About 1230 today, I was deep in the heart of the McIlroy Preserve (Summerhill), when I heard a BLUE JAY calling loudly a couple times just to the south. Immediately a second BLUE JAY arrived from the north and began calling loudly. Although I couldn't see them, they were above me in the hemlocks. What struck me as odd was that one would call once, then the other would immediately answer, back and forth like that for 7-8 calls. Then a pause, and they began again, clearly back and forth. And a third set. Finally, the south bird headed south, the north bird gave 5 unanswered calls, then flew south after the south bird. This had the feel to me of a winter territorial dispute.Except for the 2 jays, the only other sign of bird life at McIlroy was a mosaic of RUFFED GROUSE tracks.Earlier, a couple hours of walking in the Summerhill SF (mostly Salt Rd.) yielded no chickadees or red-breasted nuthatches, although a BARRED OWL did fly across the road in front of me, and a RAVEN gave 4 different vocalizations.Lunch was at the Colonial Lodge in Sempronius; I could find no buntings or larks in that huge area.Finally, a dark-phase ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK was seen along Midline Rd., my first R.-L. of this calendar year. Steve FastBrooktondale --
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/ --
