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Sam and I got up early Saturday, actually she stayed up all night, and went to Arkansas Post National Memorial. This is where the July ASCA field trip is going but I was looking forward to several possible year birds and went early.  The boundary of the memorial is along a shallow lake (not sure what the term for the habitat is) and as soon as we crossed over we saw FOY Anhingas and Common Moorhen.  Further in, we saw two juvenile Bald Eagles still hanging out at the nest.  They were too far away for decent pictures but there was an Anhinga and Moorhen who were more obliging.

Later in the day, about 6 PM, I went to Burns Park in hopes of Painted Bunting and found two.  Though not rare this time of year, everyone likes PABUs and so I thought I would mention them.  They were at mile marker 6.25, near plum thickets, on the River Trail about 3/4 the distance between the southwestern most parking area in Burns Park and the intersection of the River Trail and the Northshore Trail.

Sunday, I plan to go to Magazine Mountain State Park for Rufous-crowned Sparrow and butterflies.

Here are pictures of the obliging Anhinga and Common Moorhen. I hope you like them.

Anhinga
https://jamesdixon.us/gallery/index.php/Birds/Pelicans/Anhinga-Arkansas-Post-National-Memorial-July-2010-3513
https://jamesdixon.us/gallery/index.php/Birds/Pelicans/Anhinga-Arkansas-Post-National-Memorial-July-2010-3515
https://jamesdixon.us/gallery/index.php/Birds/Pelicans/Anhinga-Arkansas-Post-National-Memorial-July-2010-3519

Common Moorhen
https://jamesdixon.us/gallery/index.php/Birds/Duck-like-Swimmers/Common-Moorhen-Arkansas-Post-National-Memorial-July-2010-3549
https://jamesdixon.us/gallery/index.php/Birds/Duck-like-Swimmers/Common-Moorhen-Arkansas-Post-National-Memorial-July-2010-3554

I visited the Steve Wilson/Raft Creek WMA Saturday morning.  My target bird was Grasshopper Sparrow.  I heard two near the HQ.  I ventured further and saw a bunch of egrets and herons in an area downstream so I looped around and walked up on a berm and could see juvenile White Ibises on the other side.  They seemed to not be too concerned about me and let me get within about 75 feet before suddenly changing their minds.  There were also plenty Great Blue and Little Blue Herons, Snowy and Great Egrets.  Plus one Ring-necked Duck who appeared to have an injured wing.

This weekend I completed my part of the Legacy Cerulean Warbler Project for the Kalamazoo Nature Center by visiting Lake Grenada and Lake Enid in Northwest Mississippi.  The lakes are named for their nearby towns and Grenada seems to be the much more substantial of the too so I made it my base.  I drove over Friday afternoon since Grenada is a four hour drive from Little Rock.

Saturday morning I left the hotel and was on site by 6:30. Since the high was going to be near 100, I wanted to start as early as possible.  Lake Grenada turned out to be a good place with a reasonable amount of deciduous trees.  As before, I drove around and visited all of the major points around the lake. I was surprised when I heard a Prairie Warbler but on checking the field guide, I found they were more common in the east than the west. With Prairie in their name, I thought Arkansas was on the eastern side of their territory rather than western. By the end of the day, I had seen 49 species but no Cerulean Warbler.

Lake Enid was about 25 miles north of Grenada so Sunday morning I checked out even earlier and was able to start there at 6:30 as well.  I had a similar story there, visiting all the major spots around the lake though Enid has a little more variety than Grenada. The eastern end was more like our Lake Conway while the western end was more like our Lake Degray.  The Enid area has more kudzu than any of the other areas that I surveyed and I wonder what impact that has on diversity, not good I’m sure. As before, I came up with 49 species though with a few substitutions.  I did see an Osprey which was arguably the best bird of the day.

Not being an out at the bars kind of guy, my evenings were spent at the hotel watching DVDs. I had brought two that I had gotten from the library – Dead Snow and Moon. Both were entertaining, the first living up to its promise of being one of the 25 best zombie movies of all time and the latter being a good if low key story of a maintenance man (to be honest) doing a three year stint on the Moon.