Corpus Christi CBC 2015-2016

I participated in the Corpus Christi Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, December 19. I birded by myself all day on the Nueces River Delta Preserve. The weather was near perfect: low 40s in the morning and high 60s in the afternoon with partly cloudy skies and a southeast breeze that finally picked up to about 15 mph by late afternoon. I've had great luck with weather for my CBCs this year! I didn't realize until the end of the day that the preserve only offers public access through scheduled guided events, so being able to tromp around on the place by myself was a real privilege. I spent the day driving about 5 miles of truck trail through the grasslands and wetlands, spending most of my time on foot on short excursions from my SUV.

This preserve is great for wildlife tracking! All the exposed sandy soil was covered with tracks, mostly from coyotes and White-tailed Deer. I also found tracks from raccoons, jackrabbits, cottontails, and even a few bobcats. Here's one of the bobcat tracks I was excited to find:

Birding highlights included large numbers of Sandhill Cranes and geese. There was another team strategically placed on the preserve to count geese, ducks, and cranes in flight until 9:00 AM, so my eBird list did not include these birds in flight before then. But it sure was fun seeing and hearing them! Here's a large group of Sandhills that I did count, which flew in late afternoon:

Other favorite birding moments included a hovering White-tailed Kite, finding a Cassin's Sparrow, watching a group of 8 or 9 Hooded Mergansers feeding, and seeing a Long-billed Thrasher. Here the images I captured:

I found two of these Horse Crippler cacti (Echinocactus texensis), one by stepping on it. I was wearing heavy rubber boots and a little later I started feeling something under my heel. One of the spines from the cactus I stepped on had worked its way through heel of my boot. I hope it's still waterproof! Here's the one I didn't step on:

Just as much fun as the birding was experiencing the landscape:

On the north edge of my area I reached a quite definite end of the road here, where oil workers were digging a trench:

Here's my complete eBird checklist.

Here are most of these photos and a few more on Flickr.

And attached are all my iNaturalist observations which have a few more things.

Publicado el 24 de diciembre de 2015 a las 10:13 PM por mikaelb