Nalle Bunny Run Group Walk 2015-10-17

Thirteen folks (all from the same hiking group) joined me for the monthly group walk on the Bunny Run this morning. We enjoyed beautiful clear and slightly cool weather and tallied 20 species of birds. The first highlight was while I was orienting everyone before we started. Just after I finished explaining how Cooper's Hawks and Sharp-shinned Hawks were returning to central Texas for the winter, this Sharp-shinned Hawk soared by:

An interesting find we made near the spring was this Mourning Dove kill site. Since all the feathers were together on the ground, it wasn't a hawk or falcon that got this bird. A hawk or falcon would have carried it up to a perch to eat it, spreading the feathers over a much larger area. This was a ground predator, maybe a fox or a cat, that got this dove.

At the eastern edge of the preserve, emerging out of the cedar breaks into the open sandy prairie area, we spotted this juvenile Red-tailed Hawk in a dead cottonwood:

It hung around for a few minutes before flying off to the northwest. But a couple minutes later I saw another hawk flying in from southwest. It was an adult Red-tailed that landed in the same tree!

From that same spot we got to see two Ladder-backed Woodpeckers, a House Finch, and we got to compare Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures almost right over our heads.

Here's our complete bird list:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S25446728

And attached are a few iNaturalist observations. What a fun morning!

Posted on 20 de outubro de 2015, 02:37 AM by mikaelb