So of course Saturday is the Burrowing Owl day.
But for those who are interested, we’ll have a field trip on Sunday too. We’ll walk out the trail at San Felasco Hammock in search of Eastern Wood-Pewee, Hooded Warbler, and Acadian Flycatcher (plus Summer Tanager, Yellow-throated and Red-eyed Vireos … and hopefully American Crows, which I still haven’t seen!). Meet at the parking lot on Millhopper Road at 7:30 a.m.
This evening Chris Cattau, who found us three nice birds last June, spotted a Ring-necked Duck at Levy Loop. “If you go right coming out of the trailhead it is in an open body of water off the right side of the dike (i.e., not the prairie side). Right now [he wrote at 6:17 p.m.] it’s preening in some vegetation on the western edge of that body of water. Not sure how far it is from the trailhead because I started out going to the left and I’m on the way back now.” However he sent me a latlong marker on a map, which is here. To get to Levy Loop, take 441 south to the vicinity of Lake Wauberg. Turn right onto Wacahoota Road. Shortly – less than a mile – you’ll cross over I-75. Take the first left after that, and follow it all the way down to the parking corral.
Jennifer Donsky found a Northern Flicker at Northeast Park in the late morning of the 7th. It was at the south end of the park, near the playground, and it was later seen by Mike Manetz (who’d previously visited the park five times in an unsuccessful search for it) and Anne Kendall (who’d been there four times previously).
Also on the 7th, Ranger Kim Chaney of Sweetwater Wetlands Park “spotted 4 Limpkin chicks on Cell 3 just south of the immersion overlook (the low overlook opposite the overflow channel on the east side of the park). These are the first ones we’ve seen this season.”
Geoff Parks has been keeping an eye out for American Robins in his NE Gainesville neighborhood, where they apparently nested the past two (three?) summers. He writes that he heard one “once or twice” since May 4th, but not in June. Last year they were seen mainly along NE 7th Street between 16th Avenue and 23rd Avenue.