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Interesting Sightings in My Yard

With COVID restrictions and below-freezing temperatures, I haven’t been going out beyond my own yard much. It can be pretty depressing when your birdwatching is limited to the chickadees out your window! Still, I’ve had a pretty great week. On Tuesday, I reported the Common Grackle that’s been hanging around my feeders all winter to eBird, and it counted as a rarity for this time of year, which was pretty exciting for me. Grackles are normally migratory birds, and all the others flew south last October. This guy, though, stuck around. I was an hour into watching the feeders when he showed up for just a few seconds, but I spent another half-hour waiting for him with the camera until he came back long enough to photograph! It payed off plenty, though, to get those shots.

Common Grackle in January!

The very next day, I happened to be looking out the window (not very surprising, do I do anything else?) when something landed in a tree above one of my feeders. All I saw was a flurry of wings, so I thought it was a Pileated Woodpecker, a fairly unusual bird in my yard. I went and got the camera in hopes of getting some pictures of it, but by the time I returned, it had moved onto a different branch where it was much easier to see, and I realized it was a hawk! I absolutely love raptors, so that was better than a Pileated. Within seconds, it was mobbed by the Blue Jays at the feeders and got out of there, but I got good enough photos to identify it as a Cooper’s Hawk. It was covered in brown streaks instead of red barring, so it must’ve been a juvenile. I hope he found something to eat elsewhere!

Juvenile Cooper’s Hawk

Both of those were exciting, but neither was a new species for me, so my favorite sighting this week was definitely on Friday, when something unusual turned up during my window-watching. What I thought was a Blue Jay landed at the very top of a big evergreen, a popular spot for jays, but when I fixed my binoculars on it, I realized this was something different. It was grey, with a shorter and slightly rounder bill than Blue Jays, and had black-and-white patches on its wings. I immediately knew this was a Northern Shrike- one for the life list! I love it when a new species turns up right in my own backyard. I grabbed my camera, but it flew away before I could get a picture, and didn’t come back no matter how long I waited. I braved the outdoors to look for it, but though I saw a lovely Ring-necked Pheasant, I just couldn’t find that shrike! I’m still holding out hope that it’s lurking somewhere in the neighborhood, and that it’ll come back to my yard soon, but until then, I’m content with a short sighting of an awesome bird to add to my life list.

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The Blackbirds Are Back!

There are many different indications that the spring is coming, from first blooming flower, to first leaf bud, to first spring rain. For birdwatchers, though, spring’s approach is announced almost entirely by the arrival of migratory birds.

As I wrote last week, most consider the first robin of the year to mean spring has sprung, but another of the first birds to arrive in spring is the Red-Winged Blackbird, one of my personal favorites! Once they’re here, they stay all spring and summer, and their loud, familiar song is a frequent sound in the marsh. Naturally, living in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, I see them constantly during the warm months, but during the winter, I can only wait, and wait, and wait until they return, brightening even the most dreary March day.

A young Red-Winged Blackbird, the herald of spring.

And that’s what happened this Tuesday, when I spotted one at my feeder (where they occasionally stop to refuel on sunflower seeds). By the next day, they’d set up in the nearest marsh, their cheerful ‘Ok-la-REE!’ sounding totally out of place in the still-snowy landscape! As always, only the males came, and will have sorted out breeding territories in the cattails by the time the females arrive.

The first Red-Winged Blackbird of the year eating seeds below my feeder.

With these lovely birds came another, less-anticipated blackbird, the Common Grackle. There isn’t a lot of good things to be said about grackles – they have a slightly terrifying stare with their yellow eyes, their song sounds like a rusty gate, they’re one of the biggest avian crop thieves among farmers. and they sometimes kill and eat smaller birds (they’ve even been observed drowning them in birdbaths)! No, last summer, surrounded by VERY loud grackles, I was certain I wouldn’t miss them. Still, when I spotted one with some Red-Winged Blackbirds, I was glad to have them back. They do, after all, have some good traits – they have beautiful, iridescent blue heads, they look vaguely like a fighter plane when in flight (think about it next time you see a grackle, you’ll see it too!), and of course, they’re another sign of spring.

Common Grackles are beautiful, from a certain perspective.

So there you have it: the blackbirds are, at least in my yard, back! I hope to spot more spring migrants as spring comes closer (it’ll technically be spring starting on March 19, after all), and definitely see and hear more blackbirds this year!