Sam and I plus three other birders worked the Little Rock Christmas Bird Count for 2010 yesterday. Ours was “Section 3” which is north of I-630 to the Arkansas River from I-30 on the east side to the edge of the circle on the west. We started a little before 7 AM at Two Rivers Park. I had hoped to get there a little earlier to try for owls but it didn’t work out, still it was 25 minutes before sunrise. Right off the bat I was able to get a Virginia Rail to response to playback at the swamp. Something I found on the Internet indicated they were most responsive to playback at dawn and dusk so I wanted to get that done first off. Year bird for me. We walked there for about 3 hours, longer than we should have but we picked up 42 species so that’s not shabby. After TRP we went to Murray Lock & Dam and Murray Park. These were kind of disappointing due to the lateness of the morning. By the time we wrapped up Murray, it was lunch time and two of our group had to leave which left Sam, Roger, and me. Later we walked North Cedar where we had been notified of Pine Siskins and were able to pick those up. Another year bird, Yay! After this Roger had to leave so it was just Sam & me. We then birded Allsopp & Knoop parks plus a couple fruiting trees we had been alerted to. Nothing spectacular but a few new day birds. We swung by downtown but saw nothing new. By this time it was about 3:30 with 90 minutes of daylight left. Sam was pooped so I dropped her off at home and went to the Natural Resources Complex to wrap up my daylight. Here I found my last day bird, a Great Horned Owl. After sunset, I made a short trip into Rock Creek Trail, part of which is in my territory, in hopes of Barred Owl which I have heard there but no luck on the front. After then end of the day, after 10.5 hours of birding we had seen 57 species though no one person had seen them all.
