Twenty HAS members joined our guide Steve Gross on Saturday, November 22 for our field trip to the Spring Creek Greenway Parks. We started at Jesse Jones Park and got an update on the status of the Spring Creek Greenway project from Mike Howlett who is a naturalist with Harris County Precinct 4 at Jones Park. Steve then led us on a tour of the Cypress Boardwalk area of Jones Park. Although we enjoyed sunny skies and cool temperatures, the bird activity was below normal. We did manage to find a drake Wood Duck and White-throated Sparrows, along with the expected chickadees, titmouse and kinglets. We also saw some of the trail and foot bridge damage caused by Hurricane Ike. We then drove to the Peckinpaugh Preserve in Montgomery County. This small preserve on Spring Creek was created by the efforts of the Legacy Land Trust and includes 15 acres donated by Houston Audubon. The trail damage at this site from the hurricane was especially bad and we were only able to hike a short distance into the Preserve. We did find Pied-billed Grebes and a Phoebe among other expected birds. We next visited the Montgomery County Preserve near the Woodlands. We shared the preserve with a group of school children, which also kept our bird list below normal. We did add Blue-headed Vireo and an unidentified Accipter here and finished the morning with about 33 bird species on our list.

Steve Gross tells the group about likely Jones Park birds.
Photo courtesy of Bill Saulmon