A walk through Tower Grove Park early this afternoon turned up more birds than my quick drive through last Wednesday did. There were robins throughout the park, as well as several flocks of juncos and 50+ Red-winged Blackbirds (all but one of them males) in a flock of starlings.
The highlights were found off-road and would have been missed if I had been driving:
- Red-breasted Nuthatch, 1 or 2. One was south of the pavilion just east of the Arsenal entrance to the park and one was at a feeder at the brick house (same bird?).
- Eastern Towee, 1 male in the bird garden
- Fox Sparrow, 1 on the edge of the swale south of the woodland pond
By the end of the walk, my thoughts were focused more on the left-over spinach pie in the fridge than on birds, but an accipiter flying out of the park east of the Palm House brought me back to the moment. I couldn’t make a definite ID, but the wing beats looked slow to me, suggesting a Cooper’s Hawk.