Bear Creek Park

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I went to Bear Creek Park on Sunday morning to look for the Greater Pewee that has been spotted there recently and for Red-breasted Nuthatches.

I spent 20 minutes searching for the Pewee but didn't manage to find it. In fact, the only birds I saw were numerous Eastern Bluebirds.

Returning to my car to move to another area, I spotted a group of wading birds.

A White Ibis flew off as soon as I approached.

A Great Egret watched me warily.

Two Snowy Egrets were equally wary of me.

An adult White Ibis was less concerned by my presence.

The final bird in the group, an immature White Ibis, wasn't at all sure what to make of me.

Just as I was leaving these birds, I bumped into Jim Hinson and a fellow birder. So we set off together to try to find the Pewee.
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Yardbirds

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After a very quiet spell, birds are starting to return to our yards.

White-winged Doves are once more perching in our trees and the other day we had the first visit in weeks by a Northern Cardinal. It was good to have one of these beautiful birds brightening up our yards again. We've missed them!

Two Northern Mockingbirds visit several times a day every day, sometimes coming to our suet feeders and sometimes to eat from our American Beautyberry.

They usually ignore our presence on our deck but when I raised my camera towards this one, it gave me a very stern look.

We see the occasional adult male Ruby-throated Hummingbird but females are now much more numerous at our feeders and our plants. So I assume that most of the adult males have already headed south.

Mixed in among the females are a couple of young males, showing just a splash of red on their throat.



Butterflies are much less common than they were all summer but we have been seeing a few Clouded Sulphurs. (At least that's what I think they are!)

Bees have taken a liking to our esperanza blooms. Oddly, though, they don't go into the flowers. Instead, they walk around the outside of each flower's base. 

Note:
On Sunday my foot had recovered enough for me to spend a couple of hours in Bear Creek Park. I'll write about what I found there in my next blog posting.
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Friday Fotos

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I never tire of watching Carolina Wrens. They have such a lot of personality and seemingly endless curiosity.

This one came to our backyard yesterday to check out peanuts that we'd scattered along our fence.

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Trapped at Home

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This week I am trapped at home because of a foot problem. So my birding is confined to what I can see in our yards.

Things started well with the arrival of an Orange-crowned Warbler last weekend, We usually get Orange-crowned Warblers in our yards in the fall but this one has arrived about a month earlier than normal.

Northern Mockingbirds are regular visitors at present. Sometimes they come to eat from our American Beautyberry bush and at other times to hang out around our birdbath.

Throughout the summer several Tufted Titmice were regular visitors to our feeders but they don't seem to be here now.

Surprisingly,  other yardbirds birds have been scarce except for our resident Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers and Carolina Chickadees, and migrating Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

On the other hand, we have had frequent flyovers by flocks of Great Egrets and by individual Black and Turkey Vultures.

I'm hoping that more birds turn up during the next four days while I am still restricted to backyard birding!
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Friday at CyFair

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I managed to fit in a quick drive around the campus on Friday. I was hoping for some migrants but none showed up.

Northern Mockingbirds were chasing each other about everywhere.

I was surprised to copme across a flock of perhaps 200 Brown-headed Cowbirds. We normally have only one family of 4-5 birds.

The other bird that was present in numbers was the European Starling. A very invasive species, the Starling is not one of my favorite birds. However, viewed objectively, they are quite attractive birds.

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Missing Migration

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Fall is usually a good time to see good numbers of songbirds as they migrate south through Texas on their way to Latin America. Unfortunately, I haven't been lucky with migration birding this year.

I timed my recent trip to Denver so that I would be there at the peak of migration but I ended up seeing only one probable migrant, a Gray Catbird.

A trip to the Texas cost a few weeks ago turned up only a handful of migrants at Lafitte's Cove on Galveston.

Meanwhile the CyFair campus has been surprisingly empty of migrants. Admittedly my birding there has been limited tyo a few quick walks around the nature trail but still I haven't seen anything like as many migrating birds as I would have expected. In three short walks over the past two weeks, yesterday was the first time I saw any migrants at all - and that was just two Nashville Warblers and a Common Yellowthroat.

BTW, the Yellowthroat was lying dead at the entrance to our library and had clearly fallen there after crashing into the wall of windows above.

Nobody knows how many birds die in the USA each year from flying into windows, but estimates run as high as one billion. We use to have a problem at home with birds flying from our feeders into windows. We solved it by moving the feeders very close to the windows - the birds still fly into the glass but they are travelling at slower speeds and so don't seem to suffer any bad effects from their collisions with the windows.  
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Denver Trip (3): Cherry Creek State Park

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My final stop in Colorado was Cherry Creek State Park in Denver.

I didn't have time to explore any of the stands of trees but contented myself with a walk partway around the large lake.

Ring-billed Gulls were busy - and noisy - overhead.

There were Canada Geese on the opposite side of the water but on my side the only geese or ducks were a few Mallards.

Several Double-crested Cormorants were fishing for their supper.

I finally got to take a couple of photos of some Black-billed Magpies, a species that I had seen at every site I had visited in Colorado.

As I was driving out of the park, I came across a pretty little wetland area. A couple of Vesper Sparrows were in the reeds and a Northern Pintail (that I originally thought was a Blue-winged Teal!) flew off at my approach.

Overall, my visit to Colorado was very disappointing in terms of the number and variety of birds I had seen. However, the landscape was beautiful and I saw quite a few mammals, so the trip wasn't a total write-off!
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Denver Trip (2): Rocky Mountain Arsenal

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After a less-than-spectacular couple of hours birding at Barr Lake, I headed over to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge.

On my way I passed a magnificent Red-tailed Hawk.

 

The RM Arsenal refuge was remarkably quiet for birds except for Ladora Lake. This had a pair of Western Grebes, a score of American Coots and several Double-crested Cormorants (below).

The edges of the lake had a few Dark-eyed Juncoes and a flock of 20 or more Chipping Sparrows (below).

I examined prairie dog burrows and mounds carefully in hopes of seeing one that had been taken over by Burrowing Owls.

However, for the fourth year in a row at this site I failed to spot any owls!
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Denver Trip (1)

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Sunday morning I was up and on the road before dawn, driving to Rocky Mountain National Park. This time I wasn't intending to visit the park itself but just to do a little birding around the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center.

The landscape was beautiful and I shared the Center's grounds with a family of white-tailed deer.

Unfortunately, though, there were no birds except a Pygmy Nuthatch and several Black-billed Magpies. So I drove back south and spent a couple of hours at Barr Lake State Park, where I was hoping to see a range of shorebirds and waterbirds.

My luck wasn't very good, because most of the lake and the surrounding marshlands were bone dry. I could see hundreds of Canada Geese and gulls near the remaining stretch of water, plus 30-40 White Pelicans, but all were too far away for photos, as were a Bald Eagle, a Swainson's Hawk and five Sandhill Cranes. As I walked back to my car to drive over nearer to the water, I saw a few other birds - a White-breasted Nuthatch, a Gray Catbird and six Northern Flickers.

Arriving at the water's edge, I enjoyed watching White Pelicans glide by.

A Great Blue Heron was fishing nearby - the only heron or egret that I saw on my trip.

Franklin's and California Gulls were resting on sandbars while Ring-billed Gulls zoomed around overhead.

Finally I spotted one of the birds I had hoped to see during my Denver trip - a Western Grebe.

So far my morning's birding hadn't gone at all well. Was the rest of the day going to be equally disappointing or would my luck change?
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