 OK.
I tried to be productive and conscientious today doing
all the errands, chores, tasks, and goals (wait, can you
do a goal?) that got sidetracked by the blizzard or the
driving around looking for someplace to put the car until
they finally came to plow the parking lot at 2:45 PM. But
once I'd made a gazillion phone calls, taken out a
zillion bags of trash, dropped a zillion newsletters off
at a zillion printers... no, wait... I exaggerate...
Anyway, after I dropped the newsletter off at the printer
I could resist no longer the warm weather and blue sky.
OK, so there weren't a whole lot of
birds around the refuge to be observed, but three of them
were short eared owls, one of whom posed for photos on
signs, chunks of ice, tree limbs, and the poles where
they hang the purple martin houses. I half expected it to
perch on the hood of my car. I would have had to work
very hard not to see a short eared today!
And in the "my goodness tree
sparrows are really small" department: I was watching a
tree sparrow peck at a huge brown slab of something
caught on a branch. I was puzzled as to what it could be.
From my viewing angle it looked kind of tubular so I
thought maybe it was a piece of a branch from another
tree that had fallen and gotten snagged. The sparrow kept
at it for quite some time. When the sparrow finally left,
I put down the binoculars and strolled over for a closer
look. The huge object was a slice of wheat bread!
Still on the subject of sparrows, I
was reading an article in Birder's World this
afternoon about white-throated sparrows (who apparently
only say "Old-Sam-Peabody,Peabody Peabody" in
Massachusetts) and came across the interesting info that
the species that they flock together with in winter vary
by region. In the southeast they supposedly flock with
eastern towhees, chipping sparrows, vesper sparrows,
dark-eye juncos (to whom they are closely related), and
American pipits. Alas there was no list for the northeast
(all the other examples were for the west) so I don't
know whether the association with tree sparrows and
black-capped chickadees I've been observing this winter
is usual or unusual for our local white-throated
sparrows. This also reminded me that I haven't seen a
single dark-eyed junco on the refuge this winter. There
are plenty of them inland, just not out at the margins of
the universe, umm, coast.
SEOW is the banding code for short
eared owl.
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Today's Bird
Sightings
Plum Island
Canada goose (28)
American black duck (8)
herring gull (didn't count 'em)
rock dove (didn't count them either)
starling (why count them?)
short eared owl (3)
American tree sparrow (8)
cardinal (1)
Today's Reading
Winter World by Bernd Heinrich
This Year's Reading
2003
Book List
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