Waiting, waiting, waiting for migration

Like any other birder worth his binoculars, I must plead guilty to impatiently waiting for spring migration.  It doesn’t matter that in the fall we will do the same thing; wait for fall migration.  It is a habit with us that seemingly can’t be sated.

Anyway, as I sit here on a cold afternoon, the wind is howling outside.  The temperature outside is only around 40, but the wind chill is around 25.  Normally that wouldn’t keep me in, but I needed to catch up on my blogging.  So here I am.

I admitted above that I was waiting, but truthfully, I am always on the lookout for the birds that may arrive early.  I really haven’t observed many of those, but since my last post, there were a few surprises.  Such as this slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco.  They usually arrive here around mid-April and we saw five of them a couple of days ago on February 24th.

Dark-eyed Junco

Those were on the ground at Spring Creek Park, here in San Angelo.  Also while were driving through the park, we came up on this beautiful Carolina Wren.  It is probably one of my favorite of the wrens.  This maybe one of favorite photos of one, too;

Carolina Wren

Across the water was this Great Blue Heron.  He was about 200 yards away, and I wasn’t sure if I could get a great enough image to make it worthwhile.  But my great camera and lens came through for me.

Great Blue Heron

We saw a plethora of female Red-winged Blackbirds and I usually am not enthralled with photographing them, but once in a while one will stand out and make a nice photograph, such as this one.

Red-winged Blackbird

We drove by the beach near the lake to check things out.  There were about 200 Ring-billed Gulls.  I always like to look closely to see if one of them is a different gull specie.  We did a double-take, when there in the middle of them, was a Snowy Egret.

Snowy Egret

As we watched, it decided to take flight.

Snowy Egret

The following day, we decided to again make a trip to San Angelo State Park.  Out there we saw a Red-tailed Hawk and a few smaller birds.

Red-tailed Hawk

Vesper Sparrow

While were at the state park, I decided to check out the bird blind at the wildlife viewing center.  I was much impressed.  You might remember that I wrote in a previous post how bad the condition was.  This time it really looked nice, neatly mowed and the bird feeders were full.  The bad news was that for some reason or other, perhaps a change in the weather, there were only some White-crowned Sparrows, House Finches, a couple of Northern Cardinals and a lone Ladder-backed Woodpecker.

But what the heck, bird migration will start soon. 🙂

Until the next time, HAPPY BIRDING!!!