06/02/2016
Wake Audubon is having another birding Meetup tomorrow morning at Wake Landfill Park. After that, they will follow the Abbott's Creek trail to the Great Blue Heron rookery about half a mile or so from the intersection of the Abbott's Creek and Neuse River Trails. I don't have any particular target species for the day from these sites. I just really like the Abbott's Creek Trail, which is highly reliable for Red Headed Woodpeckers, so I decided to go along. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a new species or two for the Wake County Project list.
06/11/2016
A word to the wise. Check your gas gauge the night before you have an 8 AM meetup for birding. I was about 10 minutes from the park when my low fuel light came on. That's never happened to me before, maybe because I have a hybrid that gets great gas mileage, but I ended up having to hunt around for a gas station and almost missed the start of the bird walk. Fortunately, there had been a lot of birds around that day, and the group hadn't left the park without me. That's a good thing, because if they'd already moved on, I might have missed the Tree Swallows (#102 on the frequency list) nesting in the boxes along the edge of the mowed section of the park! These are new for my Wake County Project list. I also got a chance to see an Eastern Meadowlark (#60), which although not new for the list, I don't see terribly often. I saw my second Blue Grosbeak (#73) of the year as well.
101) Tree Swallow
What I did not do a good job of was taking photos. There was too much going on, so I didn't take any snaps to help set the scene. I'll try to do better next time.
Once we hit the Abbott's Creek Trail we started off with a lot of the more common forest and forest-edge birds. We did see a Great Crested Flycatcher early on, and eventually, several Red Headed Woodpeckers. There were also three or four Indigo Buntings about, and at the heron rookery, we saw not only Great Blue Herons, but a Common Yellowthroat as well. None of these were new species for the list, but they were nice to see nonetheless.
On the return trip, we kept hearing the calls of two birds I haven't yet managed to see: Acadian Flycatcher (#94) and Red Eyed Vireo (#55) but neither species seemed to want to come out and be seen. My rule is that I have to see the bird to count it for this project. I never did manage to spot the Acadian, but finally as we were starting to head back toward our cars at a brisker pace, we heard a Red Eyed Vireo and I caught a glimpse of it a flying from one tree to another. Not the greatest view, but good enough to count it.
102) Red Eyed Vireo
Unless Wake Audubon comes up with another really tempting Meetup, my next outing will be targeted at the nine or so species from the top 100 frequency list that are around in the summer but which I haven't yet seen. I might try Prairie Ridge Ecostation for Purple Martin, Rock Pigeon, and perhaps Barred Owl. After that I'm not sure. Maybe I'll head over over to the Schenk Forest or somewhere else in the area to see what else I can find.
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