On Saturday December 27th David, Jeanne and I covered the Country Club and Walnut Canyon section of the CBC circle. With only one Great-tailed Grackle recorded last year we started at the 'Asda' parking lot where we had 18 of these birds plus a number of House Sparrows, American Crows and common Ravens.
We scored well on waterfowl on Lake Elaine - 11 species which included the Ross's Goose reported ten day's earlier but which had eluded me on three tries near the Flagstaff Athletic Club, and a couple of female Hooded Mergansers. A flock of 50 Pinyon Jays greeted us at the far end of the lake and we scored well with small birds due to a house with well stocked feeders. Cassin's Finches had been around in high numbers in the fall and it was good to get them on our list. We added Northern Shoveler, American Coot and Great Blue Heron at Lake Humphreys before we got into some serious geese and wigeon counting on various fairways of the golf courses. Our final tallies were at 2200 Canada Geese and 850 American Wigeon.
We had our first Bald Eagles at the double ponds area - an adult and an immature being chased by crows, and saw what was probably the same pair perched by the Walnut Canyon Ponds a while later. A third eagle, another immature flew over while we were counting the ducks there. We had another 30 Pinyon Jays on our drive along Old Walnut Canyon Road, but we saw little but the expected Westen Bluebirds and Townsend Solitaires at the National Monument itself. Juncos were ever present along the road out to Cosnino, and we had a few Red-tail Hawks on our drive back into town.
The day ended, as it had begun, with birds of the lowest quality - 75 Eurasian Starling with pigeons and corvids at the Purina Plant. We tallied 38 species without too much of note.
No comments:
Post a Comment