Birding on Broadmeade Walk

About a dozen people joined me for the monthly group walk this morning. We started at the east end of Lake Creek Trail by the Parmer Village pond. It was cold and windy initially but the sun came out and it became a beautiful morning. Here are some highlights from the walk. The pond was pretty quiet, with a few Double-crested Cormorants and a Loggerhead Shrike being the most interesting birds. We made our way to the creek bed and began walking upstream. A heard-only House Wren chattered at us when we first went off trail. And there were a few sparrows around but most couldn't be seen.

We briefly saw an Osprey flying low over the creek up by the last dam. And a little later we saw it again. It was headed our way and flew right over us!



Here it is again, head-on!





A little further down we heard and then saw a Northern Flickr, across the creek bed high in a tree. This is a returning winter resident here, and this one looked like it was eating berries off of poison ivy. Since this was my first flickr of the season, I couldn't resist taking this photo despite a terrible lighting angle:



Enough water was pouring over the last dam to prevent us from crossing, but we saw a variety of returning winter songbirds in the patch of woods right next to it. They included Yellow-rumped Warblers, Orange-crowned Warbler, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and a single Blue-headed Vireo. They were moving fast and usually stayed deep in the tree canopy. But after we entered the woods I managed to get this shot of one of the Yellow-rumped Warblers:



Further into the woods we walked through a huge patch of blooming frostweed. It had many pollinating insects on the flowers, including American Snout butterflies, Queen butterflies, and a single Monarch. Here's one of the Queens:



We eventually made our way back to the trail, and upstream through the Town and Country playing fields to the last low water crossing. We crossed and were exploring the trees on the other side of the creek when an Osprey flew over us again, this time carrying a fish in its talons! While we watched in landed on one of the light posts and proceeded to eat the fish:



We ended up spending about 3 hours on the trail. What a morning!

Here's our complete bird list on eBird.

And here are a few more photos on Flickr.