A Weekend of Adventures

My wife and I spent this past weekend birding in southern Indiana and leading some hikes at the Nature Conservancy's Picnic for the Planet event at Fort Harrison State Park in Indianapolis. Our weekend started off with a long drive in the rain to get to Princeton, Indiana. On Saturday morning, we got up early and headed to Tern Bar Slough for a morning of birding. The main target of the day was a Hudsonian Godwit that had been reported recently. We followed the directions that I had to the area where the godwit had been seen and quickly realized that a little more direction would have been helpful.

We hiked around for a little over and hour and while we saw a lot of shorebirds, the godwit was nowhere to be found. We finally ran into some local birders and they informed us that we had not gone far enough down a dirt road to get to the right area. As we came up to the dike, some birders had the godwit in a scope and we were able to quickly get on it.

Hudsonian Godwit

On our way to my presentation in Dale, we made a quick stop at Monty's Station in Patoka NWR. There were hundreds if not thousands of shorebird but nothing out of the ordinary. The best bird was my first Fish Crows in Indiana.

After my presentation, we had a little extra time so we made a stop at Cutright SRA on Lake Monroe. There were tons of migrants in the area with the highlights being Orchard Oriole, Nashville and Prothonotary Warblers, and Louisiana Waterthrush.

On Sunday, my wife and I represented the Indiana Young Birders Club at the Nature Conservancy's Picnic for the Planet. I lead a couple of beginning bird hikes and many kids participated in our very popular bird quiz for a chance to a Kaufman Field Guide. During the hikes, we found a pair of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers building a nest. Everyone got to view it though my scope and were blown away by the awesome nest!

On Thursday, our Wild Birds Unlimited team will be competing in the Amos W Butler Audubon Society's annual Birdathon. The team consist of Jim Carpenter, John Schaust, and Brian Cunningham from the WBU corporate offices, Eric and myself. We will be going out in southern Indiana starting around Bloomington and ending at Goose Pond FWA. You can follow our progress on both the Wild Birds Unlimited Facebook page and on my Twitter feed here. If you would like to donate to the Birdathon visit the AWBAS website here and select the Wild Birds Unlimited team.

Look for a full report of our big day next week.

-Rob