Earlier this week ACT staff notified Alachua Audubon that they would not be able to lead Saturday’s field trip to Prairie Creek Preserve. The trip has therefore been cancelled.
Andy Kratter writes, “Lark Sparrow this morning at south end of Depot Park (near First Magnitude). It was in the fenced off area right at the NW corner of SE 10th Ave at Veitch, right where the Western Kingbirds were a few years ago. A mean old mockingbird gathering nest material chased it off with some Palm Warblers and Chipping Sparrow into the brushy ditch that borders the west end of the pond.”
Go south on Main Street, pass through downtown and continue south through the Depot Road traffic circle. A quarter of a mile south of the traffic circle, turn left onto SE 10th Avenue. When the road ends at a T-intersection, turn left and pull onto the grassy shoulder on the right side of the road. The bird was still present at 10:30. There’s a fence marking the boundary between the lot containing the gray building and the park property, and it was feeding on the ground between that fence and the ditch.
This is the 16th or 17th Lark Sparrow ever recorded in Alachua County. Of all these, it’s only the second spring migrant (the other was found and photographed by Sam Ewing near Watermelon Pond on April 11, 2012), though three more wintered locally and remained into March or April. Andy bikes this route frequently, and he hasn’t seen the bird until today, so I assume it’s a migrant – and of the previous 15 or 16 records, all but three were one-day wonders, so see the bird today if you can.
So go see the Lark Sparrow! But DON’T go on the field trip to Prairie Creek, because there won’t be one.