Happy Holidays!

Some images of winter birds, winter colors, and winter scenes to go along with my best holiday wishes to all of you: the readers, comment-makers, and friends who stop by Bill of the Birds. Heck I'll even send along a happy holidays to the blog spammers from the Far East—clearly my posts mean a lot to them, too.


I'll be otherwise occupied through the end of the year: enjoying some family time, working on a book manuscript, trying to reconnect with our farm in its winter mode, and of course watching birds. I hope to be back to my regular blogging schedule in 2010, but I hope you know (and can understand) that I may not be an everyday poster.


Am I burned out? Not really. This could just be a hangover from the bad experience I had last night watching the movie "Julie and Julia" which, IMHO, made blogging seem like one of the planet's more insipid pursuits. But I digress...


What I love about having Bill of the Birds is that it allows me to [attempt to] write creatively. My goal is to balance the need to post daily with my in-born editor's sense of only posting what's worth writing AND worth reading. Because we all have days when we really having nothing to say, right?

But that's a conundrum for another day, another year. Right now it's time to write the captions on the next issue of Bird Watcher's Digest, then out the door for some last minute shopping. I will endeavor to stop several times during this holiday season to count my blessings, among which you all figure prominently.


Happy and merry and peace!

Bill of the Birds

When the Going Gets Rough (leg)

On our late November birding trip to The Wilds, the birding started out very slowly. Normally as we drive the roads around the property we spook up flocks of horned larks, Savannah sparrows, American tree sparrows, and dark-eyed juncos. Not on this reasonably mild winter day. It was Deadsville, dude.

So we did what any bunch of bored birders would do, we started scanning to see if we could spot anything interesting. I've already recounted our observations of the local white-tailed deer, plus the captive endangered species at The Wilds. A few red-tailed hawks, a flashy male American kestrel, and a distant male northern harrier were nice, but I was hoping for something a bit rougher. And there it was: a rough-legged hawk.

It was a distant bird, but even before I got the scope on it, I had a hunch it was a rough-legged because of where it was perched. It was in the top of a small tree along a fence line. It would be unusual to find a redtail perching in such a small tree. But for the comparatively tiny-footed rough-legged hawk, the thin branches of the small pine were perfect. Rough-leggeds have small feet for grabbing smaller prey such as rodents.

On the Arctic tundra where these birds breed, lemmings are a main prey item. Here at The Wilds, it's probably meadow voles. The red-taileds with their larger feet are seeking rabbits in the meadows and squirrels along the woodland edges. And when they perch, they are perching on larger, sturdier branches.


Around the back side of The Wilds we pulled up to an overlook and quickly spotted another roughleg hovering over a hillside. We jumped out of the van and took up positions in a grassy ditch to take some photographs. The hawk obliged us by flying over. I'm still not great at getting good shots of flying birds, but this bird was large enough that I couldn't strike out completely.
Here are a few of the images from that fly over.

The bold black-and-white wing pattern of a rough-legged hawk in flight.

Long, wide wings with black carpal patches. A black belly band.

The white tail with a broad black band shows well in this photo.

It was very cool to see this second rough-leg. And this sighting seemed to open up the birding action a bit. Soon we were scoping rafts of buffleheads and mallards, gadwall and scaup. We never did see a single lark, though, which seemed weird. Maybe the more recent snows have brought them down from up north.


Soon enough it was time to suit up and bug out. We let the sun say its fare-thee-well and then we did likewise.

Phoebe's Giraffe

Here's a short video from our recent trip to The Wilds, where we re-enacted a memorable moment in the life of daughter Phoebe Linnea, from one of her very first birding trips. This commemorates her first accurate mammal ID call using a spotting scope. Now she's all growed up! Man, time surely flies...