Nalle Bunny Run Group Walk 2016-11-20

Twelve folks joined me Sunday morning for the monthly group walk on Hill Country Conservancy's Nalle Bunny Run Wildlife Preserve. We were treated to a cold and clear morning, and ultimately we recorded 32 species of birds! Here are some highlights.

Before we even started walking, a mixed species flock of songbirds visited us by the gate. It included Black-crested Titmice, Carolina Chickadees, and a couple Ruby-crowned Kinglets. Here's one of the kinglets, a recently returning winter resident. In this photo you can just see a little bit of its ruby crown:

A little down the hill we encountered a couple more winter residents, a Pine Warbler which gave must of us pretty good looks, and a Golden-crowned Kinglet which was moving fast and was only seen by me. On the sandy prairie area near the northeast corner of the preserve, we were excited to see this Red-tailed Hawk:

It finally flew west, and a beautiful male American Kestrel found it and spent the next half hour or so harassing the Red-tailed Hawk. I was never able to get a good shot of the kestrel.

Covering the rest of the sandy prairie we got glimpses of a few returning winter sparrows, like Song Sparrow and Lincoln's Sparrow. But we didn't get good looks at a sparrow until we encountered a small group of Chipping Sparrows back up the hill on the western part of the preserve. Here's one of them:

Here's our complete bird list.

Here are a few more photos.

And attached are the same photos as iNat observations. What a fun morning!

Posted on November 22, 2016 12:15 AM by mikaelb