Every summer, I search for new places around Austin to hike and look at birds and other wildlife. This summer, I stumbled upon The Hornsby Bend Bird Observatory, located at the City of Austin’s Biosolids Management Plant/Center for Environmental Research.

It’s right on a bend in the Colorado, and the combination of river and the treatment ponds draws a huge variety of birdlife such as this Black-necked Stilt.

There are trails along the river, and a road that winds around the ponds so you can walk or drive, which can be nice for bird watching since your car can be used as a blind, which is useful for observing more skittish birds like this Snowy Egret.

I’ve visited three times over the past few weeks, and have seen the following birds (♦’s by new ones):

• Northern Cardinal
• Black vulture
• Northern Mockingbird
• Little Blue Heron
• Barn Swallow
• Cliff Swallow
• Great-tailed Grackle
• Snowy Egret
• American Coot
• Spotted Sandpiper ♦
• White-eyed Vireo ♦
• Killdeer
• Black-necked Stilt ♦
• Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
• Red-winged Blackbird
• Brown-headed Cowbird ♦
• Mourning Dove
• Green Heron

In addition to these, I saw a few “mystery ducks” that looked like Blue-winged Teal, but not quite, as well as a bunch of “peeps” (small sandpipers) that I was unable to distinguish, lacking as I do the birding chops to distinguish between the Semi-palmated, Least, and Western Sandpipers. Oh, well, I guess that gives me a reason to go back.

When my Dad and I went last week, we saw huge flocks of Red-wings and Swallows as well as large numbers of Egrets and Little Blues. I can’t wait to see the birds that show up once migration begins.

It’s not all pretty birds, of course. There are pretty spiders like this graden spider also.

The spiders are good as there are very large flocks of gnats, flies and other bugs around those ponds. When we got back in the car to leave, it was like sitting in a plague of insects. But closing the car up in the heat for an hour while we stopped for lunch cooked them pretty well.

Last Friday, this little guy showed up in a small tree by the window. I knew he was a baby something, but R saw through that streaked breast right away and called him as a baby mockingbird. A few minutes later one of the adults showed up with a bug and fed it to him before flying away.

The young mocker sat in the bush, trying to stay balanced on the thin branches and chirping for another bug. Eventually, he fluttered over to the neighbor’s shrubs, which are thicker and offer better protection since, according to Kent Rylander’s Behavior of Texas Birds, mockingbirds leave the nest a week or so before they can really fly. The adults feed them and watch over them, chasing away jays, cats, and any other predators that may happen by.

Later, when walking the dogs, I saw the adult singing from a nearby tree while eliciting chirps from several sets of nearby bushes.

That afternoon, we watched as a pair of black-crested titmice led a family of newly-fledged youngsters around the yard, showing them where all the feeders are. I suppose it really was independence day.