Saturday, August 21, 2010

Shorebird Survey - 20Aug2010


Yesterday was the first time I surveyed the “round 2” areas at CRP and it was interesting. There was far less emergent vegetation than in the round 1 ponds and some of the new ponds are hardly flooded at all. This led to a surprising observation – it is much harder to count dowitchers in a moist field than in a flooded one since the dowitchers and the dirt clods are about the same size! I won’t bore you all with the counts but the only semi-unusual species was a cattle egret.

I will add a note of caution to those of you who will be monitoring the CRP ponds – the levee that runs along the south side of the B-6 paddies (026, 019, and 006) is very rough and, at one spot, very soft and damp. I would highly recommend that you park at the west end of that levee road and walk to the three observation points to do your survey. To do otherwise invites getting stuck.

No comments:

Post a Comment