What we saw

Yesterday was simply fantastic for bird counting, what with it being a warm day with a big storm predicted for today. The birds knew bad weather is coming and they were out in droves.The only downside was hideous holiday traffic, with at least one serious car accident that we passed. Before my counting partner had even arrived I walked out behind my parents' house to count the mourning doves, blue jays and gold finches that were just waking up there. The binoculars I trained on the Norway spruces that line the boundary between their yard and the neighbor's picked out a brown lump that clearly wasn't a mourning dove. It was plainly a small hawk, who obligingly gave me a good look at her tail before flying away, indignant at being driven out of her sunning spot-she was a sharp shinned hawk.

We also saw several red tails and a kestrel, neither uncommon, but often hard to track down on count day. During our first four roads we saw a large flock of snow buntings, (actually in a field less than half a mile from the folk's house) a flock of well over 95 crows, although they moved too much for Alan to count any higher for sure, some turkeys (just yards down the road from the snow buntings). (Not to mention lots of other birds.)

As time went on, pretty near all the normal species were represented, chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, woodpeckers, both downy and pileated (although not a single hairy this year) one grackle, which seems an unlikely critter for this season, but I saw a cowbird just last week, so I guess not all the black birds have migrated, lots of blue jays, tree sparrows, hoards of starlings, rock doves (which are pigeons all the rest of the year) a handful of house sparrows, one house finch, etc. etc. Oh, and mallard ducks, Canada geese and a bunch of small, brown fast fliers that were probably teal, but too far away to be positive.

Then perhaps an hour and a half into the count I saw a very bright, white, something that was not a lump of snow in a snowy tree right behind a house in our territory. We stopped the car, because it just looked like "something". It was hawk-shaped, but glaringly the wrong color. I could not believe my eyes when I trained my binoculars on it. It was a snowy owl, all tucked up among the bunches of snow piled on some oak leaves that still clung to the branches. It was a treat for my brother, niece Tawny and Alan who had never seen one before. We sat quite a while watching it and went back in the afternoon to try for a photo, but alas it was gone. However, a great blue heron flapped slowly by just down the road and gave my young nephew, Kegan, his first big "ooh ahh" bird of his counting history.

All in all I think everybody had a lot of fun. It was great to have Alan and Tawny, both 17, show themselves to have learned to be great bird spotters over the years. It takes a few years for the kids to learn to pick out roosting hawks and distant turkeys from among the brown and tangled trees and bushes that line the roadsides, but these two really have "the eye" now. Tawny picked out one of our red tails from a grapevine-draped elm tree in a small woods, where I certainly never would have spotted it. On the downside, I had to drive for a while for the first time, having always been a spotter in the past. My poor brother worked all night, then drove home and came to the count. He reached his limit in late morning so the boys and I did the afternoon. Spotting is a blast, like treasure hunting in the sky. Driving, especially three days before Christmas is ugly! People don't like folks who drive slowly with their flashers on, staring at trees. They express their displeasure...trust me. I have a new appreciation for my dad, my next younger brother, and my baby brother, who have served as drivers over the years (baby brother is doing it these days). It is hard and thankless and a lot less fun than being the one staring into the tree and hollering out, "Stop, it's an ooh ahh bird!"