Birded in the rain yesterday afternoon from Aransas NWR to Victoria with Cullen
Hanks showing him a couple of traditional inland shorebird spots and and lots
of flooded fields. There are an amazing number of swallows along the Coast.
Many of the flooded fields served as foraging sites for hundreds of
individuals from several species. The shorebird sites were generally too deep
for their normal occupants. We checked the Sikes Road catfish farm and mostly
had Black-necked Stilts. Went to the Dacosta Turf and did manage to find 7
Upland Sandpipers in the rain, but no Buff-breasted. We next went to a large
harvested soybean field at the corner of Menke and Boehm that was flat without
any furrows. To our delight we had about 20 Buff-bellied within 100 yards of
the road. It was challenging to locate the birds in the rain and seeing at a
distance was not possible.
Out of curiosity I went back to the soybean field today at about 10 a.m. All
of the surface water from yesterday had disappeared. I spent about an hour
scoping the field. I still could only reliably see about 100 yards into the
field because of the regrowth soybeans. However, I found if you just watched
the horizon, a flock of Buff-breasted would fly and re-position itself in the
field every few minutes. I ended up counting about 150 walking within view of
the road and another 800 in about 10 different flocks scattered across the
field which was roughly a square mile.
Brent Ortegonear Victoria, TX
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2015 09:03:54 -0500
Subject: [texbirds] Front
From: brushfreeman@xxxxxxxxx
To: Texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
Only had a short time to visit just a couple of locations this morning in
Bastrop Co.....The front responsible for........
19 Buff-breasted Sandpipers
~170 Killdeer
~54 Swainson's Hawks
1 N. Flicker HO, FOF
2 Am. Kestrels
27 Caracaras.
~75 Scissortails.
~14 Baltimore Orioles.
**********************************************************************
Brush Freeman
503-551-5150 Cell
120 N. Red Bud Trail. Elgin, Tx. 78621
http://texasnaturenotes.blogspot.com/
Finca Alacranes., Utley,Texas
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