Spring

Warming up finally, snow melting, sun, temps in the 40's. This afternoon at 1 PM, saw our first male junco of the season. What a nice treat! Earlier, a sharp-shinned hawk zoomed around trying to get a redpoll. Never saw if he was successful, might have been.

Sun is Returning

This morning, while shoveling in the early morning, but already light out, we saw a sharp-shinned hawk up at the top of a spruce tree, watching the whole back yard. Yesterday, early morning, we saw a spruce grouse out back. Longer days are nice! still cold and snowy tho.

Midnight Visitor

Night before last, we awoke and looked out at our spruce copse right by the back porch. There saw our little saw-whet owl, in the same place where we've seen one before, in the past two-three years. He was very cute and tiny. Just loved seeing him again. We've had some voles on the snow, so we were wondering if an owl would show up.

Today during the day, we saw our brown creeper once again, first time in a couple of months.

Familiar Friend

Early this morning we left for about an hour, and when we returned, we spooked a spruce grouse out of one of our snow-packed trails, where there was a teeny bit of gravel showing. It flew up into the trees right by our studio window. Had not seen one of these for a long time. He/she is still there about 4 hours later, and meanwhile, we've spread a little more gravel on the pathways that she or he might like.

Owl on the Kenai River Flats

Today we saw the owl once again, and it sat there while we backed up and looked with binoculars. It was not a short-eared owl, but a hawk owl, horizontal brown and white streaks on his breast, very beautiful.

Blizzard Weather

We've been having blizzards and a lot of snow. A lot of redpolls are coming in, along with our chickadees, nuthatches, several magpies, and stellar's jays. No siskins presently. The brown creeper shows up often enough, that we're pretty sure he's a daily customer. We did have a northern shrike three times in the last week and a half. Probably also a sharp-shinned hawk, as occasionally the yard is cleared of birds, except for a nuthatch frozen into position for 2-3 minutes. We can't see a hawk but that doesn't mean he isn't there back behind a tree out of view from our windows. Several snowshoe hares frequently coming in. Nothing else of note. We did see a smallish - medium-sized owl in the top of tree on the Kenai River flats the other day, we decided based only on size, that it was probably a short-eared owl. We turned around to go back and see it, but the instant we changed the flow of traffic the owl took off.

End of the Year

Since the 10th of December, when I last wrote, we have had our backyard bird count. Nothing new to report there. After the bird count day, we had a very brief owl sighting one night. Saw a sharp-shinned hawk pick a redpoll off a feeder midday. Have had a Northern Shrike in here about 3-4 times. Brown creeper now and then. At times approximately 100 redpolls and a large number of siskins from time to time. One black-capped chickadee with a somewhat deformed beak. The year is almost over. Happy New Year 2012!