Winter

This is the first full winter we've spent in the Maine house, so we've been anticipating some new visitors to the feeders and woods. So far, though, we've mostly had the Usual Suspects. There have been, and still are, a few Tree Sparrows around, and a couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches have been here semi-regularly. There seem to be more White-breasted Nuthatches than usual--I've seen as many as four at one time.

 

They're always fun to watch, but because the Red-breasted are less common around here it's always more of a treat to see them. After not seeing many Goldfinches for awhile, they've come back in fairly good numbers. Even in their subdued winter plumage they're lovely little things. It's great to have plenty of Juncos around, and there also seem to be a few more Blue Jays than we've had in the past.

Although there's pretty constant traffic to the suet feeders, we aren't replacing the cakes as often as we were a few months ago. Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers are around most of the time, helping themselves to the suet, but Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, and even our resident Crows patronize the suet at different times. 

 Today I saw a single Common Redpoll, probably a female, but it did not seem to hang around long. Odd to see just one, since they seem to be quite the flockers. We had quite a few here in February of 2009, along with a few of their Hoary cousins, but saw none at all last year. Apparently this is not unusual; the info on the Cornell site indicates that they typically are seen in the northern U.S. every other year.

In the meantime, other folks on the Maine bird list are reporting lot of Bohemian Waxwings, White-winged Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks, as well as Redpolls in various parts of the state. I hope that some show up here!

We have had a bit of avian excitement here, however. We got our first substantial snow of the winter just after Christmas, on December 27, to be exact. It was not a huge storm, but we got maybe 8" or so. As I was shoveling off the back deck that morning I was surprised to see a lot of feathers sticking out from under the snow. I brushed the snow off with my hands and was astonished to find not just some feathers, but an entire Sharp-shinned Hawk buried there, quite dead, and quite frozen!

 

It appears as though he broke his back. He was lying on his back when I found him. He must have run into the house, presumably in pursuit of a smaller bird, and perhaps confused and with his vision impaired because of the snow. The snow began sometime in the late afternoon the day before, and the collision must have happened soon after it started; he was completely covered by the snow. One odd thing about this is that we've never happened to see a Sharp-shin around here before. There's been one [or more] Cooper's Hawks around on occasion, and certainly Sharp-shins are not at all uncommon, but we'd just never seen one in the yard before.

So, now that I have this hawksicle, what am I to do with it? My understanding is that it's illegal for individuals to possess specimens of migratory birds [and I trust that nobody who reads this will bust me!], so I'd love to find a good home for him/her in some educational program. I offered the hawk to Wells Reserve for their education programs, but got a polite turn-down. Meanwhile, he resides in our freezer, in a very large zip-loc bag. 

We may have had another hawk in our yard early this morning. Yesterday was our heaviest snowfall of the winter. White stuff came down all day and there were still some flakes in the air when we went to bed last night. This morning, though, all was clear and we had a bright, sunny day. When I first peered out the bedroom window this morning into the yard where most of the bird feeders are, I was pleased to see all the tracks in the snow from all those Early Birds we always hear so much about.

All of these marks were probably made by the Chickadees, Juncos, Jays, etc. that feed here all the time. But I was puzzled by another set of marks nearby:

That claw-shaped mark in the left center of the shot was particularly intriguing [click on the image to get a larger copy of it]. It wasn't until later in the day, after we'd shoveled out the paths to the feeders and thus disturbed some of these marks that it finally hit me what that was--the pattern of the primary feathers on the end of a bird's right wing! A fairly sizable bird at that...possibly a Crow, but more likely a hawk of some sort. There's no obvious evidence of a kill, but there's certainly lots of other markings there in the snow. That hook-shaped pattern in the lower part of the shot is curious, and is something I still haven't quite figured out. To the right of center there is what could be marks made by the large bird's left wing. I regret that I did not tumble to what I was seeing sooner than I did, or we could have given the site a more thorough examination, with an eye to gathering forensic evidence, than we did!