[TN-Bird] Afternoon Birds 1/22/04

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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