I participated in my first Christmas Bird Count on Tuesday. It was a great experience and I was out with some really good birders, which is good because I’m not. It was really fun and I would totally do it again next year. The only downside was that it was cold, windy, and raining. Also, we were standing on a hill looking for oystercatchers while there was thunder and lighting. So safe. For the most part – we car birded, but we still saw a lot even though we couldn’t get the scope on anything.
The part we birded in was Virginia Point, the wetlands alongside I-45 before the causeway to Galveston, a superfund site (awesome, I know), and a water treatment plant which had some great ducks.
Here are the birds that I saw on Tuesday.
- Red-winged blackbird
- Osprey (we saw a few and we saw one catch a fish)
- Tricolored heron
- Double crested cormorant
- Some hybrid ducks
- Mourning dove
- White ibis
- Great egret
- Gadwall
- American coot
- Loggerhead shrike
- Spotted sandpiper
- Sanderling
- Killdeer
- Caspian tern
- Ring-billed gull
- Black-bellied plover
- Brown pelican
- Common loon
- Common goldeneye
- Red-tailed hawk
- Herring gull
- Crested caracara
- Whimbrel
- Marsh wren
- Palm warbler
- Snowy egret
- Common merganser
- White pelican (something other than brown! finally)
- Eastern meadowlark
- Northern harrier
- Roseate spoonbill
- American oystercatcher
- Lesser scaup
- Savannah sparrow
- Least tern
- Ruddy duck
- Black-necked stilt
- Blue-winged teal
- Red-breasted merganser
- Cooper’s hawk
- Northern shoveler
- Western sandpiper
- American avocet
- Falcon species (we couldn’t tell which)
- Tree swallow
- Cave swallow
- Cliff swallow
- Black skimmer
- Bufflehead
- Laughing gull
- Sprague’s pipit
- Great blue heron
- European starling
- Northern pintail
- Mottled duck
- Eastern phoebe
- Lesser yellowlegs
- And even a nutria (not a bird)
For the most part it’s a pretty good list considering the conditions. Some of the birds I had never even seen before, which makes it even more worthwhile.
