Monday, January 16, 2012

A New Site and a New Bird

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On Saturday morning I drove to a birding site I'd never visited before - Highlands Reservoir, a few miles north of Baytown. I was hoping to see some of the Longspurs that have been seen there over the past couple of weeks. Any Longspur would be a life bird for me.

Unfortunately, after tramping over the area for an hour, neither I nor any of the other birders there could find any Longspurs. So I decided to leave. The trip wasn't wasted, though, as I saw several good birds. A Sprague's Pipit let me have a good look at it.


Two Le Conte's Sparrows disappeared before I could take a photo but this Grasshopper Sparrow was slower off the mark.


Skeins of hundreds of geese passed overhead and I was able to pick out several Ross's Geese among the more numerous and larger Snow Geese.


As I was leaving the site, I noticed a Red-tailed Hawk perched in a nearby tree and I couldn't resist taking a photo.


On my way home, I stopped off at the Atoscacita landfill near Humble and quickly found three Fish Crows. This life bird took my year list to 133 species.
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