Great Backyard Bird Count: 2.16 - 2.17

     The Great Backyard Bird Count continued yesterday and today, with all types of exciting things to experience. Yesterday, Tim and I traveled up to Shawangunk National Wildlife Refuge in the afternoon, enjoyed the show that nature puts on as dusk approaches each day. On the drive, I was able to spot my first bald eagle of the year.

Shawangunk Grasslands are vast, open, and beautiful. The birds are often far, taking advantage of the space. When I came last year, a fresh cover of snow was hiding much of the grass and prey. Both Northern Harriers (like the one perched here) and Short-eared owls were out, active, hunting, and in decent numbers.

Yesterday, the day shift of harrier were out and in due time, the owls began to take flight and seek higher ground.

An owl wakes as the sun starts to near the horizon.

The harriers seems almost frantic, as the light begins to fade, they seem to know that the owls are waking and it will get a touch harder to claim that last morsel of food before the day is up.

Their owl-like face, with that disk shape serves just the same purpose as it does for owls. Both harrier and short-eared owls fill the same niche, just one by day and the other by night. Hunting in a very similar fashion to one another, soaring over the fields for prey relying on sight and sound.

The plumage fo this bid suggests either this bird is a hen (female) or immature bird. The mature males are a silvery-grey. I think, personally, this plumage of the female type is so very beautiful.

And here come the owls...

I was so excited to share all this with Tim, I promised him owls and we got a great show! He had never been to Shawangunk before and I'm so glad he got to see some owls.

Watching these birds fly is an absolute treat!

AHHH!!!! 

SCREAMING OWL!!! <3

These owls are called short-eared owls, they are very soecific to grassland habitats and do have little tiny feather tufts. BUT, they are soooo tiny, those tufts. Really they are often not visible fight in the center of the facial disk.
Tufts or not, these birds are awesome.

And for the record-- these photos are taken from the trails, with a 500mm zoom lens (some folks had GIANT lenses), and this photo is heavily cropped. 

This is a non-cropped photo, at 500mm. Just to give you an idea of how not close you are when you watch this all go down.

Always looked forward to is the changing of the guard, when the owls start to get the harriers off their turf so they can own the fields.

Good way to end the afternoon. On our way back, we stopped for an awesome pasta dinner at our buddy's new pasta & provision shop in Nyack. It's a good way to round out a trip up that way.

     Today, I birded before and afterwork, right here in Brooklyn. I stopped at Marine Park before work and ventured out onto the Coney Island Fishing Pier after work.

So many signs that spring isn't too far away. The red-wing blackbirds were "Onk-a-REEE'ing" their chorus with back up from cardinals with their own songs.

Also cheering for spring was this song sparrow, singing the song of his kind...

Something that I was pretty happy to spot- a fox sparrow! Soon this little bird will be heading north of here to nest.

The American Robin was not doing the spring thing. Ground was frozen and it had to stick to its winter berry diet.

After work, I went out on the Fishing Pier in Coney Island and admired ducks- like this very beautiful long-tailed duck over some beautiful waves.

A female red-breasted merganser was close to the pier in the low glow of the sun. Isn't she stunning?

Also a super cool chance to see that amazing fish catching bill, serrated to grab and hold onto a slippery fish.

Im going to say it...
Gulls are beautiful.

The real spectacle were the scoters, there were a good number of black scoter between the beach groins (those are what those rock pilings coming out from the beach are called). There were even more, and surf scoters out further on the water.

A female black scoter.
All these birds are getting ready to fly northward to nest and rear a little family up in Canada.