I started off the morning birding along the woods at the Regency Boulevard retention ponds where I found Eastern Wood-Pewee and warblers that included Black-and-white, Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Black-throated Green, and this Blackburnian Warbler, which was a nice surprise.
My next surprise was in the north pond where I saw two Hooded Mergansers swimming together in addition to the Pied-billed Grebe.
The small cove where the two ponds meet held a Green-winged Teal, three Green Herons, and a Lesser Yellowlegs.
I scanned the south pond, which held both Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs. I checked the few swallows that were flying around and picked out another surprise, a Cliff Swallow, of which I got some fairly good photos.
Scanning the skies, I saw an Osprey along with Turkey and Black Vultures and a Red-tailed Hawk. I left Regency with a nice list of 37 species.
My next stop was at the West Gremar Road retention pond to see if the water level had dropped enough to create shorebird habitat. I was still too full for that, but the surprise find there was a Snow Goose among the many Canadas.
The adjacent field held about 20 Horned Larks, including this one that posed nicely for me.
It was getting close to noon and I was getting a little hungry. I thought about heading home but decided to make one last stop at the Hollo Road retention pond because that was one of the few ponds that had a water level favorable for shorebirds. It would provide my best surprise of the day. While scanning through both yellowlegs species, I came across a bird feeding like a dowitcher, but it didn't look like a dowitcher. The bird had a noticeable white eye line, a long bill with a slight bend at its tip, a scaly back, and greenish legs, which all pointed to it being a Stilt Sandpiper! It was occasionally being chased around by the yellowlegs, so I took a few quick photos and sent out a text alert about it.
Eventually, it came to the near side of the pond where I was able to get some better, yet distant, documentation photos of it, despite the nasty backlighting.
The last surprise came when a Peregrine Falcon came in and made a swooping pass at the Stilt Sandpiper and the Lesser Yellowlegs that it was with, just missing nabbing one of them! It eventually flew off to the southwest empty-handed, serving up a nice finish to my birding day.
