Christmas bird count

Today was our area National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. We have participated for many years and have a small territory in the Johnstown area. This year rain was predicted and we were pretty gloomy about our prospects. However, almost as soon as we set out we started seeing a lot of birds. The woods were alive with the musical calls of chickadees and the strident shouts of gangs of blue jays. We saw juncos, tree sparrows, mourning doves and turkeys. Some years we don't see any cardinals at all, but this year we saw four. Oddly we only saw one house sparrow and very few starlings or pigeons. Usually they are numerous.

One of the high points of the day was startling a female harrier out of a tree and getting to watch her hunt. She flew with the typical low, teetering marsh hawk pattern over a golden field of left over hay, mixed with dark brushy areas, along the edge of an evergreen woods. It took her three hits, but she finally caught some kind of rodent, I am guessing a large vole, and flew across the road to land not far away to eat it. Suddenly a red-tailed hawk swooped out of nowhere and tried to steal her lunch. She was faster though and got away with it safely. The red tail retreated to a nearby snag and fluffed his feathers in irritation.

We also saw well over a hundred ring billed gulls, which although common in summer or down on the river where we live, are not generally seen in large numbers in our count area. Because of the weather and the hideous holiday shopping traffic, we didn't see either the number of species or the volume of birds that is normal, but we had many nice experiences.

In one woody swamp along a seasonal use road we sat for a few minutes in the center of a huge flock of tree sparrows. We called it thirty, but there were surely many more than we actually saw as we were surrounded by the flock. Their calls were so musical it was like sitting in the center of a symphony of tiny tinkling chimes and bells.

One of the not so high points of the day was seeing what I am almost, but not quite, positive was a goshawk. It flew up right next to the car in a very high traffic area. I got a very good but fleeting look, and it was impossible to go back and look again, so I didn't claim it. The second low point was looking really, really silly as we drove along that same little dirt road. We kept hearing the two note chirp of feeding chickadees and eagerly scanning the woods for them. None there. We looked. And looked. And drove. And looked some more. Lots of chirps. No birds. Suddenly we realized that the sound was remarkably rhythmic.....because it was a squeaky wheel on the truck.
Oh, well, you can't win them all. We had a great day, saw lots of family and enough good birds to make it worth the driving and peering through binoculars.