Birding at Three Creeks Park

We walked in Three Creeks Metro Park today for the first time. It was rainy and overcast, and today was the first home game for the Buckeyes so it was a good time to be out in a park. There weren't a lot of people on the trail. The park is very nice, but you hear the traffic noise from I-270.

We saw more than 20 species of birds on a four mile loop. The new ones for us included the semi-palmated sandpiper, ruby-crowned kinglet, and hairy woodpecker. The big adventure was to walk out on the mud flat of one of the ponds and become totally covered in mud. Emma thought that was great fun, but she did get a little cold while we stood in one spot to look at the sandpipers.

Here are a few pictures from this morning:


This wetland was along the Alum Creek trail. There were 13 Great Egrets and eight Great Blue Herons in this small pond along with Solitary Sandpipers, Semi-Palmated Sandpipers, Killdeers, and Mallard Ducks. We were covered in mud by the time we walked out and back to try to get a closer look at the birds on the mud flat.






This is a solitary sandpiper. We saw quite a few of these around the pond, so they weren't very solitary today.

















The fishing must have been pretty good to support 13 egrets and 8 great blue herons all at the same time.







We saw quite a few warblers we couldn't identify, but this bird is pretty clear when it appears - it's an Indigo Bunting, and it's one of our favorite birds to see. The picture isn't very good, but you can see the vibrant blue color it wears.
















We're always glad to see woodpeckers. This is the first Hairy woodpecker we've seen all season. It looks very similar to the downy woodpecker except it's larger and it lacks horizontal bar on the white tail feathers.