Saturday, January 12, 2013

Lately at CyFair: Part 2

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The Nature Trail has been quiet so far this year except, of course, for Northern Mockingbirds.


A few Yellow-rumped Warblers have turned up here, as well as at other places around the campus.


A couple of Pine Warblers sometimes tag along with the Yellow-rumped.


There were several sparrow species on the campus in December. Now we seem to have only Savannah Sparrows.


A solitary American Pipit tends to graze alongside the Savannahs.


White-winged Doves are never scarce. This tree held more than 50, as well as a score of European Starlings.


Our resident Great-tailed Grackles exploring the grass verges of the campus roads are often joined by small groups of Eastern Meadowlarks.




Meanwhile the Great-tailed Grackles which prefer to hang out in the parking lots sometimes enjoy the company of Ring-billed Gulls.


We seem to have at least a couple of Eastern Phoebes, too.


All in all, though, this winter has been a poor one at CyFair as regards both the number of species and the number of individual birds. It looks like another cold front is heading our way and so maybe things will improve soon!

P.S.
While I was drafting this post yesterday morning, it struck me that I hadn't seen any Snowy Egrets at the college this year. (We normally have at least one resident Snowy.) Then, as I was leaving work in the afternoon, I spotted more than a dozen sharing the waterfall area with a similar number of Great Egrets.


The Greats flew off as soon as I got out of the car.


The Snowy Egrets lined up to have their photos taken.


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2 comments:

Dave said...

Jeff, how about the Snowys showing just in the nick of time.... nice one mate

Jeff said...

I was starting to think they'd abandoned the campus!