Cheney on Sunday

On Easter Sunday, Joseph, Anthony, and I went to Cheney for a couple of hours in the afternoon.  We went to the dam right away and right as we got to the top we saw several Horned Grebes.

Horned Grebes are gorgeous in their breeding plumage!

We moves on along the dam a couple of hundred feet, when Anthony exclaimed that he found a Loon.  Any loon is good, but when we got scope views we were all thinking we had a Pacific.  This was confirmed when we got home and looked at our pics.  A lifer all around!

Pacific Loon

Unfortunately, it was far enough out that we couldn't get any good pics.

There were many Bonaparte's Gulls and one Eared Grebe as well, along with the other more common birds.

This Bonaparte's was just getting his breeding plumage black hood.

We continued along the dam seeing several year butterflies such as Common Sootywing and Painted Lady.  Joseph also got some pics of one of the Olympia Marbles that were cruising the south side of the dam, in the sun and out of the wind.

Olympia Marble: pic by Joseph

We decided to hit some other points in the state park on the way back.  It was a good thing we did.  When we got out to scope some scaup, Joseph mentioned that he had a Red-breasted Merg, I looked up and saw a obvious Horned Grebe, we debated heatedly about this for a bit, both thinking the other crazy.  Eventually we realized we were looking at different birds, so I guess we were both right and are still friends for now.

Since the Merg was to far away to get pics, I will just put in this coot pic:)

While driving back around the lake we spotted a Bald Eagle nest, a quadcopter, and a friendly man out enjoying the beautiful day with his sons.

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Fish Crow

I visited the sandpit on Monday and found that the Fish Crows are back at the Hoskinson's Sandpit, along with my FOS Franklin's Gulls and a flyover Osprey!



Andrew

Cheney Comes Through!

Early on the morning of the 14th, Joseph, Anthony, Bryant and I loaded up and headed out toward Cheney.  We went straight to Yoder Point, hoping to be there when the gulls headed out from the lake.  After some brief scanning of the usual gulls and waterfowl, Anthony noticed some large wading birds.   Upon closer examination with the scope, we could tell they were Whooping Cranes!  Neither Bryant or I had seen them in Reno before and they were also year birds for everybody!

That is what Whooping Cranes look like from 1 mile away.

We stayed there for about 45 minutes and had several nice flocks of Bonaparte's Gulls, year birds for Joseph.

From there we worked our way down to the dam, stopping at several points along the way.  We did not see much, but when we got on top of the dam we saw a vast swath of waterfowl far out on the lake.

That dark out there is all ducks!  This was only part of the flock.

We got as close as we could and started scoping.  The majority of them were Mallards, Redhead, and Scaup, but there were also good numbers of many other species.  When my turn at the scope came, I noticed two large Grebes in with the ducks.  They were Western/Clark's types, but before we could look closely at them a boat came and scared all the birds further out.   We managed to refind one of the Grebes, and after extensive viewing we were pretty sure it was a Clark's.  Unfortunately, separating the two is very challenging and we couldn't ever tell for sure.

This is the distance we were dealing with on the Grebes.

While we keeping an eye on the Grebe, I took a quick binocular scan around and almost immediately saw a Black Scoter!  A lifer for everybody!  It was swimming closer to us, but the the same boat that scared the other birds came by and scared it off.  I was pretty annoyed.

Black Scoter

Black Scoter: picture by Bryant.

We stayed and watched the Grebes for a while, hoping they would come closer.  Unfortunately, the occasional boat kept them a long way off.  As we were walking back to the vehicle, Anthony and Joseph noticed a swallow.  Any swallow is exceptional at this time of year, but the most expected would be a Tree Swallow.  It turns out that this was a Barn Swallow, about the third latest it has ever been seen in Kansas!

As we headed out we stopped at a couple more points and found a Winter Wren, a year bird for Bryant!

It felt good to have another really good day of birding since, none of us have had a good one for a while!

Since all the other pics in this post were terrible, I will throw this one to hopefully counteract that:)

Andrew

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