Archivos de diario de mayo 2018

20 de mayo de 2018

Nalle Bunny Run 2018-05-19

Only two people joined me yesterday morning for the monthly group walk on Hill Country Conservancy's Nalle Bunny Run Wildlife Preserve in west Austin. The temperature stayed in the 70s thanks to staying cloudy for most of the morning, and there was a nice breeze most of the time. The theme of the morning was bird families! We saw family groups of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Black-crested Titmice, and Eastern Phoebes, all with fledglings following their parents and begging for food. We saw evidence of Northern Cardinal and Red-eyed Vireo reproduction as well. Here is one of the fledgling gnatcatchers I found by the gate before the walk started:

Fledgling Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - 2

Down by the lake not quite under the cypress trees I scared a female Northern Cardinal off her nest. I got the quick iPhone photo showing 4 speckled eggs in it:

Northern Cardinal Nest

Among the tall cedar elms uphill from the buildings, we heard the single male Yellow-throated Warbler singing. We played a recording of its song hoping it would come investigate and we could see it. The warbler didn't come, but unexpectedly, a pair of Red-eyed Vireos came in to investigate. Here's a poor photo I got of one of them. If you look closely you can see it's holding a small twig in its bill, evidence of nest building:

Red-eyed Vireo

Back up by the gate I was ready to thank everyone for coming and say good-bye, when I heard a buzzy song, and I knew there was a migrating warbler nearby. We soon spotted this stunning male Black-throated Green Warbler:

Black-throated Green Warbler

This was the only north-bound migrating bird we found. It was loosely associated with a family group of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, maybe the same family we'd seen at the beginning of the walk. I got another photo of one of the fledglings, this time actively begging:

Begging Fledgling Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

We ended up finding 24 species of birds. Here's our complete eBird checklist.

And here are a few more photos on Flickr.

Attached are all my iNat observations.

Publicado el 20 de mayo de 2018 por mikaelb mikaelb | 9 observaciones | 0 comentarios | Deja un comentario
Vida Silvestre es una entidad asociada a la Organización Mundial de Conservación