Friday, April 16, 2010: Thickson's Woods- a Murder of Crows, amongst other things

Stayed local today between errands, but was able to add another bird to my Year List, ie an Eastern Towhee, and despite barely trying, I ended the day with 33 species. Ran into John at the entrance to the woods, so we wandered about, and found it very easy to find the Great Horned Owl by the mobbing crows. Here goes with some sequence shots, no wonder they are called "Tiger of the Sky", was intriguing to watch the change in his demeanour as he lost patience with his daytime roosting being so rudely interrupted:

His mouth is open here, is getting quite annoyed w these guys:

Notice the change in stance, is up on his legs now, grrrrrrrrrrrr:

Back to normal now, the crows eventually got bored and departed.

From there we headed over to the meadow side, where these Tree Swallows were flitting about if they weren't yelling at each other- I can only imagine what was being said here:

These next few shots I couldn't resist posting due to the amazing colour of these birds:

Then I wrapped up my visit to this area with two different sparrows, the Savannah Sparrow:

And finally, the White-throated Sparrow (my BOTD), I probably spent half an hour waiting on this lil guy who was foraging around on the ground under the evergreen hedge to come out into the open, but he was worth the wait, isn't he the sweetest thing EVER??!!