[texbirds] Local Patch
- From: Dan Smith <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: texbirds Maillist <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:22:47 -0500
I'm putting this up in both places because my Local Patch posts don't seem to
make it to Texbirds.
Woohoo! Did I have a birdy morning this morning. I started out at NE Park,
which shows as 5898 Ute Drive (actually a little cul de sac on Crystalbrook)
and walked the length of the levee along Walnut Creek. I've found several
places where you can get through the woods either down to the creek (bit of a
scramble for an old coot) or to nice overlooks, and just walking along the
levee is pretty good when birds are present because you're looking across at
birds foraging in the woods or isolated tree clumps up on the flood plain
there.
This morning in about an hour and a half, I found 3 flocks of migrants in the
woods along the creek and a couple of isolated individuals that yielded these
species:
1 each of Northern and Louisiana Waterthrush (different spots on the creek)
1 Black-throated Green Warbler
1 Northern Parula
3 Nashvilles
1 Black-and-White Warbler
1 Worm-eating Warbler
1 Brown Thrasher
2 Gray Catbirds
1 Eastern Bluebird
2 White-eyed Vireos
1 Red-eyed Vireo
2 Warbling Vireos
3 Wood Ducks
1 Yellow-breasted Chat
Out on the levee I had
5 Mississippi Kites
5 Broad-winged Hawks
1 Swainson's Hawk
2 Red-tailed Hawks
1 Sharp-shinned Hawk
1 Red-shouldered Hawk
1 Painted Bunting
2 House Finches
Also had Inca, Mourning & White-winged doves; Monk Parakeets, Western Kingbirds
just up the road at LBJ High School; an Eastern Kingbird
Add in the usual suspects (vultures, cardinals, mockingbirds, swallows, etc,
and I totaled 51 species in this park, far and away my best day in several
trips.
I then went down below Longhorn Dam and picked up 24 species there. The only
notable ones were a pair of Cinnamon Teal in an eddy a bit downstream (across
from about the 4th spot you look over the river from the path, a Yellow Warbler
and the only Yellow-rump I saw today, both foraging in the foliage down out of
the wind.
On Sunday, I strayed from my patch and went out to Big Webberville Park. 2
chicks were on the eagle nest with an adult nearby. I also saw and photographed
in very poor light against a gray sky another eagle that appeared to me to be
dark brown rather than the almost black of bald eagles in most plumages. It
also had no white underneath that I could see, but the light may have fooled me
about that and color. After showing pictures to Tony Leukering, Jen Ottinger
(also a hawk observer and field biologist and the paid counter at Smith Point 3
years ago), Brush, and Eric Carpenter, I'm reporting this as a Bald Eagle. But
I think it is at least an unusual one and I'm suspicious that an adult Golden
Eagle may have passed through and I just couldn't get a good enough shot. It's
probably long gone, but I think is worth pointing out in case anyone else in
central Texas sees a similar bird in better circumstances.
Dan Smith
dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
512-451-2632
http://www.wordsmithofaustin.com
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