Sunday Allan Mueller, Lenore Gifford, Dottie & Doris Boyles, Karen Holliday and I went to Pine Bluff to visit several sites to see reported rarities and look for spring migrants.
We started at Lake Saracen. Actually, we started at Carpet Barn in Maumelle and picked up Meep the Lucky Roadrunner. After that we started at Lake Saracen looking for Soras and Virginia Rail. No rail but several soras were there and very cooperative. Other notables were Marsh Wren, Yellow Warbler, and Yellow-breasted Chat.
We then visited the Delta Rivers Nature Center and walked some of the trails. Among the regulars there were Great Crested Flycatcher, Warbling Vireo, Black-throated Green Warbler, and Baltimore Oriole.
Then it was down to some wetlands on the southeast side of town on Ohio Street Pike near I-530 for American Bittern. It didn’t take long for someone else to locate the bitterns for us and we also found FOS Black-necked Stilt and more Marsh Wrens.
Then to Byrd Lake Natural Area which turned out to be perhaps the birdiest area of the day even though it was mid-day. We picked up Kentucky, Nashville, Tennessee, and Yellow-throated Warbler. Philadelphia, Yellow-throated, Red-eyed, and White-eyed Vireo. Plus almost every woodpecker found in Arkansas and the by now common Summer Tanager.
Finally we stopped at the Bayou Bartholomew Nature Trail. There, besides some of the migrants reported above, we saw Anhinga, Prothonotary Warbler, and Swainson’s Thrush.
By the end of the day, the group had a list of 83 species and I personally had 79.
