Birding at Home

I'm having great time since my family arrived here. One of the best routines everyday which me, my wife and my son like are the evening walks we take everyday. Our residential layout is huge with lot of trees. There is also a church which has very big parking place and lot of trees planted around. We start our walks almost 30 min before sunset and most of the times we start seeing the American Robins coming into our layout in huge numbers. They come here for roosting. We see these birds roost in our layout and the  Cisco office campus which is right opposite to our apartment. During weekends we do go to the office campus for walking and our son does like the small water body which usually has Mallards.

My birding partners.

In our residential apartment we have been seeing the Carolina Wren very commonly these days. The Northern Cardinal, Mocking bird, Blue Jay and house sparrows are very common. We also regularly see Red Tailed Hawk and Sharp Shinned Hawk in our layout. But they seem to come out when I don't have my camera :-) Even the woodpeckers are common sight these days. We do see Downy Woodpecker, Red Bellied Woodpecker and Northern Flicker very commonly these days. European starling does keep making lot of noises. I saw the Scissor Tailed flycatcher once flying right over our apartment.

American Robin

American Robin

Northern Cardinal(Female)

Carolina Wren

Caronlina Wren

In church premise its almost the same birds but most of my photos are taken from the church premise area. I did see my first yellow vented warbler there recently. Purple finches are fairly common here. I did see the Black Eyed Juncos. But the species that I see here do look differently than the one I saw in California. In wiki later I read there are lot of subspecies which do look a lot different.

Yellow Vented Warbler

Dark Eyed Junco

Red Bellied Woodpecker

During our walks in office or when I go for work I keep observing the birds on the way. Most of the birds that I see in office are Northern Mocking bird, Northern Cardinal, Spotted  Towhee, Eastern Phoebe and the Mallards in the small water body. Every now and then I do keep seeing the hawks. In our last 2 walks we saw good number of White Throated Sparrows. I'm still waiting for a good photograph of the Spotted Towhee. I did see this bird multiple times in San Jose but never got a chance to get a good photograph of this bird. I hope I get lucky here :-)

Northern Cardinal(Male)

Purple Finch

Spotted Towhee

This weekend I did my first bird walk in a park which is about 3 miles from here. There are 2 parks very close to each other, Bob Wood-ruff park and Oak Point Park Nature reserve. Read few articles about birding in these parks and thought I will try my luck. In one of the links I saw one of the birder was lucky and saw a Belted Kingfisher there. So I was hoping I might get lucky too ;-) On Thursday night there was freeze warning announced for Friday night till Saturday morning. This made me rethink my plans for the walk. Friday night was indeed cold, the first night when we had to switch on our heater at home for this season. Next day morning woke up a little early and I just couldn't stop myself from going out.

Got dressed up for the walk and started from home at around 7:45 AM. I was hoping that walking would generate enough heat for me not to feel any cold The walk is about 3 miles from my home. Reached the park at around 8:45 AM. I hardly saw anyone walking in the cold. saw couple of people cycling. But once I reached park I did see lot of people doing their regular morning jogs and walks. After entering the park I saw a Sharp Shinned Hawk sitting on top of the tree at a fair distance. This hawk was being harassed by the Blue Jay's. They were relentless and poor hawk had to look for a different vantage point. Also saw couple of Northern Flickers male and seemed like a fight between them.

As I went ahead I saw there was 10K marathon happening. It was good to see lot of people participating in the event and lot of people were there to cheer and help with nourishment's. The birding itself was not that productive. I saw very less number of birds during the day.  But I saw at least 8-10 birds for the first time. There were few ducks which I'm yet to identify. I saw these beautiful Tufted Titmouse in good numbers. Atleast 5-6 Eastern Bluebirds at the lake in oak point park. There were good number of Yellow vented Warblers there too. Carolina chickadee could be seen along the trail in the oak point park. The trails in the Oak Point Park are very good. Definitely a park which could be visited again and again. The strange thing was I couldn't see lot of raptors here. The only raptors I saw was Turkey vultures and the sharp shinned hawk I saw early in the morning. I also was not lucky to see the kingfisher,. I'm yet to see a kingfisher in US. I hope I don't have to wait long for the same :-) It was a long walk but a very good walk. Hope to do the walk in this park again very soon.

Sharp Shinned Hawk?

Double Crested Cormorant?

Great Tailed Grackle

Snow Geese

American Coot

Wood Duck(Female)

Killdeer

Carolina Chickadee

Tufted Titmouse

Field Sparrow

Field Sparrow

Mallard(Male)

Mallard(Female)

Great Blue Heron

Pied-Billed Grebe

Field Sparrow

Yellow Vented Warbler

Eastern Bluebird

House Finch

Field Sparrow

Field Sparrow

ID?

White Winged Dove

White Throated Sparrow(Female)

White Throated Sparrow(Male)

My friend Vivek from SJ and our own Deepa from bngbirds group were kind enough to help with the bird ID's of some of the birds.

Birds seen till now in Texas.

Northern Cardinal

Blue Jay

Purple Finch

Downy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Ruby Crowned Kinglet

Carolina Wren

House Sparrow

Mallard

Sharp Shinned Hawk

Scissor Tailed Flycatcher

Great Tailed Grackle

Eastern Phoebe

White Throated Sparrow

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Yellow Vented Warbler

Tufted Titmouse

Carolina Chickadee

Eastern Bluebird

Double-Crested Cormorant

Killdeer

Great Blue Heron

Field Sparrow Turkey Vulture Red Tailed Hawk Spotted Towhee Northern Mockingbird American Robin Rock Pigeon Mourning Dove Canada Goose