Greetings All:
Sunday was bitterly cold but relatively windfree (in many ways late morning
on Sunday was better than late afternoon on Saturday but I stand by my
decision to postpone the Muleshoe NWR CBC until the 24th as early Sunday
morning was viciously cold and birding would have been, in my opinion, very
poor).
By 10:00 temperatures had crawled up into the double digits - and I took
Paul DiFiore and Christian Walker on a crawl through northeast Lubbock
County ... and an owl thicket bash below Lake Six in Lubbock.
Highlights at City Farms included 3 Snow Geese and 1 Ross's Goose.
Highlights in the Becton area (focussing on the Becton Cemetery Playa)
included 14 Greater White-fronted Geese, 13 Snow Geese, 5 Ring-necked
Pheasants, 1 Rough-legged Hawk, 2 Common Ravens, 2 Lapland Longspurs, 103
Chestnut-collared Longspurs, and 45 McCown's Longspurs - the longspurs had
to be estimated a bit, from photographs of flying birds, as they would not
sit in a viewable location. This is a favored location for all three
species, though, and folk should check in over the winter.
Highlights from below Lake Six in Lubbock included 2 Wood Ducks, 2
Ring-necked Pheasants, 1 Short-eared Owl, 1 House Wren, 2 Winter Wrens, 1
Carolina Wren, 1 Hermit Thrush, 4 Cedar Waxwings, and 1 Orange-crowned
Warbler.
I got a brief look at the continuing Vermilion Flycatcher in the area just
below the spillway before it flew off - I am hoping - to the cemetery.
Anthony 'Fat Tony' Hewetson; Lubbock
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