Friday, I spent a decent amount of time birding Yellow Creek SP and Margaret Higbee’s Yard in search of new year birds. I picked up six new year birds on Friday including Fish Crow, Northern Mockingbird, American Wigeon, Eastern Towhee, Carolina Wren, and Red-breasted Nuthatch.
I started my morning off by picking up a Fish Crow calling over the IUP campus as I was waiting for a meeting. After my meeting, I drove to Yellow Creek SP in hope that the lake was not completely frozen. Birding at Yellow Creek was slow and I managed to find only 11 species. Here, I picked up American Wigeon and Northern Mockingbird for the year. I did a double take on the mockingbird as it was in perfect shrike habitat. Maybe next time. Only part of the lake was open and it held two American Wigeon, 48 Canada Geese, and six waterfowl that I could not identify because of the backlighting and glare on the ice and water.
After Yellow Creek, I stopped by Margaret Higbee’s Yard to try for a wintering female Eastern Towhee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, and anything else that may have been around. Well, it took some searching, but we did find the Eastern Towhee and the Red-breasted Nuthatch made an appearance at the feeder station. My first of year Carolina Wren was also singing from the yard as we were birding. Margaret and I birded the yard for nearly two hours and found 17 species. Here are some photos from the feeder station:
female Red-bellied Woodpecker
White-breasted Nuthatch
Black-capped Chickadee
male House Finches
At the end of the day, I hit 48 species for the year. Make sure you check out Words about Birds on FACEBOOK!
