On Saturday morning, I saw the NORTHERN SHRIKE on a wire above Cayuga Vista Road in Lansing, for the second time in probably a dozen or so passes since early January.
Then, along the Lansing Center Trail, I had the personally unprecedented pleasure of seeing one of each color morph of ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK. The light-morph bird crossed northward above the big roadside field across from the baseball complex, then descended purposefully to a tree, where the dark morph was perching. The birds interacted momentarily in a way that seemed more salutatory than agonistic. But the light-morph hawk opted not to alight, instead rising and circling the field again. I then watched the dark bird for several minutes before it too lifted off, away from the trail complex to the northwest, showing its stunning contrasting pattern all too briefly, and leaving me somehow both enormously satisfied and covetous for more. I had originally intended this morning to go to the Edwards Lake Cliff Preserve to count ravens and kinglets to get the inside edge for a Super Bowl wager. But after all my real birding luck and an hour in the chilling wind, this plan suddenly seemed a little pointless. So instead I went looking for roosting owls in the conifers along Benson Road. The search was surprisingly enjoyable despite being cold and ultimately fruitless. Mark Chao PS. Speaking of SuperB owls, we have not seen the red-morph screech-owl or any other owl in our yard since that one day I reported it last week. -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
