A Great Saturday Morning

I had the best Saturday morning today.  I had signed up for a bird walk at a local county park.  I didn't have high hopes for this walk.  Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees and woodpeckers is all I thought we would see.  Six of us gathered for this walk.  Our leader took us on the trails so I was glad I wore boots.  The weather was warm enough that I didn't need to wear a hat.  The sun actually felt warm and there wasn't any wind to speak of.  As we walked from the parking area toward the river we saw cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, and nuthatches.  Canadian geese flew over us.  Robins chirped in the trees but we could barely hear them because the snow was so loud under our feet.  The sun made the snow sparkle like millions of diamonds.  A northern shrike (!) posed at the top of a tree. That was cool.  I was glad I came now.  A few crows flew by.  Suddenly I heard that familiar call of the red shouldered hawk.  One sat on a power line pole and the other flew toward the river.  This park is only a couple miles north of my house.  Could this be MY red shouldered hawk?  We saw hairy, downy and pileated woodpeckers.  We were walking on top of the snow pack.  As we looked at the footprints of people who walked this way before us we could see that sometimes they broke through the icy shell.  Those holes were deep too - way past the knee.  I hoped I would stay on top of the snow shell.  We heard the trumpeter swans before we saw them.  Five swans flew right over our heads while two swans kept fighting for the lead position.

We walked along the path.  Our leader was taking us on a right turn when a woman in the group said, "I saw something with large wings glide into those trees!"  She said it with much excitement.  So we didn't go right, we went straight.  We walked for 10 minutes without seeing anything except some blue jays acting all agitated.  Then we came upon a barred owl sitting in a tree being dive bombed by blue jays.  He or she was awesome!!!!  As I watched the owl through my binoculars I could see the blue jays actually strike the owl on the head.  They would not leave it alone.  Blue jays are bossy birds.  A chickadee jumped from branch to branch within inches of the owl and didn't mind it being there.  We made sure everyone in the group could see the owl.  Then we let the photographer of the group go ahead and get a better picture.  As he moved forward the owl swiveled it's head between us and the photographer.  Then the owl let loose a spray of whitewash and leaned forward.  We knew it was ready to take off.  The owl flew to another tree thirty feet away and settled there.  We watched for another five minutes until we thought we'd leave the owl in peace.  Right next to the river I saw a bug slowly crawling across the snow.

A sign of spring!  A winged creature walking away from the river toward I don't know where or why.  You can see he is about to go across a human footprint.  Our leader showed me where the red shouldered hawks have their nest.  As we walked up the hill a big bird loudly took off and flew low in the trees.  It was a turkey!  Normally I see turkeys strolling, not flying.  We progressed to a prairie area.  The northern shrike was back.  We watched the shrike hunt.  The shrike stared at a spot from a tree.  It moved to another branch to stare at the same area.  Then it moved to another tree to see the same spot from a new angle.  We watched as the shrike flew down and sat on the ground for a minute.  The shrike came up empty footed; it must have missed.  In the distance we heard the sound of sand hill cranes.  As we walked back to the parking area we saw an immature bald eagle soaring while the pair of red shouldered hawks circled the sky with it.  We saw that the pussy willows are out. Some parts of the path were icy and difficult to walk across.  At one point I had a space of five feet of grass to walk across.  What a luxury to walk on grass that was not only silent but not slippery too.  One of the red shouldered hawks flew over us carrying red oak leaves in it's mouth - a definite sign of breeding behavior.  The last bird of the hike was a red bellied woodpecker.  We tried to see woodcock by gathering near a sunny hill side and playing the woodcock call on an iPad.  No luck with that technique.  I really enjoyed my morning.  The other people on the hike were enthusiastic and fun companions.  We had a long discussion about Grizzly Adams which was a television series in the 1970's.  We predicted that with the warm weather forecast for tomorrow the ice on the river would rise, break up, and flow away.  Bird watchers are fun people.