Group Walk Report for October 26, 2013

Nine folks participated in the monthly group bird and nature walk on the Bunny Run this morning. We had beautiful overcast weather and here are a few highlights from the walk. Fall migration is underway and we were very fortunate to see an impressive example of it. Near the spring we watched a group of 60-70 Turkey Vultures kettling (riding a column of warm air up to gain altitude) and then streaming off to the south. I took this photo showing a few of them, but it doesn't compare to our experience of actually seeing this group of birds:

Migrating Turkey Vultures

Birds are not the only animals the migrate, and throughout the morning we also saw a few Monarch Butterflies high in the sky flying south. We saw this one feeding on Frostweed flowers:

Monarch Butterfly on Frostweed

On the sandy prairie area we had a surprising close encounter with another migrating bird. A single American Pipit flew towards us from the west. I thought it would fly right over us, but it descended and landed right beside us, about 10 feet away! We watched it for a few moments before it flew away, continuing east. I guess we were all standing still enough that it didn't immediately recognize us as a group of people.

Near the end of our walk we were watching one of several Eastern Phoebes seen during the morning in a distant tree. It flew towards us, grabbed something about 10 feet away from us, and flew to another tree much closer to us. It had caught a dragonfly and we watched as it whacked the dragonfly against the branch it perched on, then swallowed it whole. I got this poor photo:

Eastern Phoebe with Dragonfly

All in all we found 21 species of birds. Here's our complete list:

Complete bird list on eBird

Here are the iNaturalist observations we made:

iNaturalist Observations

And here are the same photos on Flickr:

Nalle Bunny Run Group Walk 2013-10-26

Posted on 26 October, 2013 22:30 by mikaelb mikaelb

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