Recently at CyFair

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The CyFair campus continues to be fairly quiet for birds compared with previous winters. For example, all I have seen at the retention ponds in the last two weeks has been a single Great Egret, while the only ducks to visit all winter were 5 Lesser Scaup that stayed one day in January. By contrast, last winter the ponds regularly had 100+ ring-necked Ducks plus several each of Black-bellied Whistling Duck, Redheas, American Coos and Double-crested Cormorans.

Luckily, there are still enough birds around to make a brief walk around the nature trail worthwhile.

The ditch along the north side of the campus usually has some White Ibis and several Great Egrets, as well as one or two Great Blue Herons (below).

The Purple Martins have started arriving in numbers. On Friday there eight on the Martin houses.

A score or more of Savannak Sparrows are always somewhere on campus, while the occasional Lincoln's Sparrow (below) forages near the entrance to the nature trail. 

The nature trail itself has fewer species than normal: I usually see only Northern Cardinals, Northern Mockingbirds and Yellow-rumped Warblers. However, a fairly large flock of Cedar Waxwings has been turning up for the past couple of weeks. Last week the flock comprised about 200 birds. This is well down from the 500-600 birds that spent previous winters here but it is still a beautiful sight in the early morning.

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