Chaos on Campus

.
We had a great weekend trip to the coast - but it will take me until tomorrow to sort through photos and blog about what we saw. In the meantime, here's a blog about early last week on the CyFair campus.


The LSC-CyFair is not the best birding place at present, because the soccer fields and much of the rest of the campus are covered with heavy earth-moving equipment and mud. The birds that usually flock to these areas – Eastern Meadowlarks, Killdeer, Savannah Sparrows - are having to squeeze onto what few undisturbed patches remain. These Great-tailed Grackles managed to bathe in a ditch between a parking lot and one of the construction sites.



Most of the Nature Trail is untouched – but you have to walk over oceans of mud and across various trenches to reach it. The birds still hanging out today included N Cardinals, Eastern Phoebes and Yellow-rumped Warblers. Luckily, the artificial river and the two retention ponds are not affected and they have been fairly busy lately.

I thought that our ducks had all left but today I saw that the river still has a cosy little group of three Lesser Scaup and two Ring-necked Ducks.


At lunchtime the retention ponds were quiet except for a couple of Great Egrets but the waterfall area had a Belted Kingfisher and a Great Egret, as well as two Double-crested Cormorants and two Snowy Egrets.



.