After a nice break at home for the holidays, it was tough going back to work
today. Since my office is so close to the Silver Spring WW Crossbill, I tried
looking for it at lunchtime from about 12-12:50. There was a lot of feeder
activity and nice variety of birds in the vicinity but the crossbill did not show
up. Oh well, the weather was great! No one else was out looking, and I don't
know if anyone has seen it lately.
At home last week, I had a great variety of birds and have a nice start to my
annual yard list. Since it was so mild yesterday, on a hunch I went out to our
yard's edge to watch the border along the fields hoping to see a woodcock.
Standing there for 20 minutes, I picked up three more species for the year!
All were pretty fun observations:
The first was a Winter Wren blasting away with its impressive song; this song
never fails to amaze me. About 5 minutes later I heard a bunch of thrashing
around in the large evergreen (concolor fir) I was standing next to. It is one
of several favored dove roosts here (also for Juncos and White-throated
Sparrows). However, an adult male Cooper's Hawk emerged from it, oblivious
of me, and perched within 50 feet of me. I watched it and wondered why it
didn't leave. When the next dove came in to roost, the hawk waited until the
dove was in "landing mode", and the COHA then attempted to nail it. It was
unsuccesssful, but undeterred. I watched it try this several times, and was
amazed because I don't think it was by chance. Since a dove is a large and
very agile and fast quarry, I think this adult bird learned how to do this, and it
was simply a matter of time before it could get a fat meal. And to my surprise
(sort of) at the very last light of dusk, I also had two American Woodcocks fly
past me together, at very close range both to each other and to myself. I
heard no vocalizations from them and they only made one pass, so I don't
know what they were up to or where they went. It was a great end to a
great holiday season!
Cheers-
Jeff Shenot
Croom MD
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