Pine Warbler

Purple Finch (female) 

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Caddo Lake SP—January 1, 2018—D Day.  Well the day finally arrived to kick off our Texas Big Year.  Deb set the alarm on her phone to wake us at 5 AM to head for our first day.  As I sat drinking my first cup of coffee I glanced at the clock on the wall and it said 4:20.  What? 4:20!  Well come to find out Deb’s  phone had not changed back to CST after our trip to Georgia so we now had plenty of time to get ready and head to Carthage to meet our host for the Tenaha CBC, Betty Gullette and Peggy Harding.  We took a moment to stop at Walmart to use their rest room facilities before heading on to Betty’s.  There we saw the first bird for our Big Year list.  No it wasn’t a grackle (I call them Walmart birds).  Instead our first bird was a House Sparrow.  Wow! Glad to get that one out of the way.  We arrived at Betty’s about 7 and soon we were loading up her car with our gear for the day.  We started on the west end of Lake Marvaul by around 7:30.   Deb and I got out of the car on the long bridge that spans the lake here and crossed the metal barrier where we proceed to walk along side the lake looking at birds in the brush and trees that line the road.  Some of the birds seen along this area included Pine Warbler and Purple Finch (pictures included) before heading on to scour the back roads and neighborhoods.  While walking along the lake we noticed a group of ducks but they were a long way off.  So Deb went for the scope so we could try to identify them.  After getting all set up I scoped the line of ducks.  I noticed immediately that they were decoys.  What a let down.  The only ducks we found this day were a large number of Ruddy’s and two Canvasbacks.    Some of the better birds we encountered included Golden-crowned Kinglet, Brown Creeper & Thrasher, Red-headed, Downy, Red-bellied & Piliated Woodpecker, Bald Eagle  and surprisingly a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (the only one found on the entire count).  Later we finally found a couple of hawks, Red-shouldered and Red-tailed but we could not find American Robins until the end of the day.  We did have a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Northern Flicker by day’s end as well.  In all we tallied 50 species, not bad for a count that has only 90 species so far reported.  Thanks to our host Betty and Peggy for a great day and a great start for our Big Year.  Tomorrow we are heading for the reported Fork-tailed Flycatcher with an old friend Bob Metzler.  As a side note the Fork-tailed Flycatcher was my 700^th ABA species found near Austin a few years ago.