Of Kittyhawks, Catbirds, and Near Misses

We see this particularl Rough-legged Hawk nearly every day
I feel sorry for it, as it is constantly mobbed by as many as 150 crows at a time.

Everyone has been seeing the Short-eared Owl up near Fort Plain the past couple of weeks. Or if not everyone, several folks. But not us. We have been wandering around up there since last year, with only one sighting and although I was sure, I was not that sure, so we didn't count it. Today we were parked where it was seen yesterday when a perfect bird flew by, right shape, right size....wrong color darn it...it was a female Northern Harrier. I looked at it really, really hard trying to make it into the bird we were looking for, but it was a NOHA just the same.

A couple of the 40 or so Common Redpolls we found today.
Their calls are very musical

So we missed again today, although we did get first of the year Common Redpolls, as well as seeing a lot of nice raptors so it wasn't a complete loss.

Eastern Bluebird

What we do see all over, especially around farms, both Amish and English, are kittyhawks. These are also sometimes known as catbirds. They look exactly like exciting raptors huddled over prey, in the winter gloomy harvested fields. They are about the size of a Red-tailed Hawk, or maybe even a Rough-legged Hawk. 

Amish church day today

We spin around, stop, roll down the windows, point the Canon, and dang! another cat. And another cat. And another. We are getting used to getting fooled. We even saw an orange kittyhawk today, although that one was obviously notabird (the woods are full of notabirds, ranging from snow-covered squirrel nests to hunks of old tent caterpillar junkage). We stop for a lot of them too. Thank goodness for good binoculars or we would probably be counting things that aren't exactly the right things.

Holy Beaver! There were four of them in a tiny bit of open water near our owl quest area

Anyhow, as they say, a bad day birding is better than a good day looking out the window, wishing you were birding. Finding the redpolls make this far from a bad day. I truly did not expect any year birds this late...unless of course we found the owl. 

Hope you all are having fun too.