CyFair Campus Birds

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Last week was a fairly quiet week for birds on the CyFair campus. I was hoping that the colder weather would bring in Cedar Waxwings and perhaps some more sparrow species but this didn't happen. Nevertheless, there were enough birds to insure that every brief walk I took around the campus produced something worth looking at.

Whenever I drive over to Longenbaugh Road and other parts of the Katy Prairie, I see lots of Crested Caracaras. However, we don't see many Caracaras on the campus and so I was pleased to see this one.
  

Our resident Red-tailed Hawks usually perch very high up on the utility pylons along the north side of the college grounds. This one, though, decided to perch by the entrance road for a change.

I don't think I've ever before seen as many Eastern Phoebes in southeast Texas as I have this fall. And they are as common on the campus as elsewhere in the Houston area.

Apart from Northern Mockingbirds, the most common campus birds at present are Yellow-rumped Warblers. I see and hear them every time I leave the building where my office is located.





Sometimes it's very easy to see how this species gets its name.

We seem to have more White-throated Sparrows than usual this winter.

Lincoln's Sparrows are also plentiful at the moment.

Although we used regularly to have a winter flock of about 20 American Pipits, I have only seen a solitary bird so far this winter. It seems rather lost hanging out in grassy areas with Savannah Sparrows and Killdeer.

Over the summer I would see Mourning Doves wherever I walked on campus. Then in the fall they were largely replaced by White-winged Doves. However, I am glad to say that not all of our Mourning Doves have been displaced, because they really are charming little birds.

We don't see many gulls at CyFair. However, a couple of Ring-billed Gulls have been hanging out on the lamp posts in the parking lots. Their plumage certainly looks fine against the deep blue of the Texas sky.

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More Yard Birds

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As we're still a cold spell, our yards continue to be busy.

The most frequent visitors to our feeders are undoubtedly Carolina Chickadees. It is rare to look out of our living-room window for more than a few minutes without seeing one or two Chickadees flying in to grab a seed and then darting off into ther trees immediately behind our yard.

When we see House Sparrows in our yards, it's usually a flock of 20 House Sparrows that arrive in a rowdy bunch. In between these mass visits, though, an individual Sparrow - like the male below - will sometimes sneak in by itself to snack on some suet.

Every winter for 4-5 years now a solitary Ruby-crowned Kinglet has moved into our yards for several months. It's a bird that Dee and I both enjoy watching, even though we rarely get to see its ruby crown. Here it is on Tuesday.

We were luckier last year, when this same bird would often raise its crown as it approached our feeders.

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A Mixed Weekend

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Saturday morning I was out of the house by 6:00 to head over to Longenbaugh Road to look for the Short-eared Owls that everyone had been seeing there for more than a week. I stood around for 90 minutes in thick fog before accepting that I wasn't going to be lucky.

Sunday evening I headed back to Longenbaugh to see if I would do better at dusk than I had done at dawn the previous day. Once again, no luck. By now I must be just about the only local birder who hasn't managed to see the owls!

Still, I had a little more luck at home on Sunday afternoon, when a cold front resulted in more bird activity in our yards than I've seen for quite a while.

As usual, there were a few House Sparrows and White-winged Doves (below) in our yards. I tend to think of White-winged Doves as pests but they really are rather striking-looking birds.

One of our resident Northern Mockingbirds made regular trips to a suet feeder.

In between visits to the suet feeder, it popped down to the birdbath for quick gulps of water.

I was pleased to see that we still have Red-breasted Nuthatches. They clearly enjoy suet, too.

I wasn't able to get any photos of our winter-resident Ruby-crowned Kinglet but I had a little more success with an Orange-crowned Warbler.

Dee saw an American Goldfinch in our yards more than a week ago but yesterday was the first time I got to see one.

Now that we're in the middle of a cold spell, I'm hoping that our yards will see an increase in bird activity. It would certainly be nice to see more American Goldfinches - particularly if they brought some Pine Sikins with them!
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Friday Fotos

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In my last posting I mentioned a couple of bird species that I've been finding hard to photograph this fall - Northern Harrier and House Wren. In fact, a third species has been giving me trouble, too - Eastern Meadowlarks.

Every time I venture out to the Katy Prairie I see Eastern Meadowlarks. Sometimes just a handful, sometimes scores. Many of them would be perched in bushes or on fence lines right by the road. However, until a week or so ago every Meadowlark I spotted would disappear as soon as I stopped the car to try for a photo. 

Then, at Warren Ranch Lake a Meadowlark on the ground let me take several more fairly close-up photos.

I finally was a little luckier when driving along Longenbaugh and one bird stayed long enough in a bush to let me take a couple of reasonably close shots.

BTW, at the same site I even managed to catch one of the birds in flight.

