Group Walk Report September 20, 2014
Three folks participated in this months group walk. We enjoyed a relatively cool and overcast morning and ended up finding 27 species of birds. Here are some highlights. I was excited to find a few south-bound migrants including a brilliant male Black-throated Green Warbler that was part of a mixed-species foraging flock in the western part of the preserve. Another distinctive migrant was a Olive-Sided Flycatcher that was hunting flying insects from the very top of one of the cottonwoods by the houses. There were increased numbers of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers in the trees and we got brief looks at Yellow Warblers a Nashville Warbler, and a female or juvenile Indigo Bunting.
The only bird I photographed was this year-round resident male Ladder-backed Woodpecker that gave us great looks as it foraged on a dead tree:
We got a distant look at this Rock Squirrel, a species only found on the west side of Austin in rocky habitats:
And after the heavy rains earlier in the week we found a few mushrooms here and there, including these tiny yellow ones. If you look closely they have orange highlights!
Here is our complete bird list:
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/email?subID=S19885099
And here are the same photos as iNaturalist observations.