Yard Squad Challenge 2.0

If you’ve read some of my older posts from this spring you may remember a Yard Squad challenge I was part of back then. It consisted of several teams of 9 birders with one global player each and the rest of the participants from the ABA area (US and Canada). This time around is quite similar, except instead of being limited to your home you’re allowed to bird a in a circle with a radius of up to 5 miles. The challenge started this last Monday and consists of 3 three week sections with winners for each 3 week section and the whole period. There is also an iNat challenge (for all wildlife except birds) running alongside this which I enjoy!

After several weeks of being stuck at home I was finally able to get out birding yesterday morning at New Vision. Our team, the Barely Wandering Albatrosses, was sitting in 4th out of 7 teams before I went, and I was hoping to tick off many of the common species for our list. Plus it’s getting late enough in the year that I hoped for one or two winter migrants. It’s been very flooded recently and I was slightly worried the paths would be flooded as well, but we saw that the main path was still at least a foot clear of the water unlike most of the smaller paths.

Because of the iNat challenge I was paying closer attention to the plants and insects.

In the flooded vegetation on the right side of the path I saw a brown water bird fly but couldn’t focus on it then immediately, afterward saw an adult Bronze-winged Jacana so the other was probably just a juv. That area really looks like it could have interesting waterbirds, but it’s impossible to see much in there…

Birding was ok, but felt a little slow probably because of the flooding. A juvenile Greater Coucal posed nicely for a little, but flew before I could get any good shots.

A Common Baron was my first sighting of this species at New Vision.

And common but beautiful, a female Scarlet Skimmer

We heard some Citrine Wagtails calling and flying overhead, my first of the winter migrants! I then caught a glimpse of some shorebirds in flight and was happy to see they were Common Sandpipers, another winter visitor!

Here you can see just how flooded it is. The line of green in the middle of the water going from left to right is a path we normally take, but is completely submerged right now!

There were a few House Crows around the one little tin house which is unusual for out here. I tried to get a few photos even though they’re super common birds, but the photos didn’t turn out well because they were backlit.

We added Yellow-footed Green Pigeon, Cattle Egret, and Striated Heron to our list before something different caught my eye! I momentarily thought it might be a Pratincole, but it’s flight style was much stronger and I realized it was a Whiskered Tern, only my second record from this hotspot!
As you can see it was quite far away, and cruising the edge of the water along the tree line it continued on its way south west. It’ll be interesting to see over the next few weeks if the water brings more birds like this through.

A less than stellar shot of the tern.

The farmers have a row of okra along the north end of the main trail. During the winter this will have multiple species of warblers including Booted, but for now it’s only got Plain Prinias.

There was one of the smaller trails that wasn’t flooded though. It leads farther north and is where I found Streak-throated Swallows last year. It was a bit of a challenge to make our way along it though, because of the nets put right in the middle of it.

Wasn’t too much to see along here for birds: only a large flock of 40+ Baya Weavers.

There were a few nice dragonflies along here and some interesting tracks along here that were from some canine, either just a domestic dog or the Golden Jackals that are common here in the winter.

Back on the main path again we had another prinia posing nicely, unfortunately the sharpness of the shot isn’t as nice as the pose and background.

Then we saw our first Black Bittern of the day circling up from the south then landing in the grassy swampy area to our north.

There was a family of five Black-crowned Night-Herons with two adults and three juveniles. Unfortunately none of them wanted to stick around to have their photos taken…

As always we checked the tree row for the Brown Boobook, but I haven’t seen it since early this year. There were multiple Yellow Monitor lizards through here, but they were all easily spooked and so I still don’t have a photo of this species.

Past the tree row was yet another Long-tailed Shrike, but this one actually let us get fairly close.

Along here we accidentally flushed another Black Bittern and watched it fly into a large patch of water hyacinth. We went over there vainly hoping we could somehow see it and get pictures of it landed, but no luck seeing it in that stuff…

Along the path on the western side are a few larger trees including two fruiting ones that the birds enjoy: a Burflower-Tree and some kind of figs. A flock of 7 Yellow-footed Green-Pigeons flew from one to the other, but I didn’t get any photos of them. There were also a number of Asian Pied Starlings and Red-vented Bulbuls in the fig tree.

Apart from those fruiting trees there isn’t great bird habitat on this side when it’s flooded like this. There’s always a number of whistling ducks, but not too much else.

We had one last bird surprise when a Eurasian Wryneck flew past, brief views, but these are such cool distinctive birds! Here’s a photo from last year:

I saw a few more insects:

And my personal favorite insect of the day was this gorgeous pierrot butterfly! It’s my first pierrot, it’s possibly a Little Tiger Pierrot, but unfortunately can’t be IDed to species as there are multiple extremely similar species.

We ended up with 48 species and adding the Eurasian Hoopoes, Chestnut Munias, and Black-winged Kite that we saw along the road on the way to and from New Vision we hit 51 species by 10 in the morning! 27 of these species were new for the yard challenge catapulting our team to first place if only momentarily! (leaderboard) It was a fun day and reminded me just how much I enjoy being out in nature especially after several weeks of being stuck at home!

eBird checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S72928692

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe for more. As always, feel free to comment!