Swamped

One of the Great Blue Herons at GRS

Really more like unswamped.

We have for many years birded a couple of bodies of water on Goldman Rd. in Montgomery County. We used to take the kids for picnics and a little bit of mostly futile fishing to the one double pond, which we named Lyker's Pond....no idea what its proper name might be. Later when I went over to the college with them...we often shared cars in those days...we would grab lunch at the Cobleskill Burger King and take it to Lykers to eat and watch birds.

The other spot is a series of beaver impoundments at the other end of the road. I named it Goldman Road Swamp for ease of eBird reporting.

Lyker's has a sweet little pull off where you can park. GRS has a small service road, which appears intended to allow county folks to keep the beaver debris under control. Recently we got brave enough to park on it, offering heretofore unavailable great views. (We used to park up on the road where tall grass and shrubs hide most of the view.)

Lyker's has given us birds both rare (Trumpeter Swan, which I still regret not counting) and common, and in spring is reliable for 35 or more species on one list. Birds that are hard to find, like American Bitterns, show up there with some regularity.

GRS is just fun. We are not exactly a flyway county so five or six Great Blue Herons at once is a treat. Bitterns live there too.

A week or so ago the people who keep beaver ponds from overflowing the highways cleaned up the culvert at GRS. This resulted in the unswamping of about half the water in the lower pool. We stopped the other day just to count herons.

Wilson'st Snipe and Least Sandpiper

lovin' them some mud.

 I was surprised to find a plethora of Killdeers, a Greater Yellowlegs, and a couple of Solitary Sandpipers. They do love them some mudflats. Each visit since has resulted in a handful more shorebirds until today we counted six species of shorebirds plus lots of herons and an American Bittern for good measure. 

Bonanza!

Today's haul included Least Sandpipers, Wilson's Snipe, Greater Yellowlegs, Solitary and Spotted Sandpipers, plus a fine quantity of screaming Killdeers squabbling over mud rights.

Much to my delight, I discovered that after doing just two lessons in a shorebird ID course I recently purchased from Cornell, I can already differentiate among difficult birds with much greater confidence. 

Made seeing such cool birds so much less frustrating.

If you struggle with telling the tiny peeps apart or find the yellowlegs daunting I highly recommend the course. At under thirty bucks it is a steal.

Meanwhile, I cannot wait until the next time we can get out to Goldman Road. Passersby look at us funny, but the joke is not on us...

Solitary Sandpiper