December 5 -- A Bird Count With the 7D MK II at the Overton WMA

I've done bird counts before at the Overton Wildlife Management Area here in Overton, Nevada. I have an iPad Mini with the BirdsEye BirdLog app, so all I have to do is log in the number of bird species I see and the number per species, time, day and mileage I traveled, then hit "Submit" and it gets zipped off to eBird where it joins a national database. And I also use a digital voice recorder to record my sightings at the time, just in case I get "brain freeze" and forget what, and how many. It's the day after 3 days of "wet" -- I can't call it rain, as it was just mostly cloudy all the time -- and the clouds were weaving their magic in the sky and on the water --

This is Pintail Pond, my main focus for the day. It's the southernmost of the big ponds at the WMA. But when at the Nevada Dept of Wildlife headquarters the other day, a wildlife biologist said there were reports of Ridgway's Rails -- an "offshoot" of Yuma Rail -- in the area south of Pintail, so I took a look there for the first time. Tamarisk lined the "road", which opened up into a grassy area --- 

I'll make it a point to check this area more often -- though it was pretty empty at that time. Just after I parked my rental car at the parking lot north of Pintail Pond, I chatted with an NDOW employee, talking about the Canada Geese population (they go to spreading ponds at the silca plant across the road in the evening, along with the "protected" land of a Californian bordering the WMA) and the closing of the interior roads until February 17; it's partly to give the birds a "rest" from hunting. I'd met the employee last year, at Honeybee Pond, when he talked about "harvesting" waterfowl; now he referred to their getting "shot at", which I found interesting...A Say's Phoebe was singing its mournful tune as it perched on a duck blind sign -- 

Pintail Pond was gorgeous that morning, with the clouds and reflections -- 

There were 3 male Canvasbacks at the pond; heres one of them  -- 

And a raft of Eared Grebes had moved in; here are 2 from another pond north of Pintail --

Ducks were spooked by my mere presence so they were only giving me parting "butt shots" for the most part, but with the MK II and 500 f/4 lens I was able to make most of them out -- here's a group of Mallards -- 

A Flicker flyby, then a butt shot -- was it a Red-shafted or Yellow-shafted? Most likely a Red, and the photo taken by the MK II proves it -- 

I didn't make much of it at the time, but I observed about 7 American Avocet off by themselves at Pintail. About an hour later I took a photo of one of them "hanging" with the Ring-billed Gulls -- 

When I get back to Discovery, I find out that they're "rare" for this time of year, usually only seen in spring and summer, so in my eBird report I add this photo as proof that I did, indeed, see Avocet. As I mentioned earlier, it was a damp day, so the mud was literally glued to my hiking boots, and at one point I must've had 5 pounds of mud on each boot!  -- 

You can't see the boot for the mud.. ;o) On what remains of Wilson Pond, just west of Pintail, some more ducks take off so I rip off a 10fps burst, and see that they're -- 

Green-winged Teal!  Abert's Towhees are ubiquitous here, but they're hard to get a good photo of as they tend to be buried deep in the underbrush, but this one was out in the open for once --

At the pond further west of Pintail there were two Orange-crowned Warblers, foraging together -- 

Black-tailed Gnatcatchers were singing in the underbrush, though I couldn't hear them as their song is pitched too high for me -- 

I usually spend the entire day at the WMA when I'm doing a bird count, but I had laundry to do, so I take one last peek at the water left at Wilson Pond and see what looks to be a Lesser Scaup male, and the female with its round head could be a Lesser/Greater hybrid -- 

I end up the day with 35 species, and more confidence in the abilities of the Canon 7D MK II to be a valuable tool in not only bird photography, but bird counts. It's now Saturday, December 6, and I'll be checking out a Tundra I ordered through CarMax, and I hope to bring it "home" with me...