By Kent Martin –
We had eleven energetic, motivated birders in caravan on a snowy Saturday afternoon, January 20, including a young grade-schooler from the Richland area who had done her homework and brought her parents along with a wish-liist of bird species. The group spanned a wide range in age and experience levels; several found out about our event on Facebook. With a number of sharp, eager eyes in the group, Sue and I just had to hang on for the ride.
At our first stop, we saw hundreds of robins milling around in the snowstorm, a dark and mysterious buteo perched up with its back toward us, half hidden by snow flakes, and several other common woodland birds. Eventually we escaped the band of snow, first seeing some Horned Larks in flight along the road, and later had great spotting scope views of larks lounging in the snow and feeding. Some of the group were able to see Snow Buntings moving around, and we had one in the scope for a minute. Creek crossings were not that productive on Saturday, and we had to wait for our last stop to finally find tree sparrows, which were numerous several days earlier.
A lovely, pale Kestrel put on a show for us, perching in view several times, and making occasional high-speed passes through farm fields. I never had to identify anything for our young birder – just a bit of confirmation was all she needed, even though the larks, Kestrel, and Rough-legged Hawk were life birds for her. Talk about excitement! We saw 2 or 3 dark morph Rough-legged Hawks, had 4 Bald Eagles perched in the same tree, and watched Mallards and Common Mergansers fly overhead. About 15 swans ghosted through the dull sky near dusk, soundless except for the whistling of synchronized wingbeats. A few of us had binocular views of a likely Short-eared Owl in the distance at dusk to cap the day.
To find out when ASK is hosting the next field, please check our event calendar.