Flat Day at Lake Arrowhead State Park

Eastern Phoebe, Photo by Andy Reago and
Chrissy McClarren
Wikimedia Commons

Our monthly bird walk at Lake Arrowhead State Park on December 13 wasn't one of our better months in terms of the birds seen, but hey, a bad morning birding is better than a great morning doing most anything else.

Walk regular, June, came as well as Mike, who has participated the last few months. This month we also had a newcomer, Sharon. It is always extra nice to have people relatively new to birdwatching along as almost any bird is going to be a good bird. We did have a few decent birds, most notably very good views of an eastern phoebe. These often appear fairly drab little birds, but in the right light like we had on Saturday, they are really very pretty.

I was hoping for a lot of ducks so we could work on duck identification, but that didn't work out for us. The only ducks we saw were gadwall. But we did see a nice raft of white pelicans on the water, although further away than I would have liked.

Here's the list of our birds for the morning: Canada goose, gadwall, double crested cormorant, white pelican, ring-billed gull, killdeer, great blue heron, mourning dove, Eurasian collared dove, yellow-shafted northern flicker, red-bellied woodpecker, red-tailed hawk, northern harrier, mockingbird, eastern bluebird, cardinal, Bewick's wren, eastern phoebe, brown-headed cowbird, great-tailed grackle, red-winged blackbird, junco, eastern meadowlark goldfinch, house finch.

The walk next month will be January 10, 8:00 AM.

Good birding!