The Madtom Mad-dash gave me mixed results. I found fish, catfish, and I suspect at least one Madtom, but nothing conclusive. I discovered a lot about looking for fish under water, and have a plan for next time. Should be fun.
Bird wise, we're on the verge of migration. All the Northern Parulas are grown, the White-eyed vireos are looking better than in July, and there are recent eBird reports of Louisiana Waterthrush in peninsular FL.
Time to go birding around Saddle Creek.
First, I debated with myself about whether I wanted to chase a reported Gray kingbird at the Cox road Kingbird roost. The observer reporting the sighting knows birds, so I trusted the observation. Gray kingbirds in Polk county though don't tend to hang out. The scattered reports over the years tend to be one and done, but at least in similar areas. This isn't the first report of the bird in this area, not even for this year. I decided to stay closer to home, in part so that I could be handy to the family when they woke up. Plus, it's August now, time to start looking for migrant birds! With visions of waterthrushes dancing in my head, I set out.
Here's a map of the area around Saddle Creek Park, the blue dot at the top is the eBird official hotspot location for the park. the red X and line are where I park and approximately where i walk when going down the saddle creek park trail. I often bird from the car, or close to the car along the yellow line. I log it under a separate location, that I call "Saddle Creek Entrance And Road To Park" . I started my list with a Least bittern. The bird was flying around a group of cattails. I added several other usual suspects on the way to the entrance, nothing too terribly rare. Some birds were uncommon to me though, in this location, notably, a group of 7 chimney swifts. I also found an eastern bluebird and Barn swallows flying around on the way up the road.
Another reason why I chose Saddle creek was because I wanted to see roosting Swallow-tailed kites. Despite being there about 10 minutes after sunrise, I didn't see any roosting kites, bummer! I did see some kites later down the trail though, a group of seven. They were probably just flying from a roost in the area, I just didn't know which dead tree hosted them last night. Right now Saddle Creek has a lot of dead trees.
After parking and applying insect repellent, I began trekking along the trail, hearing birds like Carolina Wrens, Northern cardinals, a couple of Tufted titmice, and what's that? a vireo? What! not a white-eyed for sure.
I couldn't tell if that particular bird was a Red-eyed or yellow-throated. I suspect Red-eyed based on one I saw later, but after trying to draw it out, i continued on. There were a few other people on the trail that morning, walking dogs. Not a lot of birds. Mostly just fledge Northern Parulas, a few post-breeding Blue-gray gnatcatchers. Bird of the day was a Yellow-billed cuckoo, calling and then spotted some distance across one of the lakes.
Fortunately I managed to see some good butterflies and moths, and even got some good pictures of this Polyphemus moth:
Reports are picking back up now though, it won't be long before migrating birds make me twitch!
