Date: 12/20/24 7:47 am From: CK Franklin <meshoppen...> Subject: Clark County-Arkadelphia
The hubs and I have not seen Sandhill Cranes in Arkansas for a while now so we went off to Clark County yesterday to find them.
Before we went, I looked at our county list on eBird & was surprised & somewhat confused that our county list was less than adequate. Dottie Boyles pointed out most ASCA field trips to Lake DeGray occur on the north shore which is in Hot Spring County. Turns out our only real birding trip to Clark County was to the oxidation ponds back in 2008. My birding focus, especially in winter, tends toward underbirded areas of the near Delta and not so much west of Little Rock. That is the only feasible explanation of why Clark was on my list of neglected counties.
Now that the hubs & I have graduated into the ranks of older birders, we tend to bird from the car. We have discovered that sitting quietly & waiting in any given spot yields nearly as many birds as long noisy hikes through the bushes. A trip through the Alcoa Bottoms is a good car destination without too much traffic once you are away from the industrial area in Gum Springs.
Although we made several passes through the area where the Sandhills had been reported, we did not locate them. There is a large amount of habitat along the field margins that would make them less visible even with a scope. We will probably go back at least once more if more sightings occur. Since much of Halsey Road runs through a swamp, especially toward the Gum Spring's end, driving the whole road is a dry period expedition. In wet periods, the Arkadelphia access is a better choice.
We had a pleasant, sunny day of birding. We added 24 species to our county list. Only 22 more until the magic number of 100. We will go back and investigate some other habitats we did not have time to investigate. We had a very late lunch at El Parian. Our last new species of the day was Great-tailed Grackles at the Pilot Truck Stop at the first Arkadelphia exit at about 4:30p. They were not present earlier in the day.
We got back to Little Rock as darkness fell across the landscape.
