City Nature Challenge, Part 4 -- Birds

WARNING:  LONG POST.  LOTS OF PICTURES

In the previous three posts I explained the general nature of the 2017 City Nature Challenge, listed some of the insect, reptile, fish, mammal, and amphibian observations, and touched on the plant observations we made during the five day period, April 14-18.  Now let me address the bird observations.

Going into the City Nature Challenge, birds were probably our greatest interest.  That was mainly because we have had more experience with birds.  We also thought there would be more opportunities for observations since many different birds routinely visit the feeders in our backyard.  We ended up posting 43 different bird observations.  A number of those were new birds for us.

Backyard Birds.  As anticipated, we saw a variety of birds at our feeders.  Many of these we had seen many times before.  Those include house finches, blue jays, cardinals, brown thrasher, Carolina chickadee, European starlings, white-winged doves, red-bellied woodpecker, and downy woodpecker.

Brown thrasher

Carolina chickadee, one of our favorite backyard birds

One of the many Downy woodpeckers that frequent our backyard

Red-bellied woodpecker on the feeder as the Downy woodpecker takes off

We were well aware of white-winged doves.  We see them all the time.  However, when I posted the observation on iNaturalist, it indicated they were not in this geographic region.  Huh??  Newsflash to iNaturalist, there are many white-winged doves at least in our backyard.

Seven white-winged doves fighting for space on the feeder.  We have seen as many as twelve on the feeder at once.

I am not sure how often this kind of thing happens, but clearly their data base was wrong.  It is a good idea that iNaturalist flags abnormal sightings, but I did not notice any such notice on my my incorrect identification of a yellow clubtail dragonfly.


Taking pictures of the backyard birds also gave us the opportunity to look more closely at the wren that had built a nest in the birdhouse on the patio, but does not yet seem to be raising a family.  Is it a Carolina wren or a Bewick's wren?  We had at first assumed it was a Carolina wren but decided, based on the longer tail and white marks on the outer tail feathers, that it was a Bewick's wren.  The iNaturalist community agreed.

Our backyard Bewick's wren

A relatively new visitor to our backyard was a yellow-rumped warbler and--totally new for us--was a white-throated sparrow.

Yellow-rumped warbler

White-throated sparrow

Other common birds.  In some of the nearby parks we observed a host of other "common" urban/suburban birds that do not visit our feeders (usually because they do not eat seeds).  That included mockingbirds, crows, robins, bluebirds, great-tailed grackles, pigeons, house sparrows, Canada geese, and mourning doves.  We saw our first local red-winged blackbird as well as new, for us, a chipping sparrow and a Savannah sparrow.  Somewhat common, but still exciting to see was one of the first scissor-tail fly catchers of the year. 

Scissor-tail fly catcher

Water birds.  Being near Lewisville Lake and the Trinity River provides us with multiple opportunities to see water birds.  Many of these are migratory, so what birds we see depends heavily on the calendar.  We are still learning what to expect at different times of the year. 

There were many great blue herons along the Trinity River. Despite their large size, they are remarkably skittish.  Fortunately this one let the Frog get relatively close.

The Frog taking a picture of a great blue heron on the Bittern Marsh Trail along the Trinity River on 4-18-17.  The river level that day, according to the USGS, was just under 11.5 feet.  At that level the trail was dry close to the dam but impassable a bit further south (at the marsh outflow) due to high water.

It resulted in a nice close-up before he finally took off.

We saw both snowy egrets and  great egrets.  Snowy egrets are smaller, have a black beak and yellow feet. 

Snowy egret

Great egrets are larger, have a yellow beak and black feet.

Great egret

Although many ducks that were here this winter have gone, mallards continue to be relatively easy to spot in multiple places. 

Mallards

I am not exactly sure what a grebe is, but we saw a  pied-billed grebe, which was a first for us.

pied-billed grebe

Coots (sometimes called mud hens) are not ducks, but we almost always see them on the water.  At least some of them were still around.

American coots

Most of the ring-billed gulls that were plentiful this winter have moved on, although we did see one.

Ring-billed gull

Large numbers of Franklin's gulls (sometimes called prairie doves due to how flocks of Franklin's gulls follow behind farmers plowing in a field) were making all kinds of noise as they flew high overhead, migrating from their winter homes as far south as South America to the northern plains.  They were too high to photograph in flight, but we did see several on the ground.

Franklin's gull at Lake Park

 We also caught a glimpse of what turned out to be a Forster's Tern.  This was a new bird for us.

Forster's tern

Several kingfishers were racing around and diving for fish in the river.  We usually hear them before we see them and rarely get a picture, but did catch sight of this one.

Belted kingfisher

We had seen many many cormorants all winter, although I think those were double-crested cormorants that had already migrated out of the area.  We almost did not go down the Redbud Trail because it was so muddy, but ran into these two neotropic cormorants hanging out on the Trinity River just before we had to turn around due to high water.  This was another first for us and definitely worth slogging through the mud to see.

Neotropic cormorants -- notice the webbed feet even though perched on a branch

Raptors.  We had hoped to see the elusive bald eagles that occasionally hang out near the Lewisville Lake Dam.  We did not see them but we did see a Swainson's hawk diving for prey on the dam, an osprey over the river (the only one we saw after seeing dozens earlier in the year), and a red-shouldered hawk atop a telephone pole in the construction zone next to I-35.

 

Swainson's hawk

Swainson's hawk (we think) hovering over the dam looking for prey

An osprey soaring over the Trinity River

Red-shouldered hawk on top of a telephone pole wondering what we were doing

Vultures.  Last but not least are the vultures.  We often see vultures soaring on thermals high in the air.  Only in the last year or so did I learn that there were two types of vultures in Texas, black vultures and turkey vultures.  Although they are usually too far away to see the color of their heads, that is the most definitive means of identification.  Black vultures have a black head and turkey vultures are larger and have a red head.  Although both feed on carrion, it was not until I saw an article in the March 2017 issue of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine that I learned how different the two are in how they find food. 

Turkey vultures forage by smell, an ability that is uncommon among birds.  They often fly low to the ground to pick up the scent of decaying flesh.

Turkey vulture

Turkey vulture -- note red head, light colored flight feathers

Black vultures have a poor sense of smell but very sharp vision.  When higher-flying black vultures see turkey vultures descend to feed, they swoop down and drive away the less assertive, more solitary turkey vultures.  I don't know if that means the groups of vultures soaring together high in the sky are always black vultures, but I will start to pay more attention to their shape in flight to see if I can identify them even from a distance.

A kettle of black vultures circling high above.  Note shorter, more rounded wings.  The lighter color is only on the tips of the wings (although I can rarely see that since they are so high).

Black vulture

BTW, what is a group of vultures called?  That depends.  According to Wikipedia, a group of vultures is called a wake, committee, kettle, venue, or volt.  Wake is reserved for a group of vultures that are feeding.  The term kettle refers to vultures in flight, while committee refers to vultures at rest or in trees.  Really?! Committee = vultures at rest??  That sounds too much like a bad joke.  I think I am going to have to verify that from an independent source.

WOW.  That was an unbelievable amount of neat stuff in only a five day time period and within 10 minutes of home.