Birds of the Bosque

 This morning was finally warmer, well a little bit warmer at 42 degrees. The back of my car is still filled with winter birding gear. Four jackets, two sweatshirts, 2 neck gaiters( one thick, one thin), a bunch of hats, gloves and other birding gear. Maybe all this gear can make to the wash this week and then a closet. I'm so ready for warmer weather. If you had a "W" in your name today you were a star. Woodpeckers and wood ducks were in an abundance . Walking through the forest at the entrance to the open space there was a jackhammer noise on a tree as a woodpecker was just hammering this tree. I stopped hearing the noise and intently looked for the noisemaker, but no matter which side of the tree I was on the woodpecker was not visible. Pushing on though woodpeckers were all over the place, a totally different circumstance than yesterday. It seems to me that at times the woodpeckers communicate through their pecking. I haven't seen any evidence in literature that c...

 I was out birding the other morning  and I saw a huge hawk of some kind, I didn't know what kind at the time. The hawk was in a very difficult place to photograph, high in a tree looking straight into the morning sun. I was behind him facing the sun and the sun was very bright, clearly I was in the wrong location.  The hard part was moving in such a manner that I didn't scare him off, so moving closer and moving into a position where the sun wasn't directly in my viewfinder was in order. Gradually I moved into a better spot, more on the side of the hawk, not straight behind him. The hawk was very big, much bigger than a coopers hawk and seemed like he was the master of the territory. What I couldn't tell until I got home and looked at the photos was he looked angry, angrier than any other bird I've seen before. The hawk shouldn't have been angry at me, I was pretty far away. The hawk was a swainsons hawk, a type of hawk I've seen in out neighborhood many ti...