May 1, 2014

Happy May Day! Today's trip was to the Kendall-Tamiami Airport. I was hoping for confirmed Burrowing Owl activity, but I got probable. I confirmed 3 other species though and this block had zero data before today AND it's a priority block, so overall I am still proud of myself.

The first pair of Burrowing Owls I saw.

I'm guessing Fish Crow, nest building

Nest building Fish Crow?

So I had a female Boat-tailed Grackle screaming at me the whole time I was near these birds. Plus the middle one seemed to be begging, plus the left two seem younger-looking to me for some reason.

You can see the yellow gape of this Loggerhead Shrike while it begs for food.

And then it got fed. You can tell it's a young bird because it's still fluffy.

The second pair of Burrowing Owls. One with food in its mouth.

It's hard to see, but I tried to capture the Owl going in to his burrow. You can kinda see the brown back with white spots.

A Boat-tailed Grackle carrying food. This combined with the murky evidence from earlier really makes me think those birds were fledglings that had been born here.

Funny behavior. Cattle Egrets were literally running after the lawnmowers catching bugs.

Today was a day that I used the totality of the circumstances to determine breeding status more than ever because I didn't really get the clearest evidence for the Grackles. I think after 3+ months of Atlasing and several years of amateur birding, my judgement can be trusted. There's still so much out there un-Atlased. I've been slacking lately. More to come, I promise!