Montrose 10/16

I had a super fun morning at Montrose today. For no apparent reason I woke up wide awake at 6:30am just as the sun was coming up, so went down to Montrose to check out the birds. I got there about 7am and there were some other birders there (maybe 7 or so on the beach), but not a ton. As I walked into the park a Cooper's Hawk flew right over my head, so that was a good sign. There are always tons of Golden Crowned Kinglets around (for the last couple of weekends) and I THINK Ruby-Crowned Kinglets as well, but in the fall, the Ruby-Crowned isn't Ruby-crowned - they just have a plain head so I'm a little uncertain.

So I made it out to the beach and as I'm walking out to go check out the shorebirds, all the seagulls go up in the air. That caught my attention and I noticed that one of them didn't look like a seagull. It was gorgeous and huge and flew really oddly (really fluid). It was...a Short-Eared Owl! Drop Dead Gorgeous. It looks almost exactly like the Long-Eared Owl I saw last year (in its face and size), but it just doesn't have the big long ears that that one did. I imagine you were all smart enough to figure that out for yourself. I have one slightly blurry picture of him (or her) in flight. As I was watching the owl fly over the lake with my binoculars, I realized that there was a Peregrine Falcon on the tower on the pier. I took about a zillion pictures of him. He was chowing down on breakfast and after he was done, he let the head of his prey fall down onto the concrete (with a nice "thunk") and another birder checked it out and saw that it was a Woodcock. They are apparently very slow flyers :( One of the other birders said "Why don't they ever eat the Pigeons?" and I wholeheartedly concur.

When I went back into the Hedge, my day had already been made, but I actually got to see a lot of birds that I don't see that often (plus one I'd never seen). A PAIR of Coopers Hawks flew right over my head (again) and went to roost in one of the protected areas. Right before I left the park ANOTHER Coopers Hawk flew over my head yet again. Each time they were about 10 feet over my head. Also on the way home I think I saw a Sharp-Shinned Hawk overhead as well. It is Hawk season apparently.

Peregrine:
Short-Eared Owl:

Cedar Waxwing:

Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
And my other newbie, a Winter Wren. He's about 4 inches and very twitchy, so I wasn't able to get a picture of him. Here's one I poached off the internet for reference.

So here's the total list:

Coopers Hawk

Short-Eared Owl

Ring-Billed Gulls

Herring Gull

Peregrine Falcon

Brown Creeper

Downy Woodpecker

Black-Bellied Plovers

Savannah Sparrow

Hermit Thrush

Dark-Eyed Junco

Winter Wren

Golden-Crowned Kinglets

Ruby-Crowned Kinglets

Cardinals, Robins, Goldfinches, a Starling, Mallards,

A flock of American Coots in the Harbor

I also went on Thursday and saw a Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk, Blue Jay, Sanderlings, Horned Larks, Orange Bishop (he's an escapee that's been living at the hedge all summer), and I saw the Coots for the first time this fall.