Another Bird Walk

Saturdays during April and May the Tiadaghton Audubon Society helps lead bird walks at Hills Creek State Park. This morning I had agreed to help Gary lead the walk. Turns out there were virtually no capers at the park and of those there, no one seemed to want to go birding. Still we had several members of the Audubon Society there and one professor from Mansfield U with her husband and toddler.

It was another gorgeous morning to be out. Last night’s heavy thunderstorms seem to have grounded several birds on the lake and certainly went a long way to producing clean, fresh air. The Long-tailed Duck was a rarity. (It used to e called an Old Squaw before things went all PC.) The number of Buffleheads was also surprising. Some warblers are starting to show up and the park ranger said she’s got bluebirds sitting on eggs already. Guess that means there are some bugs starting to appear.

Anyway, here’s the report:
Location: Hills Creek State Park
Observation date: 4/12/08
Notes: Bright sunny morning after a night of heavy thunderstorms. Temperature between 50-55 degrees. Wind brisk 10-15 mph out of the west-southwest.
Number of species: 28

Tundra Swan 1
Mallard 3
Ring-necked Duck 2
Lesser Scaup 1
Long-tailed Duck 1
Bufflehead 38
Horned Grebe 6
Great Blue Heron 2
Bonaparte's Gull 13
Ring-billed Gull 5
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 4
Northern Flicker 2
Eastern Phoebe 3
American Crow 5
Common Raven 2
Black-capped Chickadee 5
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
Eastern Bluebird 2
Swainson's Thrush 5
European Starling 6
Cedar Waxwing 2
Yellow-rumped Warbler 6
Pine Warbler 1
Savannah Sparrow 1
Song Sparrow 2
Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) 6
Northern Cardinal 2
Common Grackle 4

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)