[TN-Bird] Afternoon Birds 1/22/04
- From: OLCOOT1@xxxxxxx
- To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:00:28 EST
Jan. 22, 2004
Robco Lake, TVA Lake
President's Island,
Shelby Co. TN
After a canceled appointment yesterday afternoon, I did a 3 hour tour of the
above areas looking for the easing back north of maybe a few early birds. I
was successful in finding 2 Forster's Terns at Robco Lake and I'm sure within a
very few weeks the first Purple Martins will show up there first, as they do
every year. Maybe another first week in February appearance for that species
this year after such a mild winter (so far) ;o).
Besides the terns, there were many DC Cormorants, 2 Pied-billed Grebes, 1
Horned Grebe, 20-30 Ring-billed, 3 adult Herring, 3 Bonaparte's Gulls and a
single American White Pelican along with 11 species of waterfowl. The majority
of
the latter were Lesser Scaup with a token pair of Redheads and quite a few
Canvasback.
At TVA Lake in Ensley Bottoms, the normal bunch of Lesser Scaup was scanned
yielding a big number of Greater Scaup, 94 with 38 all together in one group
and more dropping in as I scanned. This is probably the best place to study
these birds that I know. A single Canvasback hen and a few Ring-neck Ducks were
in
the mix plus 182 Ring-billed all piled up like a snow drift on the flats and
17 Bonaparte's traded in and out of McKellar Lake.
On the road into Ensley were Gadwall, Mallards, Ring-necked, Wood and
Northern Shoveler and great looks at a Sharp-shinned Hawk, my first for the
year and
on the way home I photographed a Cooper's lurking in a tree overlooking
someone's feeder.
I spent over an hour running through the doves on President's Island and
solved part of the disappearing Eurasian Collared-Doves problem. At one
location I
watch over 100 of these birds fly onto a roof that has a parapet and
completely disappear. It seems this large roof is a roosting site and could
hold a
thousand of these birds and you could drive by it and never see a one. I still
saw a few hundred others plus a ton of Mourning Doves and still marvel at the
diversity of color found in both species. I tried to get a photo of a very dark
rusty Mourning Dove and relocated the rusty EUCD plus I found a partial albino
EUCD that was pure white except for a few normal colored feathers on the
coverts and two primaries. Since these dark colors were symmetrical the bird
was
impressive in flight but I only got shots of the bird perched.
I'm off in the morning to look through the gulls at Pickwick and then the
loons and eagles at Pace Point. There ought to be growing numbers of scoters
somewhere as this species starts back north.
Good Birding!!!
Jeff R. Wilson
OL'COOT / TLBA
Bartlett, TN
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