Aransas National Wildlife Refuge CBC 2017-12-23

I was fortunate again this year to be able to participate in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge Christmas Bird Count. We were fortunate to have the count with fewer volunteers and staff available and damaged facilities in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Special thanks to Paul Swacina and Rick Laughlin for organizing the count again this year under challenging conditions.

My team covered the non-public Area 5 again which included Burgentine Lake, part of Saint Charles Bay, and some area south and inland of both. The weather was mild, in the 60s and 70s. A strong south wind increased through the morning, reaching gusts of 30 mph I guessed out over the coastal prairie habitat. The highlight was this Great Horned Owl, which was roosting nearly on the ground at the base of a mesquite tree right by the road. I completely missed it but my teammates somehow spotted it as we drove by.

When most of the teams convened at lunch time, we realized that songbirds were very difficult to find. Where last year my team counted hundreds of Yellow-rumped Warblers, we only recorded one or two this year. And no one had found a Hermit Thrush or a White-eyed Vireo.

For the afternoon I was on my own and decided to try and find some of these songbirds in the dense patches of woods in the public areas of the refuge. I had the best luck in the Youth Education Area where I walked about 1.5 miles of road and trail, stopping at spots sheltered from the wind to play an Eastern Screech-Owl recording. The birds were few and far between, but I did find two White-eyed Vireos and a single Hermit Thrush.

At one spot I'd stopped because I heard two Blue-gray gnatcatchers calling. After playing my owl recording they came in to investigate and I got this photo of one of them:

As I was watching the gnatcatchers I occasionally heard a soft call note that reminded me of a Cave Swallow. I kept looking in the sky but never saw anything. Finally, I saw another bird deep in the brush, a female Eastern Towhee! After getting a look at me she moved away and I could not get a photograph. Even after playing some Eastern Towhee call recordings she never returned. But I realized that this was the bird making the faint calls I'd heard before.

I only used eBird for my afternoon birding. Here's my complete list from the Youth Education Area, showing how hard it was to find songbirds!

Here's my account of last year's count for comparison.

Attached are a few iNaturalist observations, and here are a few more photos on Flickr.

Publicado el 25 de diciembre de 2017 a las 03:04 PM por mikaelb