PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

first breeding of gray kingbirds in louisiana

2003-07-09 - 6:46 p.m.

About the house and repairs -- nothing yet. They hope to get with us on Friday. Someone did show up and remove the hot tub and other large debris from the front of the house.

This morning D. and I went to see the Gray Kingbirds in the scrub behind the Army Reserve Building in the Lakefront Arena area. As far as anyone seems to know right now, this is the first breeding record for Gray Kingbirds in Louisiana. We found them without too much difficulty and some other good birds as well.

Here's the list. It is not in any kind of taxonomic order, just in the order we saw them:

1. Northern Mockingbird
2. Common Grackle
3. Rock Dove
4. European Starling
5. Laughing Gull
6. Loggerhead Shrike
7. Blue Jay
8. American Crow
9. Black-Necked Stilt, with fledglings
10. White Ibis
11. Purple Martin
12. Mourning Dove
13. GRAY KINGBIRD, adult with two fledglings
14. Great Egret
15. Tri-Colored Heron
16. Wilson's Phalarope, juvenile
17. Mallard
18. Red-Shouldered Hawk
19. Eastern Kingbird, with fledgling

The Wilson's Phalarope seems to be an early fall migrant, but maybe time is just passing faster than I realize. I can't get to my copy of Lowery right now to see what he says about it.

By 9:30, it was extremely hot. We talked about checking the palm trees for Monk Parakeets but didn't actually do it. D. took his car to get some satellite radio system installed, and we walked over to Clearview Mall, where we had lunch at Serrano's, which had an extensive tequila menu. Afterward, we went to see 28 Days Later.... Later, we went to meet BF at Border's. I saw Gore Vidal's Messiah, and since years ago I had been told that if I ever ran across that book I should read it, I went ahead and bought it. It's from 1954 and at first glance looks like a forerunner to Strieber and Kunetka's Nature's End.

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