Greetings All:
On 1 March 2016: 1 male Blue-winged Teal, 2 male Cinnamon Teals, 6
Redheads, 1 Greater Yellowlegs, and 1 Merlin at the Reese Center Playa.
On 5 March 2016, an unidentified hummingbird buzzed the yard. On 6 March
2016, a male Black-chinned Hummingbird was spotted at one of my feeders.
This is pretty early for the species to be in our region. So far as I
know, this was not an overwintering bird (I kept my feeders open all winter
and had no hummingbird sightings at all - just bugs and House Finches) and
I suspect it is just an 'early' arrival.
On 6 March 2016 a Barn Swallow started working the bees at my backyard
water feature. Again, this is a remarkably early sighting but our first
Tree Swallows of the season were reported from Floyd County on 29 February
2016 by Justin Bosler (very early) and our first Cave Swallow of the season
was reported from Lubbock County on 1 March 2016 (very early) by Anthony
Hewetson. The astonishingly mild winter - save for one particularly brutal
week - seems to be encouraging some movement.
Anthony 'Fat Tony' Hewetson; Lubbock