Pine Warblers

This winter I've had Pine Warblers at my feeders. In the past, I've seen them in my yard, but never at my feeders. I've really enjoyed having them and hope they stick around into spring. Most of the time, I'll see a male and female, but occasionally I'll see four of them at a time. They are already calling quite a bit, so it's pretty easy to know when they're around. Here's a picture of one that I got on Monday. They're relatively unafraid of me. I was maybe 12 feet from the feeder when I took this picture. He watched me, but seemed unconcerned that I was standing there.

Great Backyard Bird Count is coming!

The Great Backyard Bird Count is coming up on February 12-15, 2010. It is an excellent opportunity for anyone to get out and count the birds. Then submit your sightings to the GBBC website. Your sightings help the scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon monitor bird populations and migration patterns. This is also a great project to get kids involved in and introduce them to nature. Participating is easy. Determine where you want to count the birds (your backyard, favorite park, national wildlife refuge, etc.) and count the birds for a minimum of 15 minutes. Count only the highest number of birds you see at one time. Don't add your counts you observe throughout the day. For instance, if you see 4 cardinals at 10:00, 8 cardinals at 11:00 and 6 cardinals at 12:00, you would enter 8 as your count for cardinals. That insures that each bird is counted only once. There are also prizes for photographs, so take pictures of your birds during the count and submit them to the GBBC. It is very interesting to see the results of previous counts. Take some time and explore the website and then get outside and count the birds on Feb. 12-15. Have questions? Call your local Wild Birds Unlimited store and ask them. Thanks for counting the birds!

Property Birding, 1/18/10

I spent an hour and a half birding on our property today. The birds were active! I didn't see anything I wouldn't expect to be there. There were a few pretty neat things. I stopped by the Barred Owl box I put up last spring and there has been some kind of activity at it. I could clearly see that something has been going in and out of the entrance hole. I'm not ready to say it's for sure a Barred Owl, but it's promising! Also, a little further down the trail, I found a Red-shouldered Hawk constructing a nest. They nest every year close to us. When they have chicks in the nest, we can sit outside and watch them fly back and forth carrying prey to feed them. The last neat thing was watching an Osprey fly directly overhead while I was at the new pond.

I realized I keep putting things on here about where I was when I saw something and most people have not been out here to be familiar with our property. Here's a rough map of what our property looks like.


The yellow line shows our fence line. To the east is mature woods with oak, hackberry and ash. In the middle is pasture which is being slowly overrun by tallow trees. To the west is a neat mixture of grassland and cedar/pine woods. I do 90% of my birdwatching on the eastern part of the property. I do like to go to the cedar/pine woods to the west to find Barn Owls. The old pond will have Hooded Mergansers, Anhinga and other ducks on it. So far, the ducks haven't come to the new pond made by the drilling company. It's still pretty open and there isn't much cover for them. It's a wonderful place to go birding. As of today, I've seen 193 species of birds on it.

Birds seen 1/18/10 (36 species): Snow Goose, Double-crested Cormorant, Turkey Vulture, Osprey, Red-shouldered Hawk, Killdeer, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Pileated Woodpecker, Eastern Phoebe, White-eyed Vireo, Blue Jay, American Crow, Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Eastern Bluebird, Hermit Thrush, American Robin, Gray Catbird, European Starling, American Pipit, Cedar Waxwing, Orange-crowned Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Pine Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, Song Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Blackbird, Brewer's Blackbird, Brown-headed Cowbird, American Goldfinch, House Sparrow

Baytown Nature Center, 1/10/10

I decided to kill some time on Sunday at the Baytown Nature Center (BNC). For those of you who don't know the history of the BNC, here's a brief one. The area used to be called the Brownwood subdivision and in Baytown, it was the place to live. It is a peninsula surrounded by three bays. Because of underground water use and other reasons, the land began sinking. In 1961, Hurricane Carla caused damage to it, but the houses were rebuilt. In 1983, Hurricane Alicia all but wiped out the subdivision. The city of Baytown stepped in a bought all the property and made a nature center out of it. I still remember birding out there with abandoned houses along the streets, boats and other garbage piled up alongside the roads. The city has cleaned it up and it is a very nice place to go birding now. You can still see the roads that once took people to their homes, and in a few places you can see the concrete slabs where the houses once stood. But it is nature's again, and the birds don't disappoint! If you're interested in checking it out, it is site number UTC039 on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail. Check this website for more info. (If you go, don't turn on Shreck to get to the BNC as the directions on the website say. Continue south on Bayway and the entrance will be about 1/2 mile past Shreck on the right.) There is a $3 entrance fee at the gate.

It was cold on Sunday. I was glad to have my heavy coat! Most of the birds I saw were expected, but there were a couple of nice ones that I didn't necessarily expect. One of those was the Cave Swallow. There were several of them that were flying around with Tree Swallows. They were feeding over one of the freshwater ponds. The Cave Swallow has expanded its range over the past ten to fifteen years. When the BNC first became a nature center, it would have been rare here, but now you should expect to see them. There were two birds that weren't necessarily surprises, but were really nice to see. White-crowned Sparrows foraged alongside one of the streets. A Marsh Wren called incessantly from deep inside some reeds before finally coming out and giving me some great looks at him. There weren't as many ducks as I had hoped for. Black-bellied Whistling-duck (another bird that has expanded its range significantly over the last 20 years), Mallard, Northern Shoveler and Green-winged Teal were the only ducks I saw. Brown Pelicans dive-bombed fish in the bays. A Reddish Egret performed his dance trying to scare up prey in one of the tidal ponds. It was a fun day. I ended up with 48 species.

Birds Seen at the Baytown Nature Center, 1/10/10 (48 species): Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Mallard, Northern Shoveler, Green-winged Teal, Pied-billed Grebe, Brown Pelican, Neotropic Cormorant, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Little Blue Heron, Reddish Egret, White Ibis, Roseate Spoonbill, Osprey, Cooper's Hawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Killdeer, Least Sandpiper, Laughing Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Herring Gull, Mourning Dove, Belted Kingfisher, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Eastern Phoebe, Blue Jay, Tree Swallow, Cave Swallow, Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, House Wren, Marsh Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, American Robin, Northern Mockingbird, Cedar Waxwing, Orange-crowned Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Song Sparrow, Lincoln's Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Blackbird, Great-tailed Grackle, American Goldfinch

The birds were active today at the feeders. Maybe they know that we're going to get some cold weather at the end of the week and they're trying to fatten up some. I had more Pine Warblers at the feeders than I've seen. Until today, two were all I saw at a time. Today I had four. The American Goldfinches continue to increase in numbers at the feeders. I counted 53 today either on the feeders, on the ground beneath the feeders and in the tree above the feeders. A Sharp-shinned Hawk came in for a while and frightened all the birds away. I got a couple of shots of him through the fence while he was sitting on the brush pile.

The birds were interesting away from the feeders too. A pair of Red-shouldered Hawks flew around quite a bit and called to each other. A large flock of American Pipits flew in and landed in the pasture. They walked around foraging for quite a while. Eastern Bluebirds and Yellow-rumped Warblers flew around and came to my bird bath.

Birds seen 1/4/10 (16 species): Sharp-shinned Hawk, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-bellied Woodpecker, American Crow, Eastern Bluebird, American Robin, American Pipit, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Pine Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Red-winged Blackbird, Brewer's Blackbird, Brown-headed Cowbird, American Goldfinch, House Sparrow