[birding] workaday birds

[howard bruner]

Got a bit bored this morning at work and jumped ship to enjoy the bright Nov morning.  A great advantage to working on the west side of town is the proximity of the covered bridge/fairgrounds/Bald Hill pathway – a key contributor to the quality of living in Corvallis.  Pay attention this week to the multiple opportunities to let the planners know how you feel about local riparian vegetation management as well as a connector to Peoria road for non-motorized traffic (see the G-T).  
 
The season has moved onto landscapes flowing with sublime pastels.  The covered bridge area brought me up to full stop as a red-shouldered hawk sounded off several long series of shrieks from deep in the Oak Creek riparian forest.  A pair of rs flickers checked out cavities in the snags along the creek (such an important component - the standing dead) but one was occupied by a jeweled-plumaged starling.  A kestrel quartered across the washed sky followed a minute later by a ss hawk.  The red-shouldered joined the raptor parade and within a 3 minute span I had a falcon, accipiter, and buteo fly over me.  That is spectacular diversity within a 0.25 mile of OSU.  
 
The Llama fields were hosting a flock of more than 10 w blue birds that were flycatching and road prospecting.  A sparrow traveling with them as they moved northward across the flat emergent green I guessed as a Savannah.  The white oak grove was bustling with at least 8 acorn wp, a mixed flock of gc and wc sparrows in the recently developed blackberry thicket under the oaks, and another flock of w blueb.  Juncos lifted along many edges as rode by and I heard bc chicks and gc kings several times.  In the bare-branched grove I could now see the red-tail hawk nest, the globes of mistletoe and the many granaries. A red-tail very obligingly screamed and dropped into a glide from near the nest tree.  The sunlight held little warmth but the stiff southerly was not cold.  I realized on my way back to the drudgefest the temp had climbed appreciably – or perhaps I was all heated up from the clarity and abundance of the morning.
 
Not too slow right now out my office window – yet another wbb gathering but this time they are accompanied by house finch and yr warbler.
 
h 		 	   		  
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