How many Virginia Rails can fit in an acre of wetlands!?

After birding Ashurst Lake (see my previous post) we drove over to the Lower Lake Mary area. I didn't have the highest hopes for bird life here, but was hoping for something good anyway! We paid our entrance fee and were off birding around the small river like marsh. There were a bunch of sedges on the opposite side of the lake that we were on. As Mr. Ford, Alexia, and I sat down we noticed a juvenile Virginia Rail (wow!) there have not been any reports of VIRA's ever being at the lake so I was pumped! The bird stayed out in the open for a while but was pretty distant, however I was able to capture at least one okay photo.

While watching the young rail another juvenile came out. Here are photos of both birds.

You can see the body of the new bird on the left and the first bird is on the right.
We have two Virginia Rails! As we watched the two birds walking along the reed line we saw a third bird, only this was an adult!!!

I was amazed, three VIRA's within 40 feet of wetlands. Once we watched the birds for a time we walked further up along the waters edge. Stopping when we saw a Spotted Sandpiper fly into a muddy area along the bank .Watching the bird we noticed that there were two more VIRA's near the sandpiper. They were not the same birds from before because the birds were walking the opposite direction than when we had left them. Here is a bad photo but a photo indeed.

These birds also have a lot more baring on the sides then the others.
We were now at five birds, and only about half way through the wetlands! As we neared the end we had two more juveniles, but I was only able to photograph one of them.

Before realizing it we were at the end of the wetlands and had seen eight Virginia Rails, I was stoked!  While celebrating I saw a black dot on the other side of the pond.

This is what the bird looked like through my binocs. It did not take much time for me to call it a fledgeling VIRA! I knew that there should be one or two parents around and maybe some more fledgelings. While I was watching the birds Alexia said "I think I see four fledgelings!!!" but Mr. Ford and I did not see them so we walked closer. That's when we saw the adult and eventually a few fledgelings.

 It was not until I cropped my photos a bunch that I noticed Alexia was right, there were four fledgelings!!!  The day ended with twelve Virginia Rails at Lower Lake Mary, a pretty good count for a place that has never reported them before!!!

Birding at the awesome Ashurst Lake

In the Flagstaff area there are many lakes. Mormon Lake (water seasonally) and Lake Mary being the largest of them, are the most visited.   Smaller ones like Marshall Lake, Vail Lake, Ashurst Lake, Indian Lake, Ducksnest Lake, Kinnikinick Lake, Morton Lake, Rajkoo Lake, Long Lake, Soldier Annex Lake, Tremain Lake, and Stoneman Lake. Many of these are waterless. I have only been able to visit three of these smaller lakes,  my favorite of them would hands down be Ashurst Lake. It has the perfect mixed habitat for waterbirds, raptors, and songbirds! On my most recent visit with Mr. Joe Ford and Alexia Grace I was able to get a total of 44 species which was pretty good considering the time we spent there.  Before we even got to where we could see the lake I spotted my target bird, the Mountain Bluebird! On my last trip to this lake I saw a few MOBL's but they kept there distance and didn't allow me to get any awesome photos, but I was hoping that would change today! Once I showed Mr. Ford and Alexia the birds I set out to crush these beautiful photo-shy monsters. As usual right when I saw the birds they would fly to a further perch, but I eventually had a female sit still for at least one photo.
                                                                     Mountain Bluebird

                                                                 Booya year bird 251!!!
I then set out to try to photograph a male but there were only about three males in this flock, I still managed to get a couple of diagnostic photos of one.
                                                                     Mountain Bluebird

We then drove down to the lake, parked at one of the camp sites, and ate our lunch. This is a photo that Alexia took of Ashurst Lake.

 Thanks for letting me use this photo Alexia!
 While we were eating our food, Mr. Ford saw a gull looking bird flying over the lake but once it started towards us and I got my binocs on I found it was a Forster's Tern! This is only the second FOTE I have seen, with my other sighting being earlier in the year at the Glendale Recharge Ponds. The bird flew over the area a few times before landing on a dead tree in the water.
                                                                  Forster's Tern

 There was also an amazing Osprey that caught a fish on the lake.
                                                                          Osprey

  This American Crow along with a few others kept a close eye on us just in case we dropped any food.
                                                                      American Crow

Once we were done eating we birded along the shore, and while we were scanning the lake little did we know that a Lewis's Woodpecker was watching us from behind. Unfortunately the bird had the sun behind it.
                                                                   Lewis's Woodpecker

 Booya year bird 252!!!
After birding the lake we started looking for some songbirds. Mr. Ford had Hermit, Yellow and Virginia's Warblers all in one juniper! There were also Black-throated Gray Warblers in the area.
                                                        Black-throated Gray Warbler

                                                                 Virginia's Warbler

We had a nice morning at Ashurst Lake and we still had to bird the Lower Lake Mary spot which stunned all of us with a very high count on a very secretive bird, but that will wait until my next post.

