A Summer Birding Adventure

Summers in Georgia are not very enjoyable for a kid like me. Reasons are mostly weather-oriented. Mowing the lawn and other laborious tasks in 110F weather (plus high humidity!) is not really anyone's idea of fun and birding is nearly impossible during most of the day. However, if you get out early enough, Georgia summers can be thoroughly enjoyable! The example I will share is from June 2011, probably one of my best birding adventures.
The morning started by waking up at 6:30AM and heading out with my sister to Phinizy Swamp Nature Park in Augusta, an Important Bird Area only ten minutes from my house. We pulled up at 7AM and walked across the parking lot to Lock and Dam road, where we got some good looks at a male Blue Grosbeak, who was gracious enough to sing for us. After photographing this little jewel, we headed back into the park and took the boardwalk across the floodplain to the campus. No birds showed up here, but we were treated to some awesome Undulatus asperatus clouds as we walked to the wetland/pond cells.

We headed up the constructed wetland trail and scanned cells 5 and 12 for Least Bitterns, but as usual came up empty-handed. Consequently, we arrived at the gazebo. After resting for a while, a familiar sound caught my ear: the high-pitched call of the Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks. These goofy waterfowl (or maybe more appropriately treefowl) have been residents at the park since 2009 and even hatched a brood of 10 babies here (only 4 survived). So I was already well-acquainted with these tree-dwelling ducks, but nonetheless, was excited out of my seeming sanity to encounter them once again. They're not hard to locate at all, keeping to tall dead cypresses and announcing to the whole park their existence. I stopped between cells 6 and 7 to watch a small flock of 5 clowning around with a handful of Common Grackles mobbing them all the while. They posed for some great shots that portrayed their funky personality well.

This experience would have made my day single-handedly, but the trip wasn't over. After walking past the gazebo, I located my lifer King Rail in cell 11 after hearing it vocalize in the reeds. I was only able to get a video before it disappeared into reeds. We continued along the distribution canal, coming across the usual birds: Common Gallinule, White Ibis, Little and Great Blue Herons, Green Herons, Great Egrets, Eastern Kingbirds, Common Yellowthroat, and unusually cooperative Yellow-crowned Night Herons.

We then took the '3 Ton Bridge' to equalization pond, where a Yellow-billed Cuckoo quietly "chilled" in plain sight. Since it was 8:15AM, the heat was already starting to kick in and the rest of the hike was pretty low-key. We took Green and Beaver Dam Trails to the parking lot, with only a Pearl Crescent to note, and headed home for a long day of building chicken coops!