Fish Crows

Today I went to Hoskinson's Sandpit for the first time in a couple weeks.  When I was last there I had found three Fish Crows, but I could not get a good recording of their call.  This was a first Reno county record and I hoped they were still there.  When I got there one of the first things I saw was a Fish Crow.  There were two of them sitting on one of the machines used for pumping the sand out.  After a brief scan of the rest of the lake I went over there and got a recording of them before they flew off.  It is a bad recording as mine usually are, but you can just hear the birds! The only other good bird were my first of year Horned Grebe, Pied billed Grebe, Tree Swallow, and Northern Rough-winged Swallow.

You can't really distinguish between American and Fish Crow's from a picture, but this is a Fish because of the call. Photo by Andrew

Blackbirds!

A deafening flock of Red-winged Blackbirds has been hanging around these parts recently. I tried to capture some of the amazing spectacle with my camera.

The enormous brown rug you see draped across the road is the flock; intent on devouring everything in sight.

 

The creek banks were so crowded that some birds actually landed in the water to drink!

 

This massive flock of blackbirds attracted at least seven species of raptors, including this Red-tailed Hawk. I spotted no less than fifteen red-tails perched among the flock one evening!

It might seem like an easy lunch with this many birds around, but try following one bird in this mass of wings.

This must be why albino birds don't live very long. Their unique coloration makes them much easier to see and catch.

It is impossible to come up with a accurate estimate for the number of birds in a flock of this size, but there are certainly tens of thousands in this one.

Joseph

Cheney Lake

Today Bryant and I went to Cheney lake for several hours.  It was pretty calm which made the viewing for the ducks quite nice.  When we got to the dam, we started checking around the lake.  The whole lake was covered in ducks! Common Mergansers were the most common, but there was a nice variety of other diving ducks.  As we approached a group of several Ring-necked Ducks, Lesser Scaups, and Redheads, I saw one duck go flying away.  It had VERY distinct white wing patches and when it landed I saw that it had a white patch in front of its eye and another one right behind its eye.  It was a White-winged Scoter, a lifer for us!

White-winged Scoter: Photo by Bryant

Other birds of note included the following:  Field Sparrow, White throated Sparrow,  Lesser Black-backed Gull, and thousands of Common Mergansers. Undoubtedly though, the Scoter was the best bird of the day.

Andrew