This morning brought cloudiness and a little light rain. Didn’t stop dog and me from making our usual rounds.
Spied a Mountain Cottontail. Amassed a list of a dozen bird species on the mountainside. Then, back home, a big flock of waxwings descended on the flowering trees in the yard.
Feels more like spring every day.
Grandeur Peak Area List Beginning at 8:30 a.m., I hiked several hundred feet up a mountain.
1. Northern Flicker 2. Song Sparrow* (v) 3. Eastern Towhee 4. Pine Siskin 5. Black-billed Magpie* 6. Woodhouse’s Scrub-jay* 7. Black-capped Chickadee* 8. American Robin* 9. House Finch* (v) 10. Dark-eyed Junco 11. Canada Goose 12. Red-tailed Hawk
Elsewhere
13. Eurasian Collared Dove 14. Downy Woodpecker (v) 15. Lesser Goldfinch (v) 16. European Starling 17. Cedar Waxwing
Mammals
Mountain Cottontail Mule Deer
(v) Voice only *Also elsewhere **Voice only elsewhere
Hazy sun first thing. Also elks. Right away I caught site of a herd of them on the far north summit where I saw the the other day. Then a half-dozen appeared on the near hillside as dog and I headed up the slope. Looked like two bulls chaperoning four females—the largest male in front, and a younger bull in back.
Not many birds on the hike itself, but elsewhere quite a few. Including my first Utah Cedar Waxwing in six months here (in a little ornamental tree at the post office). I heard it first, then accidentally set off my truck alarm scrambling for my camera. (Worth it.)
Grandeur Peak Area List Beginning at 10:00 a.m., I hiked a few hundred feet up the mountain.
Cool, breezy, sunny, birdy. What a lovely morning—complete with familiar voices. Birds were all over the place (young and old), so I wasn’t hurting for photographs.
We had ourselves the run of the hill this morning, oddly. Where were all the early Sunday morning hikers I’m accustomed to seeing? It was weird.
But that left more birds to pay attention to. A couple of minor oddities: Red-winged Blackbird in flight, and the voice of a (migrating?) Ruby-crowned kinglet. Many, many juveniles.
Dewy blueberries, too.
Beech Hill List Beginning at 7:15 a.m., I hiked the open trail.
Bird Report is an intermittent record of what's outside my window in Rockport, Maine, USA (44°08'N latitude, 69°06'W longitude), and vicinity. —Brian Willson
