Outing #2 - Prairie Ridge Ecostation

02/05/2016

For this weekend's outing, I consulted my BirdsEye App for notable sightings within 25 miles of my home and found one species that should be easy to pick up - a Common Goldeneye. It has been reported for at least the last three days (at all different times of day) on a small pond at Wake Tech Community College's North Campus. According to eBird, the Common Goldeneye is normally seen in Wake County only about once in every 211 checklists during the winter months. So my first stop will be this pond. Two more notable species were seen this week in the Lake Crabtree area. A Nashville Warbler (1 in 1300 checklists) and a Lesser Black Backed Gull (1 in 312) were both seen on February 3rd at the Lake Crabtree Nature Trail - Southport. These are two of the same species I wanted to see last week at Lake Crabtree County Park. It rained for two days again this week, so the trails around the lake may be too wet to use, but I'll head over there and give it a look. If that doesn't work out, I will either try Lake Raleigh, where a Peregrine Falcon (1 in 656) was reported between Jan 31st and Feb 2nd, or Prairie Ridge Ecostation where a Vesper Sparrow (1 in 2186) was reported on Feb 3rd. Lake Raleigh has potential for more species, but I've never been to the Prairie Ridge Ecostation.

02/06/2016

I started the morning by heading to Wake Tech Community College to try to pick up the Common Goldeneye reported there. As you can see from the photo below, I was successful!

I took this photo through my Vortex Razor spotting scope using an iPhone 4s and a Phone Skope adapter. The pond is quite small and this was the only duck on it, so it was pretty easy to get a decent photo. I also saw Canada Geese and an Eastern Bluebird there. The bluebird is also a new one for the Wake County list.

18) Common Goldeneye
19) Eastern Bluebird

My next stop was Prairie Ridge Ecostation. This is a great place to get practice identifying sparrows. Ten species of sparrows have been reported there in the month of February, and at least eight have already been reported during the first week of 2016. The Ecostation has a number of different piedmont habitats represented, including tallgrass areas, open fields, a permanent pond, and a forest trail. I didn't have time for the forest trail, but gave the other parts a good look.  I definitely need to come back here to work on my sparrow spotting skills. I saw many that I couldn't place for certain, partly because they had plenty of places to hide, and partly because I don't know some of the species all that well, and certainly not at-a-glance. However, I was able to identify four species of sparrows - White Throated Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, and Field Sparrow. The only one I already had on the Wake County list was the Field Sparrow. I did not see the Vesper Sparrow reported earlier in the week.

I was able to identify 20 species at the Ecostation in about 90 minutes. Most were fairly common species, but many of them were new ones for the Wake County List.

20) Dark Eyed Junco
21) White Throated Sparrow
22) Northern Cardinal
23) Yellow Rumped Warbler
24) Song Sparrow
25) Turkey Vulture
26) Hermit Thrush
27) Carolina Wren
28) Savannah Sparrow
29) Eastern Towhee
30) Northern Mockingbird
31) White Breasted Nuthatch
32) European Starling

My last stop for the day was Lake Crabtree Nature Trail - Southport. This place is a bit hard to find, as the entrance is behind a string of businesses. See the instructions at the link above. My mistake was to turn right instead of left when I got into the woods, and I ended up crossing a metal bridge and walking a good distance along a roadside trail before I realized the lake was in the other direction. Lighting is better for looking at birds on the lake in the afternoon from this side, but by the time I got there, the gulls were mostly in the middle of the lake or further away. Perhaps they would be closer to shore earlier in the day.

This is my second week in the Lake Crabtree Area, and on both visits I was hoping to see either a Nashville Warbler or a Lesser Black Backed Gull. I did not see either. I did manage to scan a large majority of the gulls present out on the lake with my scope, but none seemed to be dark enough to be the Lesser Black Backed Gull. I was there for about two hours in the mid-afternoon and managed to see 13 species. Three of these were new species for the Wake County List.

33) Ruby Crowned Kinglet
34) Downy Woodpecker (see photo above)
35) Golden Crowned Kinglet

After this outing, I need 145 species to complete the project. However, I've only managed to pick up one of my target species so far on my first two outings. I'll need to find a few more of these notable birds in order to make my goal.