Mill Creek/Rooks Park Field Trip

Nine of us walked up Mill Creek from the Project Office to Rooks Park, to see what birds might be out on this cold, foggy morning.  We weren't disappointed.  There were hooded mergansers and common mergansers on the creek along with canada geese, mallards and American wigeons.  A great blue heron gave us regal poses from his perch on a rock in the middle of the creek, and we even saw a mink catch a fish!

We saw three brown creepers, a varied thrush, ruby-crowned kinglets, a spotted towhee, a belted kingfisher, black-capped chickadees and the usual song sparrows, juncos, white-crowned sparrows and Bewick's wrens.  We saw 25 species on our walk, and added a few more species in route. Ginger

Bennington Lake Today

It was very cold,but sunny – a beautiful morning for a walk around the lake.  Birds were pretty scarce when we first started our walk, but as the sun warmed the air a little, the birds began to appear.  A special treat today was seeing a barn owl.  It flushed as we walked by it and was immediately chased off by a Cooper's hawk.  Other raptors seen were red-tailed hawks, northern harriers and American kestrels. We also saw 2 great horned owls, 3 Townsend's solitaires and 2 northern shrikes.  One of the shrikes was having a "beak to beak" confrontation with a robin in the top of a tree over the trail.  Happy little black-capped chickadees flitted in and out of the trees while Bewick's wrens buzzed at us from the shrubs. There were many dark-eyed juncos and white-crowned sparrows as well as a few song sparrows, ruby-crowned kinglets, house finches and goldfinches. Northern flickers and downy woodpeckers were busy working the trees and robins were scattered throughout the area.  Ten canada geese flew over, but flew off again when they discovered the lake was frozen.  MerryLynn watched about 50 Bohemian waxwings fly over her car as she left the parking lot. Twenty-two deer and a singing coyote put the topping on a another great morning at the lake.  Ginger