Nalle Bunny Run 2018-10-20

Only three people joined me on the monthly group walk on Hill Country Conservancy's Nalle Bunny Run Wildlife Preserve last Sunday morning. After two weeks of rain and overcast skies, we were thrilled to experience a dry cool breezy morning during which the sun just barely came out a couple times! The birds were a bit slow, but two of the birds we saw were extremely cooperative. The first was the Eastern Phoebe on the trail to the spring. After struggling to see it through a couple layers of juniper trees, it flew down and hunted insects about 15 feet in front of us for a few minutes:

The second was a newly returned American Kestrel, perched a the top of a dying cottonwood near the houses. It was there all morning, and we got to watch it make a few flights out to catch dragonflies.

In the same tree, we were treated to a group of 5 Eastern Bluebirds who nervously shared perching space with the kestrel. Eastern Bluebirds are a resident central Texas species, but I have very few records of them on the Bunny Run, and this was the first group that got to see them here. Here are three of them:

The preserve was as wet as I've ever seen it, and hiking through the sandy prairie area there was one spot where we just couldn't keep our feet dry. The spring was overflowing and the downhill pools were as pretty as I've ever seen them:

Some other highlights of the morning were some beautiful coyote tracks the sand, Texas Leafcutter Ant trails, a distant group of migrating gulls, and finding a deer antler! See the attached observations, and a few more photos on Flicker here.

Here's our complete eBird list.

由使用者 mikaelb 在 2018年10月23日 00:21 所貼文