Birding Bennington Lake in the Fog

When we arrived at the parking lot the fog was dense.  We could hear canada geese out on there someplace but couldn't find them (later we found 53 of them sitting on the mud along the canal).  On the east side of the lake we got a lesson in "bird mobbing".  There were several very upset ruby-crowned kinglets in the trees and MerryLynn's keen eyes soon found a northern saw-whet owl. What a treat!  A little further up the trail was a sharp-shinned hawk – one of two we saw today.  The second one flew across the trail right in front of us in hot pursuit of several juncos.  We saw and heard a varied thrush calling from the trees (in the fog it really was an eerie sound).  A Townsend's solitaire sat in the top of the junipers at the north end of the lake.  When we returned to the parking lot, the trees were full of cedar waxwings, robins, juncos, mountain and black-capped chickadees, ruby-crowned kinglets and a golden-crowned kinglet.  We had a total of 37 species today – a lot more than anticipated on a foggy day.  Ginger