Yesterday, my friend, Megan Davis, had gone up to the Martins Creek PPL power plant area to try and find the Lapland Longspur that I saw along Depues Ferry Road on Tuesday. Instead of finding it, she instead found 3 Snow Buntings, so I drove up there to try and find them. When I got there, I found a group of around 60 Horned Larks and spotted a couple Snow Buntings in among them.
I also found the Lapland Longspur with them.
When some pickup trucks came by, they chased the group back into the field. With the white background, the birds were out in the open and easy to scan through. That's when I realized that there were NINE Snow Buntings and TWO Lapland Longspurs in the group! I took some photos, managing to get six of the nine Snow Buntings in one photo and both longspurs in a few others.
This photo shows the long 'spur' of the back toe, hence the reason for their name.
Eventually, one of the Snow Buntings came in real close, allowing me to get these great photos of it.
I also got some flight photos of both. They're a little blurry, but it's a real challenge to get any of either one.
Here's another flight photo of a Snow Bunting with a Horned Lark for comparison. Note the extensive amount of white on the face, in the tail, and especially in the wings of the Snow Bunting compared to the dark neck band, distinct facial pattern, and darker tail of the Horned Lark.
Other notables at that spot included a Common Raven and an American Tree Sparrow that came within 25 feet of my car.
I continued down Depues Ferry Road past Depues Road and found 4 White-crowned Sparrows (two adults and two immatures) along the road with Dark-eyed Juncos and Song Sparrows.
I very briefly saw a Yellow-rumped Warbler flitting around in the brush that only stuck around long enough for me to get these poor photos of it.
I stopped to check out the retention basin, which held 74 Ring-necked Ducks and a male scaup. I couldn't determine whether it was a Greater or a Lesser because it was sleeping with its head tucked in, and it was way too cold to stand around and wait for it to wake up. I had seen a male Greater there a couple days ago, so I'm assuming it was the same bird.
I went down to the boat launch to see what might be along the Delaware River. Paul Nale was there and showed me a Horned Grebe that was swimming and diving within 30 feet of the boat launch! It was totally unconcerned that we were taking its photo.
A Belted Kingfisher was perched in the tree above where the grebe was.
Paul also told me that he had seen a Killdeer fly upriver, but I never saw it. I had seen two there earlier in the month and wondered if they were still there despite the extreme cold temperatures, so he confirmed that at least one is still present. The river was mostly frozen with one narrow strip near the middle still flowing. Other notables seen from the boat launch included a Wild Turkey, and 5 Common Mergansers and 2 Hooded Mergansers among roughly 250 Canada Geese.
I left there and headed for the Nazareth Quarry. The Red-necked Grebe and the Red-throated Loon were still there. As usual at the quarry, long-distance documentation photos are usually all that you're going to get.
Other birds seen there included 12 Buffleheads, 9 Redheads, 3 Ring-necked Ducks, around 40 Ruddy Ducks, 10 Common Mergansers, 2 Hooded Mergansers, 13 American Coots, a Horned Grebe, and a Pied-billed Grebe.
I headed home after another day of good birds to warm up and check out my photos.
