Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve 12/10/12

While my sweetie was back home in the Philippines attending the funeral of her father, I decided to get in one day of birding in Henderson.  Wanted to get out there early for the early morning activity, when the birds are just getting up from a night of sleep and are hungry.  But work pushed my departure back a couple of hours and I ended up seeing a lot of waterfowl in the middle of their mid-morning nap.  I did add a few birds to my life list though, so it was a pretty good day.

First bird to come across was this Costa's Hummingbird, sitting in a tree just outside the entrance building.  He just sat there and posed for a couple of minutes for me and a lady that was getting plenty of shots also.

After he took off I went down the path leading along the west side of the ponds and sat at a number of different benches along the way.  But, with the mid-morning slumber going on there wasn't much in the way of "swim-by" activity.  I did find a family of white-crowned sparrows busy foraging in the undergrowth of a patch of bushes.

My next life-list bird was the fairly common Abert's Towhee.  Though they are common and seem to be on everyone's checklists around here, these were the first I was able to visually identify myself.

Out on the far lake I saw about a dozen Buffleheads, but they were so far out that getting a decent photo was out of the question.  Everything came out a little blurred.  They were hanging with a gang of Northern Shovlers and some Ring-billed Gulls.

Continuing back to the north, through the middle of the complex, I came upon about a half dozen Black-tail Gnatcatchers, though I am wondering about that identification.  There are characteristics here that get me to thinking these may actually be Blue-grey Gnatcatchers, but previous listers are listing the former.

After leaving these gnatcatchers I started heading north again, starting to make my way back to the entrance building and parking lot.  I saw three Snowy Egrets that were looking for some tastees along the shore of one of the ponds.  These are some fairly skittish birds, because they don't want to have anything to do with someone walking along the trails and will take to flight rather quickly.  Only got one good shot of one of them on the wing.

Another life-list bird was this Green Heron.  I was very lucky to get this one because he was just doing a quick fly-by and heading to parts unknown in the northern part of the park.  With the photos that I got, there is one with a great reflection in the water that will make a great painting someday.

The last bird to get a good photo of was this Verdin.  She was very busy with building her nest, which is located about fifty feet from the entrance building and she stopped long enough to get one great shot.  Not a life-list bird, but beautiful none the less.

And now, time for the UPDATE:  After posting these photos to whatbird.com the answers have come back.  This first one is just your average White-crowned Sparrow, Junior model.  So nothing new for the life list there.

However, this next turned out to be quite new.  It is an Orange-crowned Warbler.  Oh yeah, I didn't see that one coming. 

Well, that's all for now.  So now these two UPOs (Unidentified Perching Objects) have been Identified.