Things were a bit slow today, with desperately slow woods in the morning. The shorebirding during the middle of the day saved us though, with the magical pool on Frenchtown Rd, on the Bolivar Peninsula, holding a Hudsonian Godwit lurking conspicuously among a pack of Short-billed Dowitchers, a red, red Red Knot fed along the edge, and a couple of dowdy male Wilson's Phalaropes dropped in and "hid" among the dowitchers too. A quick stop by the lighthouse saw us ogling 25 Fulvous Whistling-Ducks, and a large raptor along highway 87 near Crystal Beach had us applying the brakes with some urgency: White-tailed Hawk!
In Smith Oaks things were looking grim for a while before someone latched onto a Black-billed Cuckoo, and then right at the end of our walk in the woods, a male Cerulean Warbler seduced us, when he bent down and revealed his dreamy blue back to us all, to audible gasps all round! Lastly, a pair of Purple Gallinules (my first this season) distracted us from the egrets and spoonbills swapping sticks and displaying to one another at the Smith rookery.
The photos: Tennessee Warbler (bottom); Rose-breasted Grosbeak (top)
In Smith Oaks things were looking grim for a while before someone latched onto a Black-billed Cuckoo, and then right at the end of our walk in the woods, a male Cerulean Warbler seduced us, when he bent down and revealed his dreamy blue back to us all, to audible gasps all round! Lastly, a pair of Purple Gallinules (my first this season) distracted us from the egrets and spoonbills swapping sticks and displaying to one another at the Smith rookery.
The photos: Tennessee Warbler (bottom); Rose-breasted Grosbeak (top)
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