Birding the CyFair Campus

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April is my final month working at Lone Star CyFair and I'm hoping to see some spring migrants here before I leave. I haven't had too much luck so far, though.

There are plenty of our common residents around, including innumerable Northern Mockingbirds.

This one gave me a very hard look as I was photographing it!

Our Purple Martin gourds are pretty much fully occupied now.

A Double-crested Cormorant occasionally pops in to see what the fish situation is like in our ornamental pond.

The nature trail - now much reduced by ongoing constriction work - has had plenty of resident birds, including N Cardinals and Blue Jays, but until Friday the only migrants I had seen were Blue-gray Gnatcatchers.

The two small wetland areas on the nature trail both have water and so I've been checking them for migrating Waterthrush. On Friday I finally got lucky when I spotted a Louisiana Waterthrush by the water's edge.

 

Surprisingly, it was part of a group of birds that also comprised two Northern Cardinals, a Blue Jay, three Great-tailed Grackle, three White-throated Sparrows and a Swamp Sparrow (below). 

Mixed flocks of birds are common but this seemed like a very odd mix of species. 
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Last Week at CyFair

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Most of last week my birding was limited to a 10-minute look around the staff parking lot on the CyFair campus.

As usual this time of year, there are normally several hundred Cedar Waxwings somewhere nearby.

They look particularly beautiful in the dawn light.
 

As often as not, an American Robin or two will tag along with the Waxwing flock.

One of our resident Red-tailed Hawks has been perching near the parking lot lately, surveying the clearing work that is going on preparatory to the construction of a new building.

While the most common warblers on the campus are Yellow-rumped Warblers, I also run into quite a few Pine Warblers.

This one sang me a very pretty song.

But then it decided to moon me before flying off!

We rarely have woodpeckers on the campus and so the other morning I was pleased to see that the male Downy Woodpecker which arrived a few weeks ago was still here. 

I was even more pleased a minute later, when I saw that he now had a mate.
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Breakfast Birding

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When I'm at work, I usually carry a camera when walking between buildings and to or from my car. I know that if I don't, I'll invariably run across an interesting bird - or maybe an ordinary bird doing something interesting.

Yesterday I was heading to my office from the staff parking area when I noticed a Northern Mockingbird on the ground. (We have a zillion Mockingbirds on campus.) It had just caught a bug and was whacking it on the ground to kill it. I was too slow to catch that action but I did get the rest of the sequence.

Gotcha.

Open wide.

All gone.

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The Campus Retention Ponds

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I used to enjoy walking down to the campus retention ponds in the winter because they were often crowded with birds. Hundreds of ducks of several species would share the ponds with scores of Cormorants, while the banks would be lined with Great and Snowy Egrets. Then a new park (Horsepen Creek Park) opened up directly across Barker Cypress Road. As this park includes a huge pond, it is a more attractive option for ducks and other birds that live on or by the water. So the campus ponds no longer host many birds and I rarely visit them any more.

However, every now and then the situation changes and birds move back from Horsepen Creek Park to the campus ponds. This is what happened today.

At lunchtime on Tuesday, when I was leaving work, I noticed that there was a lot of activity on the college's southern pond. Several dozen Laughing Gulls floating on the surface were too distant for me to photograph; so, too, were a couple of Pied-billed Grebes. Two American White Pelicans were rather closer. As is often the case, they were being shadowed by a group of Cormorants.

The western edge of the pond was lined with Great Egrets.

I counted ten - and then another flew in.

The northern edge was even busier, but this time with Snowy Egrets.

They looked really beautiful silhouetted against the sun.

When I was leaving, I noticed that a group of 20+ Cormorants had rushed over to the northern edge and were standing in the shallows in front of the Snowy Egrets. They were holding their wings out to dry. It looked for all the world as if they were begging from the Egrets.

I decided I would keep an eye on the ponds for the rest of the week to see whether all these birds lingered there or whether they would fly back across to Horsepen Creek Park.
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So Where Are They?

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So where are they? Our migrating songbirds, I mean. I was sure that I’d be posting lots of photos of beautiful warblers and other migrants today. After all, we have entered what is usually the best period for migrants at the college and, as promised by forecasters, we’ve been having northerly winds for several days. However, no migrants have turned up here recently - and it seems that not many have been turning up on the coast either. Looking at the weather down in Mexico, I think I see the problem: It has been rainy with northerly winds on the Yucatan peninsula and so conditions haven’t been favorable for birds to start their flight across the Gulf. Unfortunately, the situation doesn’t look likely to improve until early next week.

In the absence of migrants, I’ve been watching two species of birds that come to nest on the campus each spring: Western Kingbirds and Purple Martins.

I’m not sure how many Kingbirds have returned this year but it must be a lot because it seems I hear their twittering everywhere I go on campus. I haven’t seen any evidence of nest-building yet, though.

As usual, all of the gourds in our Purple Martin apartment complex are occupied by nesting birds. The perches at the top of the complex are often so crowded that it’s difficult for birds to find a perch when they return from flycatching.

As with many bird species, the male Martins are significantly more striking than their female counterparts.

BTW, since I assumed migration would be in full flow this week, I booked a day's vacation for tomorrow. My plan was that Dee and I would spend the day at High Island. However, given the recent lack of birds there, I think we may head to Galveston instead. There may not be any more birds there than at High Island but the island certainly has better food. 

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CyFair Campus

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The other day I mentioned that the campus retention ponds were empty of ducks so far this winter. However, this doesn't mean that the ponds aren't hosting any birds. Several times recently I have seen groups of 20+ Great Egrets, 5+ Snowy Egrets and 20+ Double-crested Cormorants by the side of one or other of the ponds.

Friday morning the birds gathered by the waterfalls between the artificial river and the southern pond.  

The Great and Snowy Egrets looked particularly good posed against a watery background.

The Cormorants would swim around for a while and then perch out of the water to dry their plumage.

Meanwhile half-a-dozen Ring-billed Gulls alternated between flying around above the water or, like this first winter bird, floating on it.

After photographing the group of birds at the waterfalls, I paid a very quick visit to the Precinct 3 park directly across Barker Cypress Road from the college entrance. The lake there normally has many Great and Snowy Egrets but today there were only a handful. I imagine that the birds that usually hang out there had decided to hop across the road to the college. I wish that the park's American White Pelicans, American Coots, Forster's Terns and Ruddy Ducks would do likewise!

American White Pelicans

American Coots

Ruddy Ducks

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Wordless Wednesday

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This Week at CyFair

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On Wednesday I went looking for the young Western Kingbirds in the CyFair parking lots. When I saw that two adult Kingbirds were swooping on two Great-tailed Grackles, I knew that they must be driving the Grackles away in order to protect their young. Sure enough, both young Kingbirds were sheltering in a nearby tree.

Like all young birds, they were screaming out for food.

While waiting for their parents to oblige,the youngsters passed the time by doing some grooming.

As I headed to my office, three Common Nighthawks crossed the lot, putting on a short but spectacular display of flying.

Later in the day I went back out to see the Kingbirds. One of the young birds was perched in a tree while a parent ferried food to it.

This parent had an interesting approach to feeding its offspring. It would fly to the top of a nearby lamppost and catch a bug. Then it would fly to the tree to feed the bug to its young. After this, it would fly back to the lamppost and catch another bug, but this time would fly to another tree where it would eat the bug itself. It repeated this pattern for well over 20 minutes.

What I really wanted was a clear shot of the adult feeding the youngster. It took 25 minutes but I eventually managed it.

When I left, the youngster seemed to have eaten its fill and parent and offspring  had settled down for some quiet time together.

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