Guadalupe Delta Christmas Bird Count 2015-2016

On Thursday, December 17 I participated in the Guadalupe River Delta Christmas Bird Count. The count circle includes the small town of Tivoli in its southern edge and covers the Womack Ranch and over 10 miles of the Guadalupe River. Brent Ortego with Texas Parks and Wildlife organizes this count and the more famous Mad Island Marsh count (on Matagorda Island) which are usually the second and first highest-species counts in the nation. On the evening of count day with about half the teams reporting, the tally just broke 200 species. I'm waiting to hear what the final species count is.

This year I was assigned to the the Guadalupe River itself. I got to ride on a flat-bottomed boat generously provided by the Womack Ranch and driven by a the ranch foreman. We spent all day covering about 10 miles of the river. Here's the sunrise as I drove the dirt road to the ranch headquarters.

And here's my first view of the water, crossing a small man-made lake before we got onto the river itself:

As the photos suggest, the weather was gorgeous: partly cloudy skies, little or no wind, and temperatures ranging from low 40s in the morning to high 60s by mid-afternoon. It was a joy to be out on the river finding birds. This is in stark contrast to some past count days of cold wet misery I remember too well!

I birded from the boat (mostly by ear) and got out several times to make short forays into the woods. The habitat, of course, was dense riparian forest with scattered patches of palmetto. The water was high -- just below the top edge of the banks in most places and about even with the banks in others. Yellow-rumped Warblers and Eastern Phoebes were ubiquitous along the banks everywhere we went. I counted 280 warblers and 46 phoebes, all in ones and twos, throughout the day. Other numerous species seemingly evenly spread out along the river were Carolina Chickadee, Northern Cardinal, Carolina Wren, White-winged Dove, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Early on we encountered a bright male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that I thought was a Red-naped until I examined my photos that night. (See my photos in the attached observations below.)

I was most excited to find two Green Kingfishers on the river. This species has expanded its range north into Austin, but they are very hard to detect because they like to stay in dense brush at the edge of rivers and creeks. They are much easier to find when birding on the water than when birding on land. We found the first one in the morning. Can you find it in this photo?

Here it is out in the open as we passed it by:

And here's the second bird we found in the afternoon:

Other highlights included Anhingas, Great Kiskadees, Pileated Woodpeckers, Couch's Kingbirds, Pine Warblers, hybrid titmice, and two lingering neotropical migrants: a female Black-and-white Warbler and this Least Flycatcher:

(This count is known for finding lingering neotropical migrants, and the above two species were actually expected finds.)

Here's my eBird checklist for the day.

Here are some additional photos.

And attached are all my iNaturalist observations. What a fun day!

Publicado el 20 de diciembre de 2015 a las 09:34 PM por mikaelb