The morning started with a very heavy fog. !0 avid birders gathered to see what the morning would bring.  We moseyed around the entrance, taking in the superb landscaping that has been done.  Remarkable!!  There are so many nice features that have been added since our last visit.  
We started out toward the butterfly garden and encountered, too many to count,  House Wrens.  They seemed to be in every shrub along the path.  They popped up for us to get a good view and then bounced around back to the bottom and then up again. On our visit last year on Oct 6th, the dominant bird was the Palm Warbler.  The House Wrens seemed to be as plentiful this year.  All totaled there had to be well over 30 of them!  We didn't have many species, but it was a superb day to rediscover the park.  Our total was 28 species, but all enjoyed the trek along the Palatakaha River.  We observed that the river was running at a swift pace.  Coming out of the trail back to the meadow a mob of Common Grackles led us to believe that a hawk or owl was present.  But upon further observation, we came to the conclusion that it was just a mob of Common Grackles,  congregating. Trekking out into the meadow the surprise of the day was  Eastern and Western Kingbird.  The list of birds tallied are at this eBird link.

Lunch was at Oakwood BBQ and enjoyed by all who sat and reminisced the day. 

It is so good to be back "chasing" birds!  We had 19 avid participants which included a couple from England for the morning field trip to Wallace Brooks in Inverness. Great Blue, Little Blue, Green and Tri-colored Herons.  The Tri-colored Heron was chasing a white phase Little Blue. Limpkins were very audible in several areas around the lake. Red and White eyed Vireos. Two species of warbler,  Black & white and Palms. The entire list of birds can be viewed at this eBird link 

Great morning for our walk.  Cloudy. which made it a little difficult to ID the bird, but with many good birders; no problem. :)   We had 8 birders who were ready to work the trees. We spent quite some time just in the trees before entering the trail.  Lots of Swainson Thrushes, Veerys, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers. The FOS Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Four species of Woodpecker. 3 species of Vireo, warblers, Scarlet & Summer Tanagers and Indigo Buntings.  Thirty-one species for the count.  Not a bad morning for the weather conditions.  We went to lunch and learned it was Betsy Frank's birthday and she celebrated it with a candle adorned bowl of Rice Pudding!  On the way home, we checked out the retention pond at the mall and sadly saw that the path around has not been maintained.  Completely overgrown and very difficult to see where it started.  Also stopped at Lancelot north of ECO.  There we had a few more of the same birds that we had at ECO. The list of species for ECO can be seen at this link.