| Tall Timbers seemed like a good spot to be at dawn on my first day, so
I found myself up there a little before any sunlight was visible.
I waited on top of the hill for the sun listening to the
sparrows and other pineland birds wake up. I walked down to the
bird house, saw Wood Ducks, heard two species of Nuthatch wake up, got
a little bored and started heading back. On my way back I
remembered that Andy had told me about Fox Sparrows in this one
area. I walked up and down the lines cut out, and saw several
sparrows, including my year Henslow's, but no Foxes. The day was
getting better when I found a large flock of Chipping Sparrows which
was very impressive. Every step I took forced about 10-20 more to
fly up. I also ran into a large flock that consisted of Pine
Warblers, White-breasted Nuthatches, American
Goldfinches, Kinglets, a Yellow-throated Warbler, and a Pine
Siskin. I was still missing most of my targets, but Red-breasted
Nuthatch was the only one that I would probably not find anywhere
else. I easily picked up Brown-creeper at Indian Mounds near Lake
Jackson as well as hearing a White-breasted Nuthatch. I failed to
find the Canada Goose flock on Buck Lake Road that has a Snow in it,
but I was able to pick up my year Fox Sparrow after about an hour of
searching at the Greenway, as well as another Henslow's. I called
Paul and the Tropical Audubon group to let them know, and said we would
keep in touch for rarities found over the weekend. A quick lunch
at Burger King held me over for the rest of daylight, and I made
my way to Alligator Point afterwards. Once I got to the
points I wanted to check out the KOA, since it is the best place to
scan from on Alligator Point. There was one area that looked like
the KOA, but I kept on driving. After a while I found myself
at the end of the road, realizing that I had missed the KOA I made a U
turn and ran into Jill Gaetzi, who had also missed the campground which
is no longer there. I pulled off the road where I had gotten good
looks at Red-throated Loon before, and easily found another one off the
rocks a short ways. While birding around in the woods some I ran
into a guy somewhat interested in birds who gave me directions on how
to get to that point between Alligator and Bald Points. This area
looked good, and I was glad I got directions, because when I reached
the last waterfront house on Gulf Shores Blvd I found a White-winged
Scoter off the point. On my way over, there was a Western
Kingbird on the wires on Mardi Gras Way. When I made it to
Bald Point State Park the bay seemed fairly empty of ducks that
were not Buffleheads, Goldeneyes, or
Mergansers. It took a few scans to find a raft of about
15 scoters take flight, and it appeared there were a
few surfs mixed in. A little while later I was rewarded with
a flyby group of one Black and one Surf Scoter fairly close
in. On my way back to the car I ran into Michael
Hartley scoping the birds in the bay. We found a raft of about
100 scoters, but could not pick out anything
other than Blacks. While scanning a Western Kingbird flew
in. I left for Bottoms road to add Virginia Rail to my
year list. At the little parking area on the left hand side of
the road I saw what appeared to be a group of birders, so I made a
stop. Upon scanning the water I found an Oldsquaw (or Long-tailed
Duck as some like/or don't like to call it). The group of people
were birders from Northern Georgia, but did not have a scope out
at the moment, so they had not seen the duck yet. After
showing them the duck, they showed me a few Sharp-tailed Sparrows to
the west of the parking area. Since the sun
was going down we decided to hit the end of the road to
try for Virginia Rail. I missed the one the other
group heard, but I heard one later when I went back to show
Michael the Oldsquaw. I spent the night near Blountstown at
Travis MacClendon's place. The year list was at 234 I think,
something like that. Since I was running very low on energy, I
had probably the best slice of pizza I have ever had. |
