We stayed the night in a hotel in Alabama, so when we started birding we were poking around a fleet of fishing boats in southern Alabama. From a concrete platform behind a fishing boat repair shop, we used the spotting scope to identify Common Loons (Gavia immer) in the harbor. The sandblasting and pounding of the repair people did not seem to disturb the Brown Pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) which were buzzing around them. A pleasant surprise was our first tern of the trip, the Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) which buffetted themselves from the cold by standing together on the sand facing away from the wind.
Right over the border into Mississippi and next to the ocean is the Grand Bay Wildlife Refuge. Huge nests were built on top of tall electrical pylons. We examined each nest for its resident bird, probably Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), but did not see anything. Either we were late and they had already flown off, or else, quite possibly, the birds were hunkered down inside the nest to get out of the wind. It was windy all morning.
 |
We saw flocks of American Robins (Turdus migratorius) enjoying the temperate climate of southern Mississippi. On a side street, we saw more than 50 of them pecking at the wet ground. Inside the tangles of a bush I saw the distinctive black head of the Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe). We were thinking that probably the bird-of-the-day was going to be a pair of White Winged Doves (Zenaida asiatica) we saw on Chevron Corporation property. That is until we went to Gautier, Mississippi.
At the Gautier City Park and Bird Sanctuary we saw these birds:
- Red Winged Black Bird
- Eurasian Collared Dove
- Bluejay
- Orange Crowned Warbler
- Tufted Titmouse
- Carolina Chickadee
- Yellow Rumped Warbler
- Eastern Bluebird
- Pine Warbler
- Belted Kingfisher
 |
That Orange Crowned Warbler (Oreothlypis celata), which for us is a life-bird, we caught late in the afternoon, flitting first in a gumball tree, then it moved on top of a small shed so we could get a good look at it.
Here are some photos we took in southern Mississippi:
 |
 |
 |
Robert and Berry
photos courtesy of bshelton, rfowler, glasley
No comments:
Post a Comment