The Past Week

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Last Friday was the Great Backyard Bird Count day on the CyFair campus. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very productive day for birds. We counted fewer than 100 individual birds of just 18 species.

You never know where you will see birds on the campus, though. There is an ornamental pond just behind the building where I work. It doesn't usually attract birds but lately it has become a favored fishing spot for a Great Egret and a Neotropic Cormorant (below).

The cormorant is now so used to people that it happily stands and dries its wings while students and staff walk past just a few feet away.

The Great Egret is a little less brave. When too many people are around, it flies up and stands on the roof of a nearby building.

I couldn't work out why a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds has started hanging out by the faculty/staff parking lot. Then I realized that the birds have discovered the seed that I sometimes spread around there to attract sparrows. Here is one of the female Blackbirds.

On Saturday I spent an hour at Little Cypress Creek Preserve, hoping to add a couple of species to my 2015 Harris County list. As it turned out, the only new bird was a Pileated Woodpecker.

On another tree, mating Red-bellied Woodpeckers were engaged in a noisy argument. 

I checked different parts of the preserve for sparrows but the only ones I saw were several White-throated Sparrows.

The Bald Eagles at the Longwood retention pond on Huffmeister Road are busy at their nest. 

Like last year, the pair is raising two juveniles. The youngsters haven't fledged yet but one of them is already occasionally flexing its wings, so it won't be long before they start venturing out of the nest.

While the juveniles stay in the nest, one of their parents always stands guard nearby.

I'm looking forward to watching the young birds over the coming weeks as they grow, strengthen their wings and learn to fly.
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Bits and Pieces

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It hasn't been too busy bird-wise since I got back from our Junction trip. Common Nighthawks occasionally fly over the parking lots. Our Western Kingbirds must be nesting because they are not very visible or audible at present. As usual, Black-bellied Whistling Ducks turn up all over the campus.

I'm hoping that later in the summer I'll see Whistling Ducks bringing their ducklings to the retention ponds. In the meantime I'll have to make do with the Mallard who is giving her brood swimming lessons there.

Meanwhile we have seen the return of the Black Vulture that likes admiring itself in the Library windows.

At home our resident birds are all raising young. I haven't yet managed to get photos of most of the juveniles - including Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers - but a couple of young Northern Cardinals haven't been so elusive.

Our House Finches seem to have just one baby.

It has been so busy at the feeders that birds sometimes have to line up on the shed roof waiting their turn, like this Tufted Titmice.

Down at the Longwood retention pond the two young Bald Eagles have fledged. However, one was still hanging around the nest.

An adult lurked nearby to keep an eye on the youngster.

I'm not sure whether all the calling was aimed at me or the eaglet or something else. It was impressively loud, though.

At the weekend I'll go back to the pond to see if I can get a look at the other adult and the older juvenile.
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Action in the Eagles' Nest

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Sunday morning I drove over to the Longwood detention pond again to see how the Bald Eagles were doing. I really wanted to find out whether there were two chicks in the nest or only one.

When I arrived, one parent was standing guard in a tree not far from the nest.

Bald Eagles really are magnificent birds!

They can be quite vocal, too.

I waited a while but couldn’t see any sign of movement in the nest.

I sat down and kept watching, in the hope that the nestling(s) would eventually get bored with hunkering down and decide to look out of the nest.

I was right. After 20 minutes a nestling popped its head up. Then a second chick came into view.

One of the nestlings, clearly older than the other, started exercising its wings.

I had never used video on my camera before, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I can’t wait for the young birds to get big enough to be more easily visible – and for them to start venturing outside the nest.

I'm trying out linking this blog posting to Wild Bird Wednesday.

Paul Rushing Park

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Sunday morning Dee and I went over to Paul Rushing Park to see which ducks had moved in.

On the way we stopped to watch a flyover of 17 Sandhill Cranes, a species I'd somehow managed never to see before in Harris County. 

We also had to stop to move a turtle off the roadway.

The weather was glorious.

No sooner had we reached the park than a flock of 8 Long-billed Curlews flew in. 

What beautiful birds they are!

The grassy areas had the usual Red-winged Blackbirds, Great-tailed Grackles, Killdeer and Eastern Meadowlarks (below), as well as a flock of American Pipits.

The ponds were very busy with scores of American Coots and half-a-dozen duck species, including some Northern Pintails (below).

Several Wilson's Snipes flew off before I could get a photo but an American Pipit was too absorbed in checking out the handrail of one of the boardwalks to notice us.

There were surprisingly few large wading birds: We saw only a couple of Great Egrets and a Great Blue Heron(below).

Ending the Year

My final birding outing of 2013 was a half-mile drive over to the Fairwood Retention Pond on Huffmeister to see if the pair of Bald Eagles that nested there in the Spring had returned. 

I was thrilled to see that both adult birds were hanging out around their huge nest, so presumably they'll be re-using the nest again in 2014.

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Eagles and Vultures

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Non-birder friends and acquaintances are often excited to tell me that they've just seen an eagle. However, when I question them about their sighting, it usually turns out that what they saw was not an eagle but one of three other species of large birds that are resident in our area.

It seems that the bird most often misidentified as an eagle is the Turkey Vulture, a huge bird that is common throughout the USA. Turkey Vultures don't have the most beautiful faces but they fly like angels, using air currents so well that they only rarely have to flap their wings.

Here in the Houston area we are lucky to have two species of resident vultures. The second is the Black Vulture, a bird whose range is largely restricted to the southern and southeastern states. The Black Vulture has a gray face and neck, and has white only at the tips of its wings. It is smaller than the Turkey Vulture and has to flap its wings much more often as it flies.

BTW, the reason why vultures have such ugly heads and necks is a very practical one: It doesn't make sense to have a beautiful plumage on your head and neck if these parts are going to spend a lot of time rooting around inside the dead bodies of other animals. 

Another bird that is frequently mistaken for an eagle is the Crested Caracara, a type of falcon whose US range used to be almost entirely limited to south Texas but which has now extended that range to include much of the eastern half of the state.

Although the Caracara is in the falcon family, it often acts more like a scavenger than a bird of prey. So, as the following pictures show, it may be seen arguing over carcasses with Turkey and Black Vultures.

So don't we have any eagles in our area? Well, yes, we do. Although Golden Eagles are pretty rare in this part of Texas, we certainly get quite a lot of Bald Eagles. 

Many of these magnificent birds just migrate through our area but some spend most of the year and even nest here. One pair regularly nests in Baytown. The picture below is from last year and shows a parent with one of two chicks raised.

This spring I was surprised to find another pair nesting not a mile from our house in Cypress, northwest of Houston. I wasn't able to get good photos of these birds on the nest but I did get some shots of their juvenile shortly before the birds left the nesting site in the early summer.

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