Lunch with the Birds

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On Wednesday I didn't head home for lunch. Instead I drove up to Longenbaugh Road to see if the recent cold front had brought down lots of sparrows.

The most common birds I saw were Red-tailed Hawks. There seemed to be one perched every couple of hundred yards.

I wasn't able to stop to take a photo of a White-tailed Hawk, but I was able to pull over to grab a quick shot of a male American Kestrel, one of the first I've seen this fall.

A little later I also had good looks at a Red-shouldered Hawk.

Loggerhead Shrikes and Northern Mockingbirds (below) were everywhere.

My 30 minutes of birding were almost over and I still hadn't seen a single sparrow. So I drove over to the Bear Creek bridge on Longenbaugh, my go-to spot for White-crowned Sparrows. Sure enough, when I pulled up, a male White-crowned was serenading a couple of females.

I'm hoping that I'll have better luck with sparrows on Saturday, when we're planning to visit the Attwater Prairie Chicken Refuge. After that, sparrows should start turning up in greater numbers following another front projected for midweek.
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