This month we completed “Our Year of Birding at Ford’s Pond.” We were looking over the pictures that were taken during these monthly field trips, and what an amazing adventure we had. Our goal was to get people that are not necessarily birders, to experience the wonder of seeing birds up close.  We definitely did that. As the year progressed the number of participants increased. Some participants came back for more walks and some folks became UVAS members and now volunteer with us as well!

This month we had 18 participants and saw 29 species of birds. Waterfowl were in non-breeding plumage which made them difficult at times to identify or differentiate the gender of the same species. The largest group of birds were the Northern Shovelers. We counted 100 of them but there were probably many more in the western end of the pond that we didn’t get to. Another highlight this month was the continuation of a good-sized flock of Cedar Waxwings close at hand in the trees along the northern side of the pond. (See Lucas Lile’s ebird checklist below!)

September 19^th through October 19^th is the highest time period of the Fall Bird Migration. We encourage you to go to https://birdcast.info/ during this time to see how many birds are flying over Douglas County each night. Scroll down a tad to the Migration Dashboard and put in Douglas County, Oregon.  As an example, on the night of September 19^th there were 345,100 birds flying over us. The birds take off 30-45 minutes after sunset with the greatest number of birds in flight is at 3 am before coming down to feed and rest at 6 am.

We also encourage you to decrease your light usage, both indoors and out, during this time period at night. With our increased light pollution, birds have difficulty seeing the stars and become disorientated and fly into windows.

Thank you to volunteers Stacy Burleigh, Tracy Maxwell, Lucas Liles, Bill and Nancy Fuller and Donna Prchal for making this field trip happen!

Our next two planned Bird field trips at Ford’s Pond will be October 12th and November 9th. Both begin at 9 am.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S195287267

See more pictures below.

All pictures are a sample from all the monthly field trips.

A big thank you to Madrone Ruggiero, Mark Hamm, Liz Gayner and Matt Hunter for their help co-leading field trips.

People pictures by Tracy Maxwell. Landscapes by Stacy Burleigh. Canada Geese, and Yellow-rumped Warbler by Matt Hunter. Female Red-winged Blackbird by Liz Gayner. Red-necked Phalaropes by Lucas Liles.