Ground hog month

He saw his shadow so 6 more weeks of winter....On sunny days so I try to get out there and enjoy it...went to the Environmental Park, better known to me as Bramblewood, and the river is out of it's banks again...

the last 5 steps are a little bit  tricky

On the way out I stopped at the Sports Complex and something was enticing these Black Vultures in...

One day the weather man got it wrong, and I headed out thinking it would clear off it didn't saw some Turkey in a field...haven't been seeing any so this was good.  

On Wednesday it was very windy and cold but I went to my favorite spot to check for sparrows.  Found a few too,,,

Sweet Chipping Sparrows, saw at least 100 they really challenged me to check thru them looking for the Tree Sparrow...didn't see any but the chippy's are just so cute, 

NO disappointment there, and one of my favs is the Field Sparrow with his perfect white eye ring.  

Still a lot of Song Sparrow around too,,,

Sparrows used to drive me crazy, now I consider it a welcome challenge to look for those subtle differences, it's like trying to figure out Identical twins sort of,,,

And this is the Pine Warbler who was fantastic out in the sun, 

Im using Facebook to host my photos, it is working; so far so good.. 

Then on our last partly sunny turning cloudy day I went to a spot by the Wateree Lake Dam..  This place is so abused by bank fishermen leaving trash it's horrible. 

I picked up this and 3 times more of it, discarded fishing line, nets, it's such a killer of wildlife, 

LOTS of Common Grackle and RedWinged Blackbird around,,

And at least 500 Ring Billed Gulls downstream...

Couldn't get any closer, so I concentrated on what I could see...the Eastern Towhee, also a Sparrow

And this lovely little White Throated Sparrow,,,

Perfect in every way,,,and the female Cardinal with her beautiful orangey blush

Some Sandhill Crane were spotted not far away I double dipped on them,..and now the field is being plowed so that's that.   

I decided to give the Riverside Park a visit, it's dried out some there but the water level is high there too.  This place is upstream of Bramblewood...

They replaced the bridge that moved off it's foundation during a flood in 2019.  

There was a small landslide due to all the rain and parts of the riverside walking trail was lost but some parts they have been opened up again...

Got my FOY  Redheaded Woodpecker, brings to mind the song..."raspberry beret" 

A large flock of Killdeer swooshed overhead me a couple times, they eventually landed in the farm field on the other side of the river. 

On the way home I stopped at the Racetrack to check the pond, it has a lot of water, but the landscape crew has cut most of the bird cover away so that affects things...did see a Redtail taking a look around...

 

 

And that's it for me this week...hope you had an interesting week,..

Happy Birthday to my son, now 40 yrs old. 

PEACE

Every day is a new Adventure.

Chronicles of the Week

Still summer here...hope for a sudden change!  

Aug 18

Another hot one...

...enjoyed this fresh looking dragon, I guess it's a Halloween Pennant dragonfly He looks perfect!  We rode over to Lake Paul Wallace, It's been a while since we visited we didn't see a lot but we enjoyed what we saw...

Duck Potato Plant

These Mallards wanted a hand out we had a few crumbs so we tossed a bit out of the window..they are completely spoiled as you can tell 

The Geese were not as friendly!  

Aug 21

Midweek I ventured up to the local racetrack...it is also a hotspot for my town, it's not in my radius and I helped push the county count up by 4 for the year, I know in a way I'm cutting my own throat for my radius percentage %.

 

This little pond is on the racetrack grounds and it's pretty popular...I uploaded some of these straight to Blogger see if you can click it and make it bigger, if you don't mind?  A little test. 

So last week Aug 14th I went over and found the immature Tri Color Heron, and this week he was still there along with the 2 immature White Ibis I shared last post... 

Tri-Color Heron

Then I found a Yellow Legs, I think lesser, so that's how I reported it..he stayed behind the reeds making it hard to pull out a decent shot of him..

and all of sudden he had company...lower left of the photo

A spotted sandpiper!  Fun to find both of these...

 So 2 more added to my county list for the year 

When I stand very still for a long period of time my spine fuses up! So I was glad to sit on one of these logs and watch the birds milling around in the pond...

Tuesday Aug 20,  I went to my 5 mile radius Hotspot early I arrived about 7:30 am and I found a new one for the radius, the Green Heron.  (#117) He was pretty far out there I got this for the record shot no mistaking this silhouette. 






And he returned again Aug 21....the Green Heron



This is hopeful thinking! Im glad to see some color coming to the landscape..

One of the Common Yellow Throats came out into the open  




Aug 21, Back at the Racetrack Pond, I found another Green Heron, he was really small so I assume a this years edition. 





The little Blue Heron continues to hang around even tho the pond is slowly drying up...I hope recent rains will help...




The Green Heron was having luck finding food I saw him come up with several wiggly things...mostly what this pond has in it is this:



Lots of small peepers! They scampered from the edge as I walked along making little bloopppp sounds as they hit the water.

So the cool thing is this...The Racetrack has been the number one Hotspot in our county. (per ebird) There are only about 10 birders, actually only 2 of us record active weekly counts, since one fellow moved away.  So I have moved my Hotspot, Goodale State Park, to within 3 birds of being tied with the Hotspot for species count for the current yr...it was 4th in past yrs.  So that's really cool.  I honestly believe I can take it to number 1. 


Red Eyed Vireo (taken with my old camera) at my hotspot Aug 23.



AND...
I decided not to keep the camera I just purchased, its on the way back...I decided I wanted better results and realized it was not coming... once I get refunded for that I will be looking again! I have my eye on a couple possibilities.


8/24 ...on the way to the post office this morning, and a Barred Owl (#118) glided across the road in front of my van...In the Radius! I stopped he had landed but he was in deep cover when I got out of the van and tried to relocate him he flew into even deeper cover, I've been finding feathers so I know one is active here. Then I stopped at my hotspot and finally; I've been waiting for these guys to arrive..




#119 the Wood Stork, 2 in total.   So this was a good day for me birdwise. 


SO that's a wrap up for my week.  Hope yours was a good one!

In honor of Judy a birding blogger who recently passed...

THE END:


the south end of the red eyed vireo

                                                                

                                                                         PEACE