Birding South Llano River State Park

Wanting to do some birding at a different venue for a change, Ann and I, along with Carl Williams, our neighbor, headed south to Junction, Texas and the South Llano River State Park.  About ninety miles from here, it took about an hour and a half to get there.  The weather was beautiful for us.  Mild temps and high thin overcast to diffuse the sun, and prevent those nasty harsh, contrasty shadows that us photographers dislike.

We knew that we would see some birds that we don’t usually see here in at the areas we frequent.  We were not disappointed.  SLRSP has four different walk-in bird blinds.  They are small buildings, with windows, and will seat up to a dozen people.  We checked out all four, and although a park host told us that there were few birds, we saw thirty one species.  All in a time frame of just over three hours.

I left my big 500mm lens home, opting to use exclusively my new Tamron 150-600mm lens.  Again, I was impressed.  I set the camera to Aperture Priority, using an opening of f7.1, and auto everything else.  My Canon EOS 70D performed it’s job as advertised.  I had nearly no bad exposures at all.  Also, I took most of my images with the lens extended to the 600mm maximum.  Here are some my efforts.  All images have been edited and cropped for composition

Western Scrub Jay

Spotted Towhee

Black-throated Sparrow

Western Bluebird

Field Sparrow

Lincoln’s Sparrow

American Robin

Pine Siskin

Hermit Thrush

Northern Cardinal

Enjoy the images and click on any of them to see enlargements.

Update to my Big Year list.  Total now 109.

#97.   Cedar Waxwing

#98.   Vesper Sparrow

#100.  Black-throated Sparrow

#101.  Song Sparrow

#102.  Hermit Thrush

#103.  Western Scrub Jay

#104.  Carolina Chickadee

#105.  Fox Sparrow

#106.  Pine Siskin

#107.  Brown Thrasher

#108.  Field Sparrow

#109.  Lincoln’s Sparrow