More, As Promised

So, here is the rest of the story from last weekend.  We took the dogs to Cox Hall Creek for a quick walk before packing up to go home on Sunday and we were pretty disappointed in the bird activity.  It seems like all of the birds took off on Saturday night and no new birds came down from the north to replace them.  Oh well, at least it was a beautiful day and not too hot for the walk. Remember, this is the park that used to be the golf course, so it is pretty big with lots of walking paths.

Just as we were headed back to the car, we spotted a few birds and stopped to take a look.  One of the birds turned out to be Olive-sided Flycatcher which is pretty uncommon.  I blogged about my "lifer" last year if you want to check it out click HERE.  This bird was perched high on a dead branch as most Flycatchers like to do.  They sit there and then fly out, catch a bug, and fly back to the same perch.  We watched this guy do that a few times.  You can tell from the photo that this is Olive-sided by the "vest".

 Olive-sided Flycatcher

The Flycatcher repositioned himself onto a bigger branch and sat there for awhile.  I have more than a dozen photos that look just like the one below.

 Olive-sided Flycatcher perched

What happened next was pretty amazing - all captured frame by frame while Barbara was yelling. . .

Olive-sided Flycatcher leaving his perch in a hurry

"Kestral!" "Incoming!"  And whoosh, the Kestral (which is a falcon that eats other birds and insects) came zooming in for a meal. Take note to which branch the Flycatcher is on above, then note where the Kestral lands below.  The Flycatcher narrowly escaped - whew!

 American Kestral coming in for a landing

 American Kestral perching

Look at the expression on this falcon. She is obviously not happy that she missed that meal. I'm sure she grabbed a dragonfly down on fairway 9!

American Kestral

The Bird Expert

Yes, that's me - the "expert". All you have to do is tell people that you are a birdwatcher, and you become the expert. I am by no means an expert birder. I cannot identify the one Western Sandpiper in the flock of thousands of Least Sandpipers like some people can. I cannot identify the migrating songbirds flying overhead at the Higbee Beach platform. I cannot even identify most of the hawks flying past Hawk Mountain unless they are really close or the professional counters shout out the name. I'm getting better at bird songs, but still get fooled by Titmice.

Even though I know that I'm not an expert, non-birders continue to rely on me to identify all kinds of sightings, and answer all kinds of bird behavior questions. As referenced by my last post - my mother sent a photo of a hawk in her backyard asking me to identify it. Coworkers ask me to identify birds based solely on their terrible descriptions of "the finch that is making a nest in my hanging plant" - turned out to be a House Wren. On and on . . .

Last week was the best yet. Kristyna - the young captain of my ice hockey team - couldn't wait to ask me about a bird that had become trapped in her fiance's apartment. She told me that it was the fourth bird in a week to get into the house (don't ask about # 2 and # 3 - they are no longer with us). They did manage to get a couple of photos of #4 before they got it out of the house though. Neither Kristyna or Brian could figure out what kind of sparrow this was. Check it out:




American Kestral - a Falcon! Inside the rowhouse in Mayfair. How in the world did it get into the house, nobody knows. But at least it's outside now. Thanks to Brian for having the wherewithall to take a few photos, or I would never have been able to render my expert identification.