With clear blue skies and not a cloud in sight the hawk watching was always going to be challenging. As it was you can substitute challenging to dire. I gave it a few hours and then left it to the dedicated team of counters (😆) to search the skies for migrant birds. Great job Guy's.
This Catbird was meowing from the Indian Pokeweed (id'ed using my super duper iPhone Plant App).
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| Gray Catbird |
In our woodland last night it was 36f, just down the road in the fields it was white with frost. It's too early! I checked only last week in the Farmers Almanac what the first frost date was for this area and it said October 10th.
Just for giggles I found these Horned Lark images from a couple of years ago. I wonder when we're going to get the first snowfall then the Horned Larks will be easy to find.
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| Horned Lark |
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| Horned Lark |
It looked promising conditions for a few Broad-winged Hawks yesterday after so I headed up after lunch. I'd missed the main flight but still saw quite a few along with a nice supporting cast of Bald Eagles and a nice close Merlin buzzing the plastic Owl. What was really nice was a very low flyover by a couple of Maryland Air National Guard A10 Thunderbolt II Warthog's. I missed the first pass because I wasn't ready and they were so close over the HawkWatch. I got this shot a while later though when they were further out.
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| A10 Thunderbolt II |
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| Turkey Vulture |
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| Black Vulture |
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| American Kestrel with grasshopper lunch. |
Apart from the Ipswich Sparrow which is a sub species of Savannah Sparrow I've photographed the rest in the back yard. From memory I've also seen White-crowned, Field and American Tree Sparrows in the yard but not very often and only once in the case of the Field Sparrow.
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| White-throated Sparrow |
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| Song Sparrow |
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| Savannah Sparrow |
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| Ipswich Sparrow |
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| Dark-eyed Junco |
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| Chipping Sparrow |
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| Lincoln's Sparrow |
