Yesterday afternoon I found myself on the roof shovelling away (hopefully the last time this season).
Midway through the drift, I heard what I first thought was an American Robin vocalizing and then, I decided the sounds were some high pitched Blue Jay-ian mimicry. The song was occasional squeaky phrases and had the cadence of a Brown Thrasher, It continued intermittently for at least 10 minutes and caused me to pause to listen repeatedly.
Eventually, I abandoned my shovel, climbed down the ladder, retrieved my binoculars and hunted down the bird-- an adult Northern Shrike tee'ed up on one of my neighbor's Tamarack trees. I suspect it was a northbound bird.
-- Midway through the drift, I heard what I first thought was an American Robin vocalizing and then, I decided the sounds were some high pitched Blue Jay-ian mimicry. The song was occasional squeaky phrases and had the cadence of a Brown Thrasher, It continued intermittently for at least 10 minutes and caused me to pause to listen repeatedly.
Eventually, I abandoned my shovel, climbed down the ladder, retrieved my binoculars and hunted down the bird-- an adult Northern Shrike tee'ed up on one of my neighbor's Tamarack trees. I suspect it was a northbound bird.
Bill Hersey sent over some interesting pictures of another Northern Shrike that was visiting his feeders in Caribou to nibble on a kidney he'd picked up with some suet at the local abbattoir. Nice feeder bird when its not chasing chickadees... The other star of Bills yard is a Northern Flicker that showed up around March 5th and has been regular under the feeders since.
Locally there have been some changes birdwise. American Crows have returned and dispersed across the landscape. For the first winter in quite a few, crows had mostly departed from the county. American Tree Sparrows and Black-capped Chickadees are now singing strongly in the mornings.
Several recent reports of Northern Goshawks have come in from Bancroft to Chapman. Bohemian Waxwings were seen at UMPI in Presque Isle and Woodland last week. Northern Cardinals were reported in Ashland recently and are notable in a winter with very few reports of these locally.
The female Northern Pintail has successfully wintered at the pond at the hospital in Presque Isle. It was seen this AM with 120+ Mallards and Black Ducks.
Several Snowy Owls continue to be seen in the area with the Presque Isle bird being nearly-dependable at the "PT" Barn at sundown most days.
With snow cover here as deep as its been all winter and subzero nights predicted this week, it still seems spring is a long way off!!!
Good Birding
Maine birds mailing list
maine-birds@googlegroups.com
http://groups.google.com/group/maine-birds
https://sites.google.com/site/birding207
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Maine birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to maine-birds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment