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August 20, 2005
A warm morning but with a nice sea breeze greeted 16 folks who attended this field trip. The breeze helped keep the mosquitoes at bay and the temperature reasonable during the trip. Cathy Porter of The Nature Conservancy, was our guide during the trip and she told us about how The Nature Conservancy acquired this property, how they are currently managing the property, and there plans for the property in the future. It was interesting to learn that The Nature Conservancy is planning on keeping this property, which is in conflict with the conservancies policy of acquiring land and managing it for a certain length of time and then selling it to the government for enough money to buy more land and repeat this process.
The trip started with good scope views of Ibis, Black-necked Stilts, Fulvous, and Black-bellied Whistling Ducks out in a wet field with a few ponded wetlands. We then drove a little ways down the road towards the visitor’s center and stopped at a creek to see Common Moorhens, a few Green Herons and one Purple Gallinule. About 100 yards back up the road a few of the participants got good scope views of two perched adult White-tailed Hawks. It was quite a site. We then proceeded to the visitor’s center for a snack break. Kathy provided us with Coffee, water, and bananas for snacks. While we snacked we got good looks at Common Nighthawks perched at various places around the visitor’s center. After the break we drove to two wetland cells and set up scopes at the top of the leave and checked two water holes for shorebirds. The highlights here included two Wilson’s Phalaropes in fresh basic plumage and a molting Black Tern that had a few of us scratching our heads before being comfortable with the identification. We finished the day driving along the intercoastal waterway and had a fleeting glimpse of a Spotted Sandpiper. We ended the day with about 52 species. A list of the birds seen on the trip is below.
Brown Pelican, Cattle Egret, Little Blue Heron, Green Heron, Great Blue Heron, Tri-colored Heron, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, White-faced Ibis, Roseate Spoonbill, Wood Stork, Black-bellied Whistling Duck, Fulvous Whistling Duck, Mottled Duck, Black Vulture, Turkey Vulture, White-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, Northern Bobwhite, Common Moorhen, American Coot, Killdeer, Black-necked Stilt, Greater Yellowlegs, Long-billed Dowitcher, Semipalmated Sandpiper 1, Short-billed Dowitcher, Least Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper, Stilt Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs, Upland Sandpiper, Wilson’s Phalarope, Ring-billed Gull, Laughing Gull, Caspian Tern, Royal Tern, Forster’s Tern, Black Tern 1, Common Nighthawk, Eastern Kingbird, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Loggerhead Shrike, Barn Swallow, Northern Mockingbird, Northern Cardinal, Meadowlark sp., Common Grackle, and Red-winged Blackbird.
Participants:Bill Saulmon, Patsy Lawrence, Dick and Barbara Massey, Cindy Douglas, Claire Moore, John Schneider, Jane Herring, John Baird, Jim Winn, David and Iris Poteet, Al and Kathy Shultz, and Adam Wood.
~ Adam Wood, OG Field Trip Coordinator, birdman_570@yahoo.com, 713-515-1692
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