With the wonderful weather today;  I had to get out of the office and wander
the trails!  Walking Darke County Parks' Shawnee Prairie Preserve near
Greenville<http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&geocode=&q=darke+county+parks&near=&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=52.505328,78.75&ie=UTF8&ll=37.579413,-95.712891&spn=52.209875,78.75&z=4&iwloc=G>,
it was obviously one of the first warm days!  There was a LOT of activity,
even in the afternoon!  In addition to many bird species, lots of mammals
and reptiles were out and about as well.  Spotted a raccoon on a tree
limb, mourning
cloak butterflies, a muskrat enjoying a snack and many garter snakes.

On the birding side of things, very few of the 'winter'  birds were to be
found, although we still have many Juncos (who are starting to sing).  The
Phoebes are very active, checking out their nesting sites from last year.  I
saw at least 4 bickering over nesting locations.  And while not a "true"
SPRING warbler, I did have a brilliantly colored Yellow-rumped gleaning insects
just off the trail!!  Can't wait for the 'rest' of them to show up!

See below for the full list.  Happy Birding to all!

Location:     DCP - Shawnee Prairie Preserve
Observation date:     4/5/08
Number of species:     31

Canada Goose
Mallard
Turkey Vulture
Red-tailed Hawk
Mourning Dove
Belted Kingfisher
Northern Flicker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Eastern Phoebe
Blue Jay
American Crow
Carolina Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Carolina Wren
American Robin
European Starling
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Eastern Towhee
Field Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird
Brown-headed Cowbird
House Sparrow

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)

--
Robb Clifford
- Naturalist -

Darke County Parks
www.darkecountyparks.org

"We need another and a wiser, and perhaps a more mystical concept of
animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice,
man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge
and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We
patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having
taken a form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err.
For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more
complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions
of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall
never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other
nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners
of the splendor and travail of the earth."
-Outermost House by Henry Beston-

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