Last week held a bonanza of shrike sightings for me--3 in 8 days. On the first Sunday, there was one hunting the hillside below Refuge Headquarters in Bloomington. The following Saturday there was one at Black Dog Park, about halfway along the trail toward the SNA at Cliff Fen Park. (Perhaps it was the same bird?) Then on this past Sunday, another was seen on the west outskirts of Carlos Avery Wildlife Refuge. We seem to have a larger influx of them than usual; do they choose a winter territory to occupy, or can we expect them to be simply nomadic?
The sudden drop in temperature brought more activity to the backyard feeders and heated birdbath today. There continues to be a RB nuthatch, along with the WBs, At times, the finches, both house and gold, have been outnumbering the house sparrows. Bluejays are appearing almost as often as cardinals, and juncos are plentiful. However, the real surprises were the pair of robins---haven't seen any of them in weeks--and the red-bellied woodpecker at the birdbath. (Perhaps the RB woodpecker has been visiting the nuts and suet right along with the downies and hairies, but I should think I would have noticed, since I don't very often see them right here, even in summer. It makes me think the warm water was the real attraction.) Linda Whyte -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20071127/9096caf4/attachment-0001.html
