E-Z Birding - Tuesday, August 11th, 2015

Threatening skies and thunderstorms on the way affected our itinerary for today's walk. Leaving our scopes behind, we walked down onto the beach for closer views of an array of terns and gulls on the beach including adult and juvenile Royal Terns, two Ring-billed Gulls, and a very spiffy adult Lesser Black-backed Gull at close range. Since we were there, we carried on down the beach for close looks at Black Skimmer and Least Terns which were somewhat difficult to pick-out amongst a very large gang of resident Canada Geese on the upper beach. The rest of the walk, we surveyed the plover ponds, the last trail's boardwalk, and finally Bunker Pond before a driving rain sent us back to the parking lot. This produced good looks at a number of shorebirds and the recently arrived Black Swan, a non-native from Australia, amongst the all-too-common non-native Mute Swans on Bunker Pond. Leaders: Catherine Busch, Chris Marks, and Steve Weis.

29 species

Canada Goose  100

Mute Swan  32

Black Swan  1     presumed escapee - possibly the bird that was seen at Forsythe?

Mallard  26

Great Blue Heron  1

Great Egret  2

Little Blue Heron  1     immature

Killdeer  2

Spotted Sandpiper  1

Greater Yellowlegs  2

Lesser Yellowlegs  4

Sanderling  8

Least Sandpiper  6

Short-billed Dowitcher  6

Laughing Gull  X

Ring-billed Gull  2

Herring Gull (American)  4

Lesser Black-backed Gull  1

Great Black-backed Gull  20

Least Tern  40

Common Tern  10

Forster's Tern  4

Royal Tern  9

Black Skimmer  4

Purple Martin  8

Tree Swallow  2

Barn Swallow  6

Carolina Wren  1

Red-winged Blackbird  4

View this checklist online at http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S24586503