I took off work a couple of hours early on Wednesday, November 21, with the goal of getting some last-minute grocery shopping done before the crowds hit. But a flock of sparrows feeding just west of Steinberg Prairie in Forest Park tempted me to take the birder’s direct route (Torrey Berger’s apt phrase describing the meandering ways of our kind), which brought me across a late Orange-crowned Warbler. A nice surprise.
Another nice surprise was the Thanksgiving Day bird that had been on my yard wish list: a Fox Sparrow. This one was especially beautifully plumaged, with the rust being quite red. It stayed in the yard for several hours before moving on.
Over the long weekend I replaced the old upside-down finch feeder with a new one that I put out of the path the House Sparrows take from the dead tree to the sunflower seed feeder. The goldfinches seem to like the new location much better; numbers went from one lone goldie to three to eight. No siskins in the yard yet.
On Saturday Jim Z. and I took a trip to Horseshoe Lake. Birds of note were Sharp-shinned Hawk (111 side, Bruns/Bischoff Rd. area) and two Great Egrets and a few American Tree Sparrows (203 side). The egrets were soaring with a few hundred gulls over the borrow pit; they almost seemed to be playing or imitating the gulls.
Sunday during my feeder watch I watched a large raptor fly out of sight into a tree on the side of the house at the south entrance to the alley. Although it was certainly a Red-tail, I went outside and walked to the end of the alley to verify. A couple of hours later from my window, I saw the bird (an immature) in a tree across the alley and a couple of doors up. It had prey, a pigeon. I didn’t need binoculars to see the feathers fly as the hawk plucked its catch.