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...

Stoney Creek Eastwood Beach

Large group of Gulls on the ice in ctr of the lake... most of them are Herring and Ring-billed... However, today there were 8 Great Black-backed Gulls(new to county list 2012) in with the group..  In the open water near Baypoint Beach there was Trumpeter Swans, Mute Swans, large flock of Canada Geese, and half dozen Common Goldeneyes and 2 Redhead (new to county list 2012).... Thats all I had time for... on way home I checked out the farm fields along 27 and 28 mile rd and no buntings or larks were spotted, but I did find one Red-tailed Hawk and 1 American Kestrel... MC list 52

Green-winged Teal Stoney Creek

Found a pair of Green-winged Teal at Stoney Creek today in the open water... there were also a couple dozen common mergansers, tons of Canada Geese and 2 Cackling Geese and a bunch of Ring-billed and Herring Gulls... Someone reported 2 Great Black-backed Gulls but I did not see them.... I found a Horned Lark on the Beach.. The Osprey Trail was quiet but I did manage to find a Brown Creeper..... MC list 50.

Northern Flicker and Bald Eagles

I had a Northern Flicker on the way to Stoney Creek today at 27 mi rd and Tiller... At stoney the lake was mostly frozen over... the only open spot in the middle had a large flock of Canada Geese and over a dozen swans... I scoped the swans and could not tell from the long distance with certainty that they were all Trumpeters and Mutes... a pair of Bald Eagles could be seen sitting on a dead tree across the water/ice from Eastwood beach... They were a long way off but could easily be found with a scope..... MC list 47

Big Bird that flew over

Wasn't kidding when I said a scope was needed

only open water on lake

Tree Sparrows

Large flock of tree sparrows behind the house today... approx 20.... I heard that there was a Northern Shrike at Stoney Creek Nature Ctr.... I will be looking for that this week.... MC list 46

Stoney today....

Today I chose Stoney as my birding spot... on the way there I spotted a Sharp-shinned hawk munching on a sparrow on 28mi rd near Wolcott Rd... There also was a large flock of Wild Turkeys at Kuntsman and 29 mi on the Air Strip.... Stoney had a large raft of Common Mergansers... I would estimate 2000... there were also Common Goldeneye and a couple of Hooded Mergansers... I also saw Tundra and Trumpeter swans near the Baypointe beach side... An Imm Bald Eagle soared above the lake near the North Bridge where a group of 8 Hooded Mergansers floated by... The cool bird of the day was a Red-headed Woodpecker that flew right in front of my Jeep on the road to the Nature Center, near the Osprey Trail.... I found that the best place to scope the waterfowl today was at the Southdale Picnic Area.....climb down the hill and right on the shoreline I was directly across from most of the ducks.... The feeders were active at the nature center with many Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Dark-eyed Juncos, White-breasted Nuthatch and one Hairy Woodpecker....   MC list at 45....

Great Start for 2012

My Macomb County list got off to a great start today.... I left my house at 10am and headed toward Metrobeach (sorry, Lake St. Clair park... yuck).. along the way I glassed the fields from my house, along 25 mile rd to hall Rd, down I94 to Metroparkway and then headed toward the park...

First on my agenda was to find one of the Snowy Owls... This was fairly easy as it was already found by other birders at the DNR station on South River Rd... It was sitting along the rock out-cropping near the Marina... I hopped out of my car, looked thru their scope and there it was... a Juvenile Snowy Owl...  I bumped into Tom Heatly there and we scoped the lake near the station... There was a large raft of waterfowl... Common Mergansers, Canvasbacks, Lesser Scaups, Buffleheads and Common Goldeneyes were plentiful...  In addition to those were a single coot, a Red-breasted Merganser and a few Gadwall...  while walking back to our vehicles a Coopers Hawk soared by... a nice looking Adult...

I headed over to Metrobeach from there. Tom and I were going to walk to the point and scope Lake St. Clair... Tom had seen a Merlin a day or two before in some trees near the parking lot, and when we got out, he scoped them from a distance, and the Merlin was sitting right there... waiting for us... its probably the same bird that I photographed a few weeks earlier, as it has been seen by several people since then.  The wind was picking up but we decided to keep walking... once we reached the lake we saw a group of 4 small gulls fly by... Bonaparte Gulls... sweet.... as we neared the tip, 3 Long-tailed Ducks came flying in and landed in the lake, only 20 yards from shore...  by this time it was nearly 1PM and the wind was really picking up... so I headed for the car.... Thinking I was done for the day, I headed for the exit.... Nope, one last good bird to see... Over the North Marsh an Adult Bald Eagle came soaring by..... what a great way to end my first day of birding for 2012....  32 Species on the day... a nice start to my Macomb County list for 2012...