26 September 2009

TOC Bird Walk–Shore Birds and Late Migrants, Tommy Thompson Park

For a day that was forecast to have hard rain start around noon, the actual start time (about 16h00) was a remarkably nice break from the weather.

Bob Kortright led the walk; this is the first walk of his I've been on, and his take on the park is noticeably different from that of other leaders of Tommy Thompson park bird walks. This was an interesting change, and I'll be going back to some of those corners of the park.

Based on some of the other birders on the walk, I have a long, long way to go when it comes to spotting birds in undergrowth and thick leaves.

Don't know what the group total was; I saw (meaning, saw it well enough that I either could, or believe I ought to have been able to, identify the bird) 34 species:

American robin
American widgeon
black duck
black-throated green warbler (included a fresh male in goldenrod; really vivid)
blue jay
blue-winged teal
brown creeper
Canada goose
chipping sparrow
common yellow-throat
Cooper's hawk (sitting on a chain link fence by the park's access control point; last bird of the day)
dark-eyed junco
double-crested cormorant
eastern kingbird
Eurasian starling
gadwall
golden-crowned kinglet (there were ruby-crowned, too, but I wasn't able to confirm any)
goldfinch (plucking thistle seeds, and letting the fluff float away...)
greater scaup
green heron (in clear view, on a dead branch, and it just stayed there)
killdeer
magnolia warbler
mallard duck
mute swan
northern flicker
northern pintail
palm warbler
phoebe
sharp-shinned hawk
shoveller duck
song sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
white-throated sparrow
yellow-bellied sapsucker

So quite wretched for shorebirds but a pretty good day all the same.

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