February 24 -- A Bird Count At Overton Wildlife Management Area...

I met my new "birder" friend, Norm Parrish from Alberta, Canada, at the Overton wildlife area parking lot at 7:30am for a day counting the number of bird species we see, driving the dirt roads in my 4-wheel-drive Toyota Tundra. The first place we headed to were the "ponds" (really small lakes) in the southern section, where large numbers of ducks congregate to seemingly escape the more publicly-accessible areas to the north. I took my 7D/500 f4 + 1.4x TC off the BushHawk shoulder mount so I could shoot from the driver's side window, using a Molar Bean Bag resting on the window frame to support and stabilize the camera rig. The 500 f4 and TC also act as a "telescope" that has a farther reach than out binoculars, so if there is a bird way out there that we can't quite make out, I'd take a photo, then view it on the 7D's LCD screen and enlarge it if need be to ID the bird. We followed that procedure with this duck, which from where we were looked like a brown blob, but after taking the photo we ID'd it as a female Lesser Scaup --

We next went to the road along which I'd seen the sub-adult male Vermilion Flycatcher, but we were "skunked" on that one -- and didn't see him again when we returned for a second try in the afternoon. So we headed north, and saw a Greater Roadrunner up on a branch looking very photogenic, but as happens with many birds I got the shot just as he was taking off --

Looking at the "whitewash,", that's one well-used perch! We checked out the large cottonwood trees along the wildlife area's edge for the nesting Red-tailed Hawks, and found this dark morph having an early lunch --

We stopped at Honeybee Pond at the north end of the wildlife area, and saw a Grebe that we couldn't quite call, it was either a Horned or Eared but Eared is much more common in this area. But once I took the photo with the 500mm lens we realized we had a Horned Grebe in winter plumage, and the range maps in our bird guide showed that it is found in winters in Nevada only in the extreme   southern end of the state. A nice catch! --

 The sparrows seen most this time of the year here are either White-crowned or Savannah, the latter of which can be a challenge to identify (if by myself I usually ID them as "little brown sparrows"), but Norm said this is a Savannah --

And another challenging bird for me to identify are swallows, especially when they're doing their airborne zooming. If you can find the tree where they take a break for a few minutes before zooming off again, it's easier to study their markings and color. We finally came to the conclusion that the majority of the swallows we've been seeing lately are Northern Rough-winged; here's a good shot of one at rest --

We ended the count at around 3:30pm and went to the Overton MacDonald's to combine our data and come up with a final tally. It was 60 bird species -- pretty darned good for winter! I told Norm that rain was forecast here for this coming Friday and Saturday, so we should think about going back to the wildlife area on Sunday as the storm might blow some "good" birds in. And that's exactly what we'll do...I think I can really get into this "retirement mode"!