I took advantage of the relatively cool weather this morning and took an 8 mile hike at Black Rock Forest. It was a pleasant and relatively birdy hike, especially the first half of it, which provided a variety of habitats and most of the nearly 50 bird species I identified for the morning. Bird highlights included two Broad-winged Hawks (2 separate encounters), recently fledged Worm-eating Warblers, and recently fledged Prairie Warblers, neither of which I’d ever seen before. Non-avian highlights included a cooperative family of Beavers at Upper Reservoir.
I’ve included my full list of birds species as well as a screenshot of my All Trails tracking information at the bottom of this post.
I did get out locally yesterday evening and on Thursday night as well. Both days I went to the Camel Farm to check on shorebird progress, and it’s not bad at all with a decent species list: Lesser Yellowlegs, Killdeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Solitary Sandpiper, and Least Sandpiper. I also made it out to the Liberty Loop on Thursday and finally caught up with a Least Bittern in Orange County.
Wow. Nice long hike with some good activity.
Yeah, it was pretty good. I thought about you while I was out there, of course. Thanks for checking in. Matt
Hi Matt! Reaching out to you from the National Wildlife Federation — your photos and blog posts are fantastic. We are running an advocacy campaign to protect habitats for grassland birds from being converted to farmland and asking if you would give us permission to use your photo of a bobolink in flight from this post https://orangebirding.com/?m=201505 – we will credit however you require. Thank you for considering our request!
Jane – feel free to use whichever photos you like. You can give me credit (Matt Zeitler) and if you want you can add the website: http://www.orangebirding.com. Thanks! Matt
awesome, thanks so much Matt!!