Seven PBCers met early this morning to head north to bird the Holland Landing sewage lagoons. The first two ponds had a few groups of shorebirds including Least, Spotted, and Semipalmated Sandpipers, Black-bellied Plover, Killdeer and Lesser Yellowlegs. Some of the waterfowl present included Mallards and Blue-winged Teal. Other birds heard or seen in the area included Bonaparte’s Gull, Belted Kingfisher, Great-cr. Flycatcher, Eastern Pewee, White-br. Nuthatch, and Black-capped Chickadee. A few people went further to the last or 4th lagoon and spotted something different (thanks Heather!), a closer look revealed that it was a Red-necked Phalarope, foraging with some Greater Yellowlegs not far from the shoreline. At the south end of this lagoon were many more shorebirds than we had seen in the first two lagoons but we had a tight timeline and were unable to stay and look for more.
From here we moved west to the Schomberg sewage lagoons where we quickly added Solitary Sandpiper, Wilson’s Snipe, and Short-billed Dowitcher to the shorebird list for the day. We finished the morning with a total of 11 shorebird species with the furthest or third lagoon at Schomberg also having the most shorebird numbers as it had the lowest water levels of the three. But the birding highlight of this location was an albino or partial albino Bank Swallow flying around the first lagoon. It was fairly conspicuous as it was chased on occasion by a few other individual Bank Swallows as they foraged and flew around close to the near shoreline. Altogether we had 4 different swallow species for the day before we headed home early just before noon after a pleasant morning of birding.
