Birding Lake Montgomery

 

Pectoral Sandpiper

We always called it that although you won't find it on any map, because the lake is really just a low spot in a corn field near my parent's house. It is well below road grade and probably undrainable. Thus it fills with water every spring and has since the folks bought the place when we were small. We used to skate on it when we were kids, racing down the furrows between the rows of corn stubble. 

For years we watched for the school bus out the kitchen window, and noted the interesting birds that stopped to partake of insects from the mud, and enjoy a nice handy feather wash.

Habit dies hard, and when we were working on parceling out the remainders of their lives yesterday, I stopped to peek out over the kitchen sink.

Whoa! Something brown moved at the edge of the water line.

Greater Yellowlegs

I ran through the house like an idiot, grabbing bins and camera along the way, and shouting that I had a bird.

And, oh, what a bird I had. Well, birds really. Around that humble puddle were an interesting pair of Canada Geese, a couple of amorous Killdeers, a few screaming Red-winged Blackbirds, and a Greater Yellowlegs, which is a pretty good bird for Fulton County. However,  best of all was a Pectoral Sandpiper. That one was unusual enough that I had to fill out that yellow rare bird line on eBird mobile, and he made the state rare bird alert this morning. 

Killdeer

I was kind of chuffed to identify him properly, as sandpipers are hard and I am not good at them. However, another birder found one a couple of counties to the east the other day and I decided to do a bit of studying in case by some amazing happenstance I found one.

This bird hit all the check marks, bi-colored beak, sharply defined line between streaked breast and white belly, yellow legs, faint eye-line.

I was thrilled to find such a cool bird in such an unlikely place.

I think maybe Dad sent him.

Check out the pigmentation on this Canada Goose
Such abnormalities are actually quite common and
we see several every year

Anyhow, it was my first opportunity to submit birds via the International Shorebird Survey protocol on eBird, and I did so.

I am excited for shorebird migration season and can't wait to hit the river mud flats, when and if we get the car fixed. 

Meanwhile, I learned something this week. I had been trying to learn shore birds as a group, even taking a Cornell identification course...twice...and am still confused. However, when I concentrated on ONE species at a time, albeit a fairly distinctive one, I got it right on the first try.

So, I am going to pick out likely visitors and look over photos of them carefully, and read the field marks, and try to learn them better. Here's hoping....