Date: 12/23/25 1:26 pm From: Geoffrey Hill via groups.io <hillgee...> Subject: [ALbirds] Report on the Eufaula CBC
Hello Alabama birders,
For the 2025 Eufaula CBC, Eric Soehren and I covered the Alabama side of the count circle. We met at 530am and drove into the Kennedy Unit, stopping to play Eastern Screech-Owl and Barred Owl calls along the way. We couldn’t get either species to answer our playbacks but we did hear a Great Horned Owl in the distance. We did much better with rails, getting Sora, Virginia Rail, King Rail, and Common Gallinule to call before daybreak. As dawn broke, we were disappointed to see no ducks in the impoundments formed by the dykes of the Kennedy Unit. With some effort we located two Hooded Mergansers—that’s it. There was one flock of scaup out in Lake Eufaula and a few Canvasbacks flew past, but the lack of ducks in the marshes created by the Kennedy Unit dykes was a harbinger of the near total lack of ducks on the refuge—Kennedy Unit, Houston and Uplands Units, or anywhere else. Eufaula NWR was established in the 1964 largely to provide habitat for wintering waterfowl and in its heyday in the 1980s it hosted tens of thousands of ducks and geese and hundreds of Sandhill Cranes. It is now virtually duckless. Eric and I did not record a Canada Goose until we traveled outside the refuge and found a small flock on a private pond that we are granted permission to visit—the duck situation at Eufaula is that bad. It is a duck refuge with no ducks.
Waterfowl aside, we had a nice day tallying songbirds and marsh birds. Fifteen minutes after sunrise, as we were sorting through songbirds, I played a Barred Owl tape, and a Barred Owl flew in and sat 30 feet from us. It stayed for the next 30 minutes as we looked at songbirds. For the first time in the history of the Eufaula count, we had a Glossy Ibis. We also had White Ibis and White Pelican. We found some of the scarce songbirds we always look for: Black-and-white Warbler, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, and Gray Catbird. Overall, though, the cool breezy weather seemed to dampened bird activity. Some typically easy-to-find species were harder than usual. We didn’t record a Downy Woodpecker until after noon, and by that time we were actively looking for them.
All-in-all it was a fun day out but with lower numbers of total birds and fewer species than we’ve recorded on recent Eufuala Counts.
Happy Holidays to everyone. Geoff Hill, Auburn
