozen House Finches on the fence. What a great baseball field!

The pipits are winter residents and these were the first I've seen this season. They are small, sparrow-like songbirds that are often found near water. They walk like a chicken and often bob their tail up and down as they forage. Here's a poor photo of one of them:



Here's our complete bird list on eBird.