Friday, May 14, 2010

This Week at CyFair

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It has been a fairly quiet week on the 9191 Barker Cypress Road campus. The only new bird I saw was a Black-throated Green Warbler, one of just a handful of spring migrants that have visited this year.

I was worried that our spring-resident Western Kingbirds might take fright at all the construction work going on around the campus. However, they seem to be unconcerned by the noise and by the presence of heavy earth-moving equipment.


On Wednesday I saw that one pair of Kingbirds has already nested under the northeastern corner of the basketball court roof. This makes six years in a row that the pair has nested under this roof. At present it's hard to get a good look at the nest and the bird on it.


I'm looking forward to next month,
when the fledglings start exploring the roof beams and then move down to the small pine trees nearby.

Elsewhere on the campus, other birds have nested above the cafeteria doorway. There seems to b
e only one baby in this nest but he/she certainly makes a lot of noise.




I wasn't sure what species it was until I saw a parent fly in to feed the youngster.


European Starling. I should have known. Not many birds except Starlings and House Sparrows would be cheeky enough to raise their young 3 feet above a doorway used by thousands of people every day.


The only other sighting of note was a snake that turned up on the nature trail. I'm no expert on snakes but it looks to me like a Rough Green Snake.




P.S.
Tomorrow morning I am taking part in a census of Greater Roadrunners north of FM2920. I'll be listening and watching for Roadrunners along Roberts Cemetery Road, just northwest of Kleb Woods. They saw a Roadrunner at Kleb on Wednesday but I have never seen one anywhere in our area.
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2 comments:

Unknown said...

This post was very timely for me. My son and I went to Attwater yesterday and I could not figure out what those birds in the road and on the fences were but you made it easy by posting a picture of the Northern Bobwhite. I did not manage to get a decent photo of one because they kept flying away by the time I got my camera up. Keep up the great blogging.

Jeff said...

Hi, Jeff. I know what you mean about getting photos. Saw a N Bobwhite on a post not 10' from my car on Longenbaugh this morning - but I was too slow getting the camera ready!