Cover photo: a comically bad, blurry capture of one of the coolest spectacles I’ll probably ever see!

I start this as a placeholder blog annually to keep track of bird sightings and dates, to summarize at the end of year!

• 4/6 – I dragged my non-birder beau up the Hillview Natural Trail (and through the paved trail) at Eisenhower Park (San Antonio, TX) to get a glimpse of my lifer golden-cheeked warbler!
• 5/17- Josh Gant found an incredible record of common swift at the Meadows, during the spring festival! What a crowd-pleaser, to say the least!
• 10/6 – white-tailed ptarmigan at Medicine Bow
• 10/30 – black and yellow rails…!!! One of our trip leaders said of rails in flight: “if you have to think, it’s a sora. If it’s a yellow rail, you know.” The first time I saw this is when I saw a yellow rail flush that night, and followed it with my spotlight.
  • 11/2 – While riding on an ATV behind a combine, we saw a yellow rail flush and fly back (our way) giving great looks in a decent length flight trajectory. It was then that I got the first “telltale in flight” looks during the day. The bird landed in the rice, and knowing generally where it was, we went to stand in the field nearby. Then, on another pass harvesting that section, the combine flushed the yellow rail almost directly 10 ft in front of me. It was unbelievable! I watched its somewhat startled flight and saw even better how white they are under the wing. Our trip leader’s words held true indeed!

…more to come…and to be fully fleshed out in a NYE post!