April 9th

Spent about 3 glorious hours outside today. It seems like summer is here!

Had several very exciting spots in the arb. I had planned to only check out the ponds in the arb, on the off-chance of seeing more fancy ducks, however I got distracted by:

female downy woodpecker (small beak!)

red-bellied woodpecker (I love the call of this bird. Seriously sounds like a dinosaur. Something about it sounds so wild, every time I'm like "what the hell is that?!?")

red squirrel scaring two blue jays

beautiful male cardinals making his mating face, with the hair tuft haha. I believe he scored since a female followed him across the lake...

three golden crowned kinglets! A new species for me. I had seen these little birds the other day when I was going for a run and was very frustrated not to have gotten a good look at them. However I saw them again today! And it took my a good half hour to catch them in my binoculars. They are so small and quite zippy. But, I finally did. Very satisfying.

3 American Crows foraging together. I love how they are social birds.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker. Another new species for me. One of the most beautiful birds I've ever seen. His colors were so bright. I loved his red face, contrasted with the black chest mark and the yellow. This one was very yellow, which was nice. I am very happy to have identified one. I feel that I have finally worked out my native woodpecker distinctions, which I am proud of.

Next time I will try to make it to the reservoir, because there is an intriguing marshy area where I will probably get good looks at amphibians.

As a N.B. on the eighth I saw a hawk being harassed by a crow. Very cool, but I still do not know my hawks well enough to have gotten an id. I also did not have my binoculars, though the hawk did fly only about thirty feet from me. I have seen this individual before, I feel. He is rather light colored.... Maybe another time

Posted on April 10, 2013 09:12 PM by jane_c