At about 430 pm, a young N Shrike was perched in the clump of trees, N side of road, that is about 60 m east of 220 Hile School Rd. This is the address/mailbox at the east end of the unfinished road running through the wetland. The clump of trees sits just west ( toward Rt 38) of a two- track running N into the field.
The shrike was first sitting atop the tallest tree, then popped down on the east face of the bushes near a single bushy pine. It has a distinct but not extensive black eye stripe, white undersides to retrices,a soft brownish cap, nice round head shape and bill accentuated with light areas around base. It was continually doing slow tail bobs. In a few views, slight tessellated patterning on breast was visible. It was deep dusk on a cloudy afternoon so detail was hard, but my son Toby managed to get a few pictures through my binocs. It Made several dive- forays into the weedy patch (golden rod, milkweed ) surrounding the clump. Hopefully it got something and will stay?? Full disclosure, we have been releasing some of the 15-20 Peromyscus live trapped in our basement right into the tree- brush clump. Hmmm. Anyway it was a very exciting find for Toby and I! I put it in eBird and will upload a couple of pics tomorrow—good only to convince one of the ID, nothing more. Anne Sent from my iPhone -- (copy & paste any URL below, then modify any text "_DOT_" to a period ".") Cayugabirds-L List Info: NortheastBirding_DOT_com/CayugabirdsWELCOME_DOT_htm NortheastBirding_DOT_com/CayugabirdsRULES_DOT_htm NortheastBirding_DOT_com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave_DOT_htm ARCHIVES: 1) mail-archive_DOT_com/cayugabirds-l@cornell_DOT_edu/maillist_DOT_html 2) surfbirds_DOT_com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) aba_DOT_org/birding-news/ Please submit your observations to eBird: ebird_DOT_org/content/ebird/ --
