Date: 11/2/25 8:15 am From: Joseph Neal <0000078cbd583d7c-dmarc-request...> Subject: Looking glass day on Beaver Lake
LOOKING GLASS DAY for fall birding on Beaver Lake in Northwest Arkansas City. Here’s what I submitted to eBird, including some photographs: https://ebird.org/checklist/S282230041. Flip Putthoff, Outdoors Editor for NWA Democrat Gazette, gave the Walleyes a day off from his expert fishing. Invited me aboard his bass boat that he turned for a few hours into a birding tour.
No wind, water smooth, blue sky with wavy clouds that reminded me of what my hair looked like when I was a kid, after mom gave it a good combing. Smooth gentle waves and just a tiny curl here and there. Everything so smooth surrounding hills with steadily reddening leaves reflecting perfection. Sugar Maple Bluff with rising gold and red fire was totally Fall.
Winter birds like Horned Grebes are coming in – we saw 85 or maybe 105 today. This year’s Cliff Swallow nests formed their perfect avian city on Red Bluff. They have migrated south now, but it is always a pleasure to see them nesting where they nested before the era of bridges and propbably before humans even arrived in the Ozarks. Overhead, a kettle of Turkey Vultures and a Bald Eagle 2 or maybe 3 years old, lord of all. We flush a few ducks, but other than a few Mallards … the diving ducks are still be on the way.
The Beav’s widest expanse is Rocky Branch. Usually when I go birding there, I’m looking across roughly 2-miles of water towards Lost Bridge on the lake’s north side. Straining to see anything way out in the middle, a mile away. What a treat deluxe aboard Flip’s boat, out in the middle, with the water birds, with Fall-in-the-Ozarks landscape encased like jewels in grandma’s wedding ring.
It was October 31, 2025, Halloween. Nothing scary to report from our trip.
