Lake Tawakoni Christmas Bird count

I have been planning to participate in Christmas Bird Count from last year. Last year I could not attend any of the CBC. But this year I did not want to miss out. So planned to do atleast 2 CBC this year, one was Lake Tawkoni and other being Audobon Trinity Count. Lake Tawakoni count was on Dec 26'th. The trinity count is on Jan 2'nd.

Richard Kinney was the group leader heading the Lake Tawakoni CBC. There were about 11 of us. doing the CBC around the lake. I joined Chuck Carlson and Vance to cover the area around Edgewood. We drove around in Vance's car. We started birding at around 7 and started from the town itself. There is some good birding habitat around the town and we saw lot of birds. The first place where we stopped had good mixed flock of birds foraging. There were White-Throated Sparrows, White-Crowned Sparrows, Pine Siskins, Red -Bellied Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird and Yellow-Rumped Warblers.

Red-bellied Woodpeckere

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

White-winged Dove

Song Sparrow?

White-Crowned Sparrow

House Finch

Pine Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Savannah Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Field Sparrow

During the day we saw other sparrows Field-Sparrow, Nelson's Sparrow and Song Sparrows. The number of Duck sightings for the day was very less. We only saw few Mallards and Geese and only other duck we saw a lone Ring Necked Duck. We also saw couple of Red-Shouldered Hawks, red-Tailed Hawk and few Kestrels. The Black/Turkey Vultures were see throughout the day.

Red-shouldered Hawk

Loggerhead Shrike

Downy Woodpecker

White-throated Sparrow

And at one place our car got stuck in the mud. Thank's to chuck's idea we were able to get out of it. But during this time we saw lot of bird activity near a cemetery close by. We decided to check the birds around the area and again we saw a mixed flock of birds which had Goldfinches, Pine Warblers, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, American Robins and few sparrows. Also heard Red-Bellied woodpeckers from close by trees.

Pine Warbler

Eastern Bluebird

Pine Warbler

Dark Eyed Junco

Chipping Sparrow?

White-crowned Sparrow

Hermit Thrush

American Robin

Right before we ended the day we saw few Harris Sparrows and Fox sparrows which were my first sighting of these species along with Ring Necked Duck.

Harris Sparrow

Red Tailed Hawk

Fox Sparrow

I'm yet to go through the final CBC count from Richard.

I left early and could not join the group for final tally since the weather had been bad and the tornadoes warnings kept coming. I started home around 5:10 and reached home by 6:30 before the heavy rains started. Unfortunately we did have 3 tornadoes touch down in Dallas and few lives were lost which was really sad. The weather was really scary till about 10PM that day.