Not a great picture by any means but the first I've ever managed of a Meadowlark in flight. So I am making progress!

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Difficult Birds!

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Success with photographing birds usually depends on observing two main rules - getting out often enough to where the target species hang out and being patient until they approach near enough to where you are. I've been observing these rules lately and they've worked reasonably well for most birds that I've wanted to photograph but there are two species that I've had a lot of problems with.

The first difficult species has been the Northern Harrier. I see several Harriers every time I go out to the Katy Prairie and I've been seeing one fairly often on the CyFair campus. However, even though I've been very patient, all the Harriers that I've spotted have stayed well away from me. As a result, the photos I've gotten till now have been poor shots of distant birds, like the ones below. So I guess I'll just have to keep on being patient until a Harrier eventually comes close enough for me to get decent pictures!

The other difficult species has been the House Wren. Now I wouldn't mind if the problem was that there haven't been many of these Wrens around, but that certainly isn't the case. Every time I walk around the CyFair campus nature trail I hear at least one House Wren and frequently two or three. However, getting to see them and getting photos has been incredibly difficult. Sometimes the light has been too bad. Sometimes a bird has appeared and then disappeared before I could raise my camera. Sometimes I've only been able to see parts of a bird.

Last week I finally got lucky and managed to grab a couple of photos. They aren't great shots by any means but at least the images are recognizable.

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Prairie Birds

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As I forgot to report on a quick trip I took out to the Katy Prairie on November 24th, I'll give a quick summary here.

I was hoping for sparrows at the Cypress Creek bridge on Sharp Road. All I actually saw was a Downy Woodpecker that was looking rather agitated.

Further east on Sharp I came across a flock of several hundred Brown-headed Cowbirds. Most of the birds flew off when I pulled over but a couple of juveniles stayed behind.

The only interesting bird at the Bear Creek Bridge on Longenbaugh Road was an Inca Dove.

There were a couple of Vesper and Field Sparrows along Longenbaugh. However, they were greatly outnumbered by Savannah Sparrows.

I finally spotted the Ferruginous Hawk that had been hanging around in the area for weeks. The bird was too far away for photos and so I had to settle for photos of a nearby Red-tailed Hawk instead.

At the corner of Longenbaugh and Porter Road End I had to brake as a family of eight Northern Bobwhites crossed the road. They were the first Bobwhites I'd seen this year. And very handsome birds they were, too.

My final sighting was of the young Scissor-tailed Flycatcher that I'd been watching for weeks on Longenbaugh and that seemed to have decided not to leave when the other Scissor-taileds migrated in late October.

P.S.
There have been no reports of a Scissor-tailed in our area since November 24th, so I guess the Longenbaugh bird finally reaized it was time to head south.
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Friday Fotos

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Winter is the time for sparrows, many species of which are now moving into our area. I see large numbers of Savannah Sparrows every time I venture out onto the Katy Prairie and I've now seen quite a few other species, including White-crowned, Field, Vesper and White-throated. I've also started seeing a few of my favorite sparrow species, the Harris's Sparrow.

At 7.5 inches, the Harris's is our largest sparrow and its pink bill and black face make it easy to recognize.

As it happens, the one in the photos was in exactly the same place where I saw my first-ever Harris's Sparrow several years ago - right next to the Bear Creek bridge on Longenbaugh Road just east of Porter Road End. For all I know it could be the very same bird.
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You Never Know Quite When

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We invited friends over for Thanksgiving and I was looking forward to showing them some of the birds - particularly the Red-breasted Nuthatches - that constantly come to our feeders.

Wouldn't you know it! Although the weather on Thursday was beautiful, the only birds to visit the yards were male and female House Sparrows.

So our guests had to make do with a sighting of a Red-shouldered Hawk circling our house instead.

Of course, the next day, when our guests had left, our yards were full of visitors.

The Nuthatches were enjoying snacking on sunflower seeds.

The Orange-crowned Warblers preferred suet.

Our Ruby-crowned Kinglet went for the suet, too. (If you look carefully at the back of its neck, you can just see a tiny part of its ruby crown.)

We were even graced with a visit by a female Northern Cardinal.

We used to see several Cardinals every day but they have been almost totally absent for a couple of months. They may simply have been too busy raising another brood of babies to visit us. If so, I expect they'll start showing up again soon, bringing their youngsters with them.

Close Encounter
On Saturday I noticed that the Chickadees in the yard behind ours were making a terrible racket. I walked over the fence to see what was agitating them. Just as I reached the fence, a Cooper's Hawk swooped in and settled on a branch just 4 feet away. We both froze for a few seconds, no doubt equally shocked by the encounter. Then the hawk zoomed away. I think that's the closest I've ever gotten to a non-captive raptor.
.he  visitors ursday was o