Greetings All:
I made the right call to take time off to get my remaining four BBSs done
... as yesterday would have been one weekend day lost and one never wants
to count on the last weekend of the period (it is too close to the start of
our 'monsoon' season.
At any rate, I completed the Floydada BBS on 17 June 2017 - though a few
patches of dirt road were either sticky or rutted from the rains that had
fallen earlier in the week. This route starts at a point north of Floydada
runs east almost to the Floyd/Motley County line, turns south along FM 28,
and then turns west - back towards Floydada - on FM 232.
Conditions were lush and enough time had elapsed since the last set of
rains for a rebound in playa activity, making for good butterfly and herp
diversity though numbers still seem a tad low. Birds and mammals were
everywhere - with the highlight being a Vesper Sparrow, in high breeding
plumage, vigorously singing from atop a fence line.
All in all, I tallied:
1 Juvenal's Duskywings
2 Orange Skipperlings
4 Sachems
5 Black Swallowtails
51 Checkered Whites
10 Orange Sulphurs
1 Southern Dogface
1 Lyside Sulphur
1 Sleepy Orange
4 Dainty Sulphurs
2 Monarchs
2 Queens
1 Variegated Fritillary
3 Bordered Patches
1 Vesta Crescent
2 Phaon Crescents
2 Pearl Crescents
1 Common Buckeye
1 Red Admiral
1 Goatweed Leafwing
hundreds of toads/toadlets in playas
hundreds of spadefoots/spadefootlets in playas
2 Plains Leopard Frogs
2 Gopher Snakes
1 Prairie Rattlesnake
2 Gadwalls
5 Mallards
2 Northern Pintails
28 Northern Bobwhites
4 Ring-necked Pheasants
1 Pied-billed Grebe
1 Eurasian Collared Dove
89 Mourning Doves
9 Common Nighthawks
5 American Coots
2 Black-necked Stilts
8 American Avocets
8 Killdeers
1 Great Blue Heron
2 Cattle Egrets
3 Black-crowned Night Herons
2 White-faced Ibises
7 Swainson's Hawks
11 Burrowing Owls
2 Say's Phoebes
59 Western Kingbirds
7 Scissor-tailed Flycatchers
1 Loggerhead Shrike
5 Chihuahuan Ravens
2 Common Ravens
65 Horned Larks
6 Cliff Swallows
5 Cave Swallows
28 Barn Swallows
1 Bewick's Wren
1 Curve-billed Thrasher
6 Northern Mockingbirds
9 House Sparrows
1 House Finch
2 Common Yellowthroats
12 Cassin's Sparrows
1 Vesper Sparrow
22 Lark Sparrows
40 Grasshopper Sparrows
3 Blue Grosbeaks
38 Dickcissels
91 Red-winged Blackbirds
5 Eastern Meadowlarks
78 Western Meadowlarks
3 Common Grackles
31 Great-tailed Grackles
1 Brown-headed Cowbird
3 Bullock's Orioles
17 Black-tailed Jackrabbits
9 Desert Cottontails
10 Black-tailed Prairie Dogs
1 Hispid Cotton Rat
1 Coyote
Anthony 'Fat Tony' Hewetson; Lubbock
