Sunny Day and Good Birding.... Northern Shrike at Wetzel State Park

I decided to take a long walk today and burn off some of those holiday lbs... I got ready to leave to head to Wetzel State Park and looked out in the yard... The birds have been hammering away at the feeders and I noticed that they were low.... when all of a sudden, whoosh, the birds are gone.... There is usually about a 30 second delay before Mr. Cooper shows up..... as you can see by the photo, he doesn't use a very complicated approach when looking for lunch.... he patiently waits, and is usually rewarded when one of the impatient birds shows up in the brush pile behind the feeder.... click on photos to enlarge

Shot the picture thru the window

After taking care of the feeders, I headed to Wetzel State Park which is located in New Haven, Macomb County. http://www.michigandnr.com/parksandtrails/mapping.aspx?id=507&type=SPRK

The hiking was wet and muddy but worth it... after a slow start I was standing almost knee deep in water in some cattails when I see a hawk leave its perch and take off.... at first I thought maybe I will be lucky and it will be a Northern Harrier... as I got my binoculars up, I realized that it was a Red-shouldered Hawk... cool bird.. After fuddling around with dropping binoculars and trying to get camera up and move to an open area so I could photograph the hawk, it was already high up and soaring... I managed a couple of pics at a very long distance.... these are majorally cropped....

I decided to head in the direction of the Red-shouldered Hawk so I could get some better photos... However, that got side lined by my next bird.... as I moved around the frozen Pond, and was trying to get thru the wet grass, I spied a bird sitting high up in a tree..... I knew immediately that I had a Northern Shrike... I lucked out and had one in my yard last winter and photographed it in my feeder, but this one made me happy because I worked hard for it. It was pretty tame as I slowly walked toward it and snapped a few photos before it flew off.... In addition to the Shrike and the Red-Shouldered Hawk I had a Northern Flicker, Tree Sparrows and a Song Sparrow... MC list at 55...