Great Backyard Bird Count 2020: Day 3

Sunday – February 20, 2022 was Day 3 of the Great Backyard Bird Count. I did one long session from 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. in our field in Ringgold, Catoosa County, Georgia.

Here are the birds we counted:

Mourning Dove – 10
Red-bellied Woodpecker – 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 1 Female
Carolina Wren – 2
Eastern Bluebird – 1
Field Sparrow – 25
Dark-eyed Junco – 1
White-Throated Sparrow – 2
Song Sparrow – 1
Eastern Towhee – 10
Sparrow (unknown) – 20
Red-winged Blackbird – 2 (male and female)
Northern Cardinal – 30 (12 male, 18 female)

New Bird: Ruby-crowned Kinglet

We spent 30 minutes down by the Chickamauga Creek. It was incredibly quiet down there. Dave fell asleep on the beach. I wouldn’t have stayed there as long as I did, but I didn’t want to wake him up.

I sort of felt like it was an unproductive 30 minutes for birding because I saw only one bird. I couldn’t tell what it was, but took three pictures. Between the three photos, we were later able to identify that we had a brand new bird! She’s a female Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Dave said there’s a lesson in there somewhere … we may feel like we’re wasting our time sometimes, but the one thing we get from that time could be more significant than we expect.

Dave asleep on beach at Chickamauga Creek — Dave asleep on the beach by the Chickamauga Creek

Female Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. Female doesn’t have the shock of red on top of its head like the male. Very tiny bird.

Female Redwing Blackbird. Notice she doesn’t have red wings but has mottling.

White-throated Sparrow — White-Throated Sparrow: Note the signature white throat and the yellow above the eyes.

Cardinal Alley

We’ve been noticing a lot of birds between a big ditch we have and a couple rows of corn we left up for the deer to eat. Sunday, I parked my chair at the end of this space, put my camera on the motion setting and took pictures like crazy. There had to have been 40 birds in there. I spotted Eastern Towhee, White-Throated Sparrows, and Cardinals primarily. There were also a pair of Red-wing blackbirds that were up in a honey locust tree. The male flew away early but the female occasionally perched on that tree on the side of the ditch I was on. This was the first time I’ve been able to photograph a female Redwing Blackbird. Dave said they like the cattails that are growing in the ditch.

I had no idea how the photos I took would turn out. I shot a few hundred of them. Wading through them was like panning for gold. There were a lot of blurry photos and photos with no birds. But, amidst all that were some truly breath-taking ones.

Because of the abundance of cardinals, I call this spot, “Cardinal Alley.”

A Goal That Keeps On Giving

I would say several of these are the best photos I’ve ever taken in my life! And to think I set a goal a couple years ago to take a good cardinal photo as part of Leslie Householder’s Mindset training course. I’d already satisfied that goal shortly after setting it, but it still must be deeply rooted in my subconscious mind. I can’t resist photographing cardinals. You never know what you might set in motion with an inconsequential goal! To learn more about my experience with manifesting cardinals, convertibles and more, read this blog post.

For more of my birding photos, click here.