[tn-bird] sewage treatment plant-Memphis and Callis Creek Cutoff-Germantown

From: Linda Kuczwanski <kuczwanski@xxxxxxxx>
To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 16:53:28 -0500
Today my friend Kay Leatherwood and I visited the sewage treatment plant
on Plant Rd in Memphis.  I think that this is the area that Jeff Wilson
told me was Ensley Bottoms or the pits; please correct me if I'm wrong. 
The ponds that are behind the truck loading area, past the "authorized
personnel only sign" in the NW corner nearest the golf course have an
island where the black-necked stilts nested last year.  This year they
have drained and cleared that pond and the one east of it.  That far
eastern road has also been cleared but if you travel to where the road is
still overgrown and rutty, there are pectoral sandpipers.  We also
believed we saw willets there, although I had forgotton my spotting
scope, but they appeared to be almost twice the length of the pectoral
sandpipers and had a bill that was nearly twice as long.  They appeared
to have similar color patterns compared to the pectorals, with a little
bit of white around the eye, brownish mottled feathers on the wings and
white underneath the tail.  They had plainer and grayer heads and dark
legs compared to the browner streaked heads and yellow legs of the
pectoral sandpipers. I never got a good look at their breasts or the
black-and-white wing pattern they are supposed to have and I am too
novice a birder to swear they were willets but I mention this in case
some better birder wants to go have a look at them.  Happy birding! 

On another habitat-change note, at the corner of Germantown Road and
Callis Creek Cuttoff (a little unmarked road that runs between Germantown
Road and Hacks Crossing where it turns into Tournament Drive) is a field
that used to be regularly used as a polo field. It has apparently been
sold, as the fence has been removed and there were trucks going all over
the polo field.  The property behind it includes several fenced fields
with five horses, a couple of lakes and someone's home, but none of this
can be seen, even though it is bounded by the interstate 385 on one side
and Callis Creek Cuttoff on the other.  The area is overgrown enough that
there are regularly bluebirds and rufous-sided towhee.  Last week I saw
my first white-throated sparrow there.  The area is almost certain to
become the next apartment-encrusted natural wasteland that so much of
east Memphis is becoming. Mostly car-travelling birders like me who live
near east Memphis may have but a short while to savor this last little
oasis. 

Linda Kuczwanski
Memphis, TN 


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[tn-bird] sewage treatment plant-Memphis and Callis Creek Cutoff-Germantown

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