Greetings All: This year's game, titled 'A Slightly Bigger Patch' is to see how many species of butterfly, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal I can find in my home region. The LEAS region includes fifteen counties (Bailey, Lamb, Hale, Floyd, Motley, Cochran, Hockley, Lubbock, Crosby, Dickens, Yoakum, Terry, Lynn, Garza, and Kent) and, with portions of the region below and atop the Caprock Escarpment, offers a fairly wide variety of habitats. My goals for the year are 75 species of butterfly, 10 species of amphibian, 25 species of reptile, 300 species of bird, and 25 species of mammal. Due to ongoing and brutal drought, March was not the big improvement over February that I had hoped but I did get out and about a bit, found a few new spots in what I thought was a well-covered patch, and added a few critters. All in all, I spotted 14 species of butterfly, 1 species of amphibian, 4 species of reptile, 138 species of bird, and 9 species of mammal during the month bringing the year's total up to 15 species of butterfly (20%), 2 species of amphibian (20%), 4 species of reptile (16%), 167 species of bird (56%), and 14 species of mammal (56%). As mentioned in a separate and earlier post, Rich Kostecke is still whupping my butt (196 bird species to 167 bird species) in our regional competition and I will continue to track and post that savaging separately. Without further ado, the March list for the LEAS region - with new additions *sked. Common Checkered Skipper Cabbage White Checkered White Orange Sulphur Southern Dogface* Sleepy Orange Dainty Sulphur Gray Hairstreak Variegated Fritillary* Question Mark Mourning Cloak Red Admiral Painted Lady Goatweed Leafwing* American Bullfrog Common Snapping Turtle* Red-eared Slider Spiny Soft-shelled Turtle* Eastern Fence Lizard* Snow Goose Ross's Goose Cackling Goose Canada Goose Trumpeter Swan Wood Duck Gadwall American Wigeon Mallard Northern Shoveler Northern Pintail Green-winged Teal Canvasback Ring-necked Duck Lesser Scaup Bufflehead Hooded Merganser Common Merganser Red-breasted Merganser Ruddy Duck Scaled Quail* Northern Bobwhite Pied-billed Grebe Double-crested Cormorant Great Blue Heron Snowy Egret* Green Heron* Black-crowned Night Heron Turkey Vulture* Northern Harrier Sharp-shinned Hawk Cooper's Hawk Swainson's Hawk* Red-tailed Hawk Ferruginous Hawk Sora* Common Gallinule* American Coots Sandhill Crane Black-necked Stilt* American Avocet* Killdeer Greater Yellowlegs Lesser Yellowlegs* Long-billed Curlew* Least Sandpiper Long-billed Dowitcher* Bonaparte's Gull* Franklin's Gull* Laughing Gull* Ring-billed Gull Rock Pigeon Eurasian Collared Dove White-winged Dove Mourning Dove Inca Dove* Greater Roadrunner Barn Owl Great Horned Owl Long-eared Owl* Burrowing Owl Black-chinned Hummingbird* Belted Kingfisher Golden-fronted Woodpecker Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Ladder-backed Woodpecker Northern Flicker American Kestrel Merlin Peregrine Falcon Prairie Falcon Say's Phoebe Eastern Phoebe Ash-throated Flycatcher* Western Kingbird* Loggerhead Shrike Blue Jay American Crow Chihuahuan Raven Horned Lark Purple Martin Cliff Swallow* Barn Swallow* Mountain Chickadee* Black-crested Titmouse Verdin Bushtit* Brown Creeper* Rock Wren Winter Wren* Marsh Wren Carolina Wren Bewick's Wren Cactus Wren* Golden-crowned Kinglet* Ruby-crowned Kinglet Eastern Bluebird Western Bluebird* Mountain Bluebird Townsend's Solitaire American Robin Curve-billed Thrasher Brown Thrasher Sage Thrasher* Northern Mockingbird European Starling American Pipit Phainopepla* Orange-crowned Warbler Common Yellowthroat* Yellow-rumped Warbler Spotted Towhee Rufous-crowned Sparrow Canyon Towhee Field Sparrow Vesper Sparrow Lark Bunting Savannah Sparrow Fox Sparrow Song Sparrow Lincoln's Sparrow Swamp Sparrow White-throated Sparrow Whtie-crowned Sparrow Dark-eyed Junco Northern Cardinal Pyrrhuloxia Eastern Meadowlark Western Meadowlark Brewer's Blackbird Common Grackle Great-tailed Grackle Brown-headed Cowbird House Finch American Goldfinch House Sparrow Black-tailed Jackrabbit Desert Cottontail Eastern Gray Squirrel Eastern Fox Squirrel Black-tailed Prairie Dog Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel* Striped Skunk White-tailed Deer Mule Deer Anthony 'Fat Tony' Hewetson; Lubbock Edit your Freelists account settings for TEXBIRDS at //www.freelists.org/list/texbirds Reposting of traffic from TEXBIRDS is prohibited without seeking permission from the List Owner