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Swallow report from the SC coast and some border birds



Hi Folks,

On Saturday I spoke with a pair of reliable birders who visited Huntington Beach on Friday. They were just about to head out fishing and the conversation went like this...

Me: "When you're out on the water today watch out for Swallows!!!"

Them: "Oh, we saw swallows yesterday at Huntington Beach."

Me: "Oh yah? Which ones?"

Them: "A bunch of Trees and as many as 4 Cliff Swallows."

Me: That's funny. There's a Cave Swallow invasion going on right now..." etc.

You can guess how the conversation went from there (No they weren't 100% certain about the ID after that). Needless to say, CHECK THOSE SWALLOWS!!!

I headed out to check Phinizy (Augusta, GA) with my wife and friend visiting from OR, just in case any of these little guys came down the Savannah (80 spp. for the day). We had NELSON'S SHARP-TAILED, LE CONTE'S and VESPER SPARROWS in the grass surrounding the first pool you encounter there. We also ran into about 120 G-W TEAL, 110 SHOVELERS, about 50 B-W TEAL, 2 WIGEON and 3 FEMALE-LOOKING Black/Mallards that turned out to be MOTTLED DUCKS. There were also HOODED MERGS, RUDDIES, BUFFLEHEADS, RING-NECKS and L. SCAUP. A Dickcissel had been located today day at the end of one of the bridges but we didn?t see it (near the parking lot?). We did find 4 ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLERS.

Merry Bros. Ponds produced a single flock of about 1000 DUCKS including about 950 RING-NECKS and about 40 L-SCAUP. The rest of the ducks were 3 Wigeon, 8 RUDDIES, 2 G-W TEAL and 5 HOODED MERGS. A short look at 2 SWALLOWS exiting the wetlands left the impression of ROUGH-WINGEDS.

Note that in about a day-and-a-half of surveys at the SRS (Aiken Co. only, so far) I have located 16+ HENSLOW'S SPARROWS, 7 in Carolina bays and the rest on power line transects. The search continues.

Cheers
Paul Champlin
New Ellenton, SC


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