Words about Birds: Field Birding (11/14/2010)

This morning Nate Fronk and I birded some fields near Colyer Lake along Williams and Tusseyville Rd. We started at Colyer Lake, but struck out in the way of waterfowl except for 4 Pied-billed Grebes. We were lucky enough to hear a Great-horned Owl hooting for roughly a half hour before dawn. We then headed to Tusseyville Rd. to check for larks, longspurs, buntings, and raptors, but we struck out there also. We did find some field birds on Williams Rd. near a farm. In one field, we heard one maybe two Horned Larks, but were observing a Red-tailed Hawk perched on a round hay bail mantling it's capture from another red-tail and a flock of crows. We had a flock of 6 or 7 Horned Larks mixed in with about 95 Killdeer. This was a massive flock of Killdeer, the largest I have ever seen. We stopped further down the road and checked out some shrubby habitat for sparrows and found an American Tree Sparrow and a Field Sparrow along with a nice male House Finch and Northern Mockingbird. Below are a few photos of the House Finch and Northern Mockingbird. A pond near rt. 322 off of Neff Rd. produced a Mute Swan and 2 Lesser Scaup. I managed to get a photo of the Mute Swan.