Campus Birding

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After months of almost no birds on the CyFair campus, a few are starting to show up. Yesterday the trees had lots of Yellow-rumped Warblers, some White-throated Sparrows and a couple of Ruby-crowned Kinglets and an Eastern Phoebe. There was a flyover by a Northern Flicker, the second one I've seen in the past few weeks.

A small flock of American Robins flew in and argued with our resident Northern Mockingbirds over who had perching rights to which trees.

 A little pishing stirred up a pair of House Wrens, one of which stayed up just long enough for me to grab a photo.

The campus lakes haven't attracted any ducks or other water birds yet this year. I suspect that any birds that do fly over our area will now ignore our lakes in favor of the larger lake in the new Precinct 3 park just across Barker Cypress Road from the college. That lake continues to attract a nice range of water birds: Pied-billed Grebes, American Coots, Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Ducks, Ruddy Ducks, Green-winged Teal etc. It also attracts Laughing Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls (below).

The other day the grass around the lake had a small flock of American Pipits, the first Pipits I've seen since last winter.

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