[TN-Bird] Pickwick to Pace Weekend

From: OLCOOT1@xxxxxxx
To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:35:01 EST
Jan. 10-11-12, 2004
Pickwick, Hardin Co. TN
Pace Point and environs, Henry Co. TN

A lot of back roads and out of the way places produced a lot of good birds as 
Clyde Blum and I tallied over 100 species in our travels. As always surprises 
were at hand, new hot spots were found and discoveries kept us thinking.

The best triple ticks were found early and late on the trip. On Saturday a 
wet hole near Savannah yielded 6 species of gulls with California, Lesser 
Black-backed and Thayer's as food for thought and real eye candy, in great 
lighting. 
Late on Monday near Pace Point, five tenacious birders looked, searched and 
looked again until we found an adult winter plumaged Pacific Loon complete with 
chin strap in high fashion black and white. While we compared it directly to 
a Common Loon as both birds lounged side by side, another spiffy loon rowed 
into view and it was an immature plumaged Red-throated Loon, as pale as a 
ghost. 
The stair step sizes sitting within feet of one another filled our scopes and 
satisfied Lifer Looks for some. We could talk about the various differences 
without moving our scopes and the lighting was near perfect. I've had four 
species of loons in one sweep of a scope before but never 3 in one field of 
view.

In between, there was a trip to White Oak Wildlife Area just south of Shiloh 
and a whole lot of great habitat that probably goes completely un-birdied. 
Extensive swamps and huge fields full of birds. We had at least 5 LeConte's 
Sparrows on a couple of short tromps through 3 fields.

We ended up with 20 species of waterfowl, 10 species of raptors including an 
adult Peregrine at Paris Landing, a Merlin at Pickwick, 1 adult, 1 sub-adult 
and 1 immature Golden Eagle at Pace among 60 Bald Eagles. I photographed 22 
Turkeys at Bruton Branch Recreation area south of Pickwick Dam. Relatively few 
gulls were at the dam and even fewer ducks were using the area. A total of 9 
Common Loons but loads of Pied-billed and a small number of Horned Grebes were 
seen. A single pale Thayer's with light coffee colored primaries with wide 
frosty edgings and arrow heads at their tips, was seen late Friday and Saturday 
evenings coming to roost above the dam.

We did very little woodland birding because our main objectives were gulls 
and loon species but we did fill in most of the gaps on a winter list. All the 
expected woodpeckers were tallied plus Brown-headed Nuthatches at two locations 
as a bonus. We found good numbers of Palm, Yellow-rumped and Pine Warblers 
plus 10 species of sparrows but dipped on Rusty Blackbird and Brown-headed 
Blackbird.

Thanks to Clyde's great ears, we had Woodcock all three evenings at different 
locations with some birds already into display flights. Friday evening I had 
17 Harriers going to roost in one field and 6 were perched in trees. I have 
one photo of the birds in the trees and another with a bunch of Harriers 
swirling in tight circles. After dark only one bark was heard from a 
Short-eared Owl. 
Daylight to dark birding always pays off...........


Good Birding!!!

Jeff R. Wilson
OL'COOT / TLBA
Bartlett, TN


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[TN-Bird] Pickwick to Pace Weekend

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