November 17, 2007
FORTY TWO participants enjoyed a relatively nice day of birding in Brazos Bend State Park and Davis Estates. It was cloudy all day long and the rains managed to hold off except for a period of about 1/2 hour to an hour in the afternoon while we were out on Davis Estates. Bill Godley one of the parks naturalists led the trip and he also was able to get us access to Davis Estates, which was a specially treat because normally the only time that birders can get on Davis Estates is during the Brazos Bend Christmas Bird Count.
We spent the morning birding around 40 Acre Lake and the prairie across from 40 Acre Lake. We went over to the pavilion at Elm Lake for lunch and while eating lunch we were on the look out for the Vermillion Flycatcher that normally winters on Elm Lake near the pavilion since we had missed the Vermillion that is usually seen near the observation tower of 40 Acre Lake. We did manage to find the Elm Lake Vermillion Flycatcher, which turned out to be a life bird for at least one of the participants. It is always nice to be able to get a life bird for one of the participants. After finishing lunch and having our fill of the Vermillion Flycatcher we headed over to Davis Estates. Just as we got there it started to rain. We started out by scoping the big lake across from the Fort Bend County Landfill and found five Gadwalls and three Lesser Scaup and a forth bird that morphed from a Canvasback to a Redhead to finally a fourth Lesser Scaup. I wound up making the Redhead call and after looking through what we all decided was the superior scope of the group agreed that it was indeed a Lesser Scaup. The superior scope was the Lieca. After finding not much else on the lake we went into Davis Estates to search for the Palm Warblers that have wintered on that property for the past five to six winters and to try and add a few more sparrows to the trip list. Unfortunately only one Palm Warbler was found by one participant and it did not hang around. We did add White-crowned Sparrow to the list but dipped on getting a Song Sparrow. Then as participants were leaving and preparing to leave two Sandhill Cranes flew quietly overhead to end the day. Other highlights for the trip were finding a very cooperative Marsh Wren along 40 Acre Lake, getting brief glimpses of Sedge Wrens within about two feet from the observation platform in the prairie across from the 40 Acre Lake parking area and finding a lingering Yellow Warbler near Hoots Hollow. We also had some nice up close experiences with some Green Herons on 40 Acre Lake.
Overall for the trip we observed 59 species. A big thanks to Bill Godley for leading this wonderful trip and doing a wonderful job of handling all 42 participants, which was about three times as many as I was expecting. I hope everybody had as wonderful of a time as I did. Just having that many people on the trip made the day for me. Forty two participants is a record at least for the field trips that I have organized so I want to thank everybody for coming out and helping to make this a truly wonderful trip. Hope to see you all on future trips. We have some great ones still to come.
~ Adam Wood, OG Field Trip Coordinator, birdsondabrain@earthlink.net, 713-515-1692 |
