The Start of a New Year

    The first day of the year involved pretty much all traveling. 869 miles to be exact! I started in Kettering, OH in the morning where Dan and Shawn came and picked me up at. That night I was staying in a hotel in Hammond, Louisiana. My first time ever being in LA (and also Mississippi but we only drove through that state). Ended up with 24 birds for day 1 which isn't bad considering pretty much the whole day was spent on a highway. (I did manage to rack up all of 16 birds in Ohio before I left). It is day 2 that was much more interesting.

    Jan. 2nd: Dan, Shawn and I got an early start, after not much sleep, and started to head West towards Texas. The night before, Dan and I had discussed some plans in the car (Shawn was sleeping) and we decided to try out Cameron Prairie NWR where a Eurasian Wigeon was being seen (don't worry, Shawn agreed to the plan when he woke up). We did however make a first stop at a gas station with a little pond that proved to be quite magical! Every few seconds we were finding a different bird and a new species for the year. That 15 min stop yielded close to 40 species including 2 lifers for me!! (Mottled Duck and Crested Caracara). Then we stopped at Lacassine NWR for about 2.5 hours. This spot was like a drive around auto tour and it also produced some really good birds for us like Anhigna (a lifer) and Merlin. After we finally got out of there, we arrived at Cameron and this place was pretty amazing. Another auto tour type thing, this one a smaller loop with water and shrubs on either side. The amount of birds present, especially ibis and herons and even raptors, were unreal! We could get so close to some of these birds without ever leaving the car. I've never seen anything like it and I had fantastic looks at all sorts of great species including, Eurasian Wigeon, Roseate Spoonbill, White and White-Faced Ibis, many duck species, and 2 of my favorites, Black-Necked Stilt and Tricolored Heron! We went to the nature center area after the auto tour loop and found a Cinnamon Teal (rare for this area) and we relocated the dark morph Ferruginous Hawk that has been hanging around for a few days now (another rarity for LA). We were on fire today! On the way to Texas in the evening, we picked up a few more year birds including a lifer for me, a gorgeous White-Tailed Kite!

     Today was unbelievable and I haven't even seen a single bird in Texas yet!! We ended the day notching 95 species (I think) which brings me to 103 on the year so far. A list can be found on the right hand side of the blog. I'm going to try my best to document as many species as I can with either video or recording or picture, and upload them to an album on my flickr page. Right now I'm a bit too tired to start the album but I will post a link when I do. Here are a few shots from today that I took and actually had the energy to look through. Shawn Collins has a lot more pics posted already from today (see link below and go check it out). I got to get to bed, another big day ahead of me tomorrow! Oh and we traveled another 309 miles today! Total mileage for the trip = 1178.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pghdjshawn

Dark Morph Ferruginous Hawk

Tricolored Heron, stunning!

Hungry Gator!

A lovely White Ibis

My lifer Anhinga