Birding the Glendale Recharge Ponds (The quest for 250)

On August 5th I took a trip to the Glendale Recharge Ponds with my friends Mr. Joe Ford and Mr. Paul Doucett. My main goal was to find at least one year bird, to finally reach 250, which was my year list last year. When we first arrived we found many Lazuli Buntings in the reeds, we waited a bit to see if the buntings would come closer but they didn't. We then parked at the east parking lot and a young male Costa's Hummingbird greeted us with his bright colors.
                                                              Costa's Hummingbird

We then headed to the ponds and started scanning. The first shorebird we saw (after the Killdeer) was the Long-billed Dowitcher which were now in their beautiful breeding plumage or at least most of them were. You can see the non-breeding bird in the back.
                                                              Long-billed Dowitcher

Along with the dowitchers were a couple of Least Sandpipers.
                                                                       Least Sandpiper

There were also a couple of very entertaining Wilson's Phalaropes swimming around.
                                                              Wilson's Phalarope

As we scanned the ponds I quickly found my FOY Baird's Sandpiper feeding with the peeps. This photo that I am going to show you might not be the best photo but this is my 250th bird for this year, it's time to celebrate!!!!!!
                                                                       Baird's Sandpiper
 
 It was a great relief to finally get 250.  Yes, I knew I was going to beat it sooner or later but the sooner the better. Now every year bird after this bird is just icing-on-the-cake as they say! I spent quite a bit more time observing my 250th bird, but I knew that I must press on and hopefully find another year bird. One of my target birds was the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher X Western Kingbird hybrid, but I came up empty handed. I looked through every kingbird looking for him, without luck here are a few of the birds I came up with while I was on the chase.
                                                               Western Kingbird

                                                        Ash-throated Flycatcher

                                                    Black-tailed Gnatcatcher

                                                        Black-chinned Hummingbird

                                                                      Osprey

We spent a total of four and a half hours birding the ponds, with a total of about 60 species of bird! A new record for Mr. Paul, and I got my 250, we were all happy!
Here are a few Canada Geese to close out this post.
                                                                      Canada Geese

A short post from up north

From July 31st-August 2nd my family and I took our second trip this year up to the Happy Jack Lodge Camp Ground. I must apologize, this will be a short post because I only had one full day.  As I was looking for reptiles just as much as birds, although I still had my camera with me. When we first arrived I set out to try to get at least one decent shot of the common but hard to approach Steller's Jay. This is one of the many birds that sparked my birding career. It took me quite a while to finally photograph one of these jays, but after trying hard I came back with a couple of decent shots.
                                                                 Steller's Jay

  

I know they aren't the best photos but considering the behavior of the Steller's Jay these are my best so far.  I also encountered one of the weirdest things, as I was trying to photograph a flock of Pygmy Nuthatches I pointed my camera to take a photo of one of the birds at fairly close range and the bird must have seen its reflection in my lense because the young nuthatch flew very close to me and after a second of hovering it flew to a tree, and I got some pretty good photos of that bird.
                                                               Pygmy Nuthatch

This bird looks like it is a juvenile because if you look at the beak it has a bit of yellow which shows that it was just a fledgeling not too long ago. After my first day, I spent the other two days looking for reptiles like gartersnakes, many-lined skinks, and alligator lizards. I found the gartersnakes and alligator lizards but no skinks surprisingly. Here is a photo of one of about eight of the gartersnakes I found.

While I was looking for the reptiles I decided to take one more birding hike through the forest before heading back down to the Valley. I did not see much except for what I first thought was just another tree-top living Grace's Warbler, until I put my binocs on the bird and found it was a Hermit Warbler. It was a pretty nice find for the day, and after watching the bird for a while it even came down from the canopy of pines and allowed me a couple of photos.
                                                                    Hermit Warbler

The last time I thought I photographed a Hermit Warbler was down in Southeast, AZ when I found a Hermit Warbler looking bird, but after I looked at the photos it ended up being a Hermit X Townsend's Warbler.
This is still only the beginning of my summer camping trips and this is also only the beginning of the awesome birds I will find! I hope you enjoyed my post and thanks for reading!