Today my dad and I woke up early and went to Commons Ford to look for birds. When we arrived, it was 7:30, so the birds were active and energetic. Immediately we saw a ruby-throated hummingbird and a singing summer tanager in a tree. We kept walking around the main ranch area of Commons Ford, seeing more hummingbirds, tanagers, woodpeckers and lots of eastern bluebirds. We walked to a trail, and at the entrance, we started hearing a loud bird call. Merlin told us it was a white-eyed vireo, so I looked around the bush the call was coming from until it emerged for a few seconds, long enough for me to get some pictures of this new lifer. After it flew away, we walked down the trail for a minute, then turned back to go down a larger, better trail.

As we walked down the trail, my dad turned off on a short trail to a blind with a birdbath, and I kept walking a bit. I stopped once I reached a group of birders looking at a Couch's kingbird. I waited around with the group a while, looking at all the swifts that were flying around us. Then I turned to go find my dad, who was still at the bird blind. We watched a female painted bunting drink from the birdbath, then walked back onto the trail.

We kept walking for a long time and didn't see anything until we came to the end of the trail, which let out into a field with a river next to it. I saw some wood ducks on the other side of the river, but not anything else, so we walked to a bench under a tree and sat there. After a few minutes, I was looking at a pewee when a yellow-colored bird caught my eye in the tree above me. I zoomed in and got some pictures as it hopped around the tree. It started singing, so my dad used Merlin, which told us it was a yellow-throated vireo. After it left, we walked back to the ranch and our car on a different path. Once we got there, I looked around for a few more hummingbirds until I was satisfied, and then we left.

Posted on September 5, 2021 02:07 AM by ellington