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