On Friday night, a group of scolding titmice and chickadees drew my attention to an area of the yard just off my front porch, where I happened to be sitting at dusk. I then heard an adult Eastern Screech-owl calling in the vicinity, and suspected that the scolding was directed at the calling adult owl. But when I scanned around for the owl, I found a much closer baby screech-owl, perched not that far away, maybe 20 feet up in a tree, looking at my husband and me on our porch. I don't think the titmice were scolding this fledgling, but possibly they did see him/her but considered the adult more of a threat.
We moved inside to see whether more owls would materialize (we've had as many as 4 young in the yard in prior years), but we only saw this one baby. It scanned the area around our feeders looking for mice, then made a pass at the flying squirrels which come to our bark butter, missed, and landed on the power line that runs to our house. There it sat, with us watching from the window, until it was too dark to see. I checked briefly on Sat. and Sun. night for the owl(s), but didn't see any activity. The other interesting report from my weekend was a vocal Alder Flycatcher in some brushy wet habitat at the Lansing Center Trail on Sunday. I walk this trail once a week, and this is the first time I've heard the species here. I also flushed Common Yellowthroats on 2 occasions that were in vegetation at the base of bluebird boxes (I'll be careful approaching those boxes in future). Cheers, Robyn Bailey Lansing -- 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/ --
