 |
| Small flock of cedar waxwings |
Although I did a post for Day One of GBBC, we're going to summarize the other days, as I have been blowing and going lately.
Day Two I visited Lake Arrowhead State Park. Even though I go to Lake Arrowhead frequently, this is a location that usually has some good birds and people know where it is if they want to go. We didn't get a lot of birds, but there were a couple of good ones (in the sense that we don't see them a lot). We started off with neotropic cormorants. When we see a cormorant here, 99% of the time, it is a double-crested cormorant. But we got lucky with a small group of neotropical. Another good bird was a flock of 32 Bonaparte's gulls flying through. Gulls in the winter here are probably 95% of the time, ring-billed gulls. In addition to these two less common species, we saw ring-billed gull, Canada goose, American coot, gadwall, northern shoveler, ladder-backed woodpecker, great blue heron, killdeer, northern harrier, meadowlark sp., American pipit, song sparrow, fox sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, Harris's sparrow, northern cardinal. northern mockingbird, eastern phoebe, Bewick's wren, and great-tailed grackle.
On Day 3, it was off to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area. The best part of the count was the cedar waxwings. These elegant birds are winter visitors. They tend to stay in flocks and have a distinctive, high-pitched call. Debra and I watched a few groups flying from tree to tree--easily over 100 individuals altogether. In addition to the cedar waxwings, I saw a single double-crested cormorant flying over, a turkey vulture, and a couple of black vultures. Other birds seen included rock pigeon, yellow-shafted northern flicker, blue jay, northern cardinal, northern mockingbird, ruby-crowned kinglet, dark-eyed junco, yellow-rumped warbler, American robin, song sparrow, Harris's sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, and spotted towhee.
The last day was at Lucy Park. I wasn't there long because of other commitments that day, and I stayed in the picnic area at the Sunset Drive entrance. This has been a pretty good spot for me to find little dickey birds. I did cross the street to take a quick look in the river, but didn't go down the trail more than a dozen yards. The birds I saw included mallard, Canada goose, Eurasian collared dove, white-winged dove, dark-eyed junco, cedar waxwing, blue jay, Carolina chickadee, black-crested titmouse, golden-crowned kinglet, Carolina wren, American robin, great-tailed grackle, white-throated sparrow, American goldfinch, and house finch.
Across the world, birders submitted 911,000 checklists, documenting 8,004 species of birds.
Good birding!
