Quivira on 4-30-15

Bryant, Anthony, and I decided to go to Quivira today for a day of birding. We got there at about 6:30 and went straight to the Big Salt Marsh to listen for Rails. Yellow Warblers and Common Yellowthroats were singing loudly all the while and we even heard a couple American Bitterns doing their unique call.

After a little bit we met up with Barry Jones, the Public Relations person for Quivira, and birded together for two hours.  We made one pass around the Wildlife Drive and saw the following: 6 Dunlin, 2 Sanderling, 3 Black-crowned Night Herons, 2 Bonaparte's Gulls, 15 Hudsonian Godwits, and about 15 Forster's Terns.  Barry then had to go, so we walked up to scope some shorebirds on the flats north of NE 170th street.   People had been seeing a lot of Piping Plovers in the past week, so we thought we had a good chance of seeing one too.  I started to scope the flats with Anthony's spotting scope, but didn't see anything of interest, and we were just about to leave when Anthony said," I think I have a Piping Plover!" Sure enough, I had missed it with a spotting scope, and he found it with binoculars. Sharp eyes!

Sanderling: photo by Bryant

    

Snowy Plover: photo by Bryant

Piping Plover: photo by Bryant

Black-bellied Plover: photo by Bryant

We then proceded to go around the Wildlife Drive a second time a little more slowly, and were surprised to find a breeding plumage Black-bellied Plover and lots of Willets among the many shorebirds.  We were just finishing the second loop and getting very hungry (lunch time!) when I saw a large buffy shorebird with a VERY long bill sitting right across the ditch twenty feet away!  "Long-billed Curlew!" I yelled.  It just sat there as we backed into position and got great pictures.

Long-billed Curlew: photo by Andrew

We decided to recover from the excitement by eating lunch and parked in a nice shady spot beside the road to eat.  During our repast, I happened to glance up and saw a small hawk flying straight north at a fairly brisk pace.  I put my Binoculars on it a was shocked to see that it was a Broad-winged Hawk!  Anthony looked up and saw it, but Bryant could not find it.  Bummer!

We finished eating and went to bird some of the woodlots.  There weren't many interesting birds to be seen there, except a Ruby-throated Hummingbird that only Bryant saw.  We  had seen about 110 bird species by then and so we thought that it would be to fun to see if we could hit 130 in a day, which would be good for April.  We kept working our way down to the Little Salt Marsh, picking up birds as we went.  By the time we got to the Refuge Headquarters, we had a combined 120 species.  We were now really thinking we could get 130 species, so we went out of the way on the way home to pick up some birds we had missed at Quivira. By the time it got dark, I had seen 134 species. What a day!

This Killdeer gave us great looks and picture opportunities as it tried to lure us away from its nest: photo by Andrew

Killdeer: photo by Bryant

Andrew