Carden & area Birds - may 25th Posted on May 25, 2011 at 12:52:19 PM by Norm Murr
Good morning.
Yesterday (May 25th) Ian Cannell, Jay Peterson and I birded the Carden Alvar area and despite the cool, cloudy day we came up with 103 + 1 species of birds.
All roads that we travelled were passable but some have many pot holes. Alvar Rd east of Wylie Rd (at the small marsh & stream crossing) has several huge puddles (relatively solid bottoms) on it and if you are a nervous or very careful driver you may want to turn back at these puddles. We went through with one puddle (the western one) being fairly deep.
The Prairie Smoke is showing well as are many other flowers but with warmer weather the flower show should get much better.
Following are some of the birds we found.
Common Loon, American Bitterns, Wood Ducks, Blue-winged Teal, 6 Hooded Mergansers, 7 Osprey, Merlin, Wild Turkey, Virginia Rails, Soras, Upland Sandpipers, Wilson’s Snipes, 17 American Woodcock, 4 Black-billed Cuckoos, 13 Whip-poor-Wills, Pileated Woodpecker, Alder Flycatchers, Common Ravens, Sedge Wrens, Marsh Wrens, Eastern Bluebirds, 8 Loggerhead Shrikes, 17 + 1 Warbler species including 1 male Blue-winged warbler (Shrike Rd south of McNamee Rd at the hydro towers), 4 Golden-winged Warblers, 1 hybrid Brewster’s Warbler, Pine Warbler,Blackpoll Warblers, cape may Warblers, 8 Northern Waterthrush, and Wilson’s Warbler, 10 Sparrow species including 8 Clay-colored Sparrows, Vesper Sparrow, and 19 Grasshopper Sparrows.
I also had a kind of close encounter with a Bear and we spotted a second Bear later in the day.