Matt Bruce saw a Least Tern at Chapmans Pond on the 23rd. They’re probably annual here in late spring and early summer, but on the rare occasions when someone spots one it’s usually on the big lakes rather than small bodies of water like Chapmans.
A visiting birder named Jeffrey Bailey photographed a late Yellow-rumped Warbler at Sweetwater Wetlands Park on May 16th. See his checklist (with the photo) here: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S36909374 There’s only one later record for the county.
I went out to Powers Park and Gum Root Swamp this evening to see if the rain had changed things at Newnans Lake. The mud flats all appear to be underwater, but there’s still a wide grassy shore – though it may be too soggy to walk on. At Gum Root Swamp I went down to the first bridge to see if Hatchet Creek had risen significantly – if so, the water level in the lake could be expected to rise a lot more – but it was merely a trickle. That may change after today’s rains. Lloyd Davis was out there at first light this morning, walking east from Powers Park toward Prairie Creek and beyond, and at that point there was still enough shoreline to accommodate 8 White-rumped Sandpipers, 46 Semipalmated Sandpipers, a Semipalmated Plover, and a Spotted Sandpiper.
The June Challenge begins next Thursday. I’ll send out another reminder before then, but let me repeat one point: Don’t keep your June Challenge list in eBird! You definitely DO want to include heard birds in your eBird checklists, but you CAN’T count heard birds in The June Challenge. We’ve got some paper checklists if you want one, and there’s a nice computerized checklist that Phil Laipis created in Excel, which I’ll attach to my next email.
Short-tailed Hawks haven’t been reported lately. The season’s first was seen near Prairie Creek on March 31st, there were several sightings during the second half of April, and three were extensively studied and photographed over Powers Park on April 30th. Since then, however, eBird doesn’t show a single sighting.
Also among the missing:
Cedar Waxwings, usually the last wintering birds to leave us, seem to be gone. There were only seven local reports during the first week in May, and three since. They were last reported on the 15th, when Alicia Johansen saw a flock of 12 at Sweetwater Wetlands Park and Darrell Hartman saw another flock at a blueberry farm near Lake Alto. This was not a big winter for waxwings; that’s two winters in a row with low numbers.
I haven’t seen a Bobolink report in a few days. There was a small flock hanging around the eastern shore of Newnans Lake in the middle of the month – we counted 48 on the 12th and 23 on the 15th – but Lloyd Davis reported only 1 on the 20th, and there’s been nothing since then.
Our Paynes Prairie Whooping Crane stayed with us for almost exactly a year. First noted near Bolen Bluff on April 21, 2016, she was last seen near the Visitor Center on April 14th by Sarasota birder Keith Pochy. I expect she’ll be back, though. She’s visited the Prairie almost annually since 2009.