White Lake CBC, 12/27/2012

Gary Broussard, my brother John, and I did a section of the White Lake Christmas Bird Count yesterday.  It was a great day, especially compared to the cold, windy weather of the day before.  Our area had a good mix of woods and fields alongside marsh, so we had a good mix of species.

The best bird of the day happened in the morning.  John called out, "Stork!" and both his words and the bird went over my head.  Stork?  Huh? Oh, stork.  I looked up and saw a Wood Stork flying over, put the binos on it, then grabbed my camera...which wasn't set...as the bird passed behind the trees and disappeared.  We all got looks at it, but no photos.  I don't recall ever having seen one in winter, much less on a CBC.  Good bird.

Otherwise, action was pretty steady on all fronts.  There weren't many species of sparrow, but there were tons of what sparrows there were.  Hundreds of Savannahs, flock after flock of White-crowned and White-throated, Swamps all over, and lot of Songs.  Mixed in we also had 2 Clay-colored Sparrows, always a fun find, especially this fall and winter as they've been scarce.

In a nice patch of oaks, we also had an out of season American Redstart.

We ended up with 105 species for the day.  A good day to be afield.