This is the victorious Canada Goose mentioned earlier; doing her imitation of an ostrich as she seeks to convince me she is invisible nearing the end of her second day of incubation.

BIRD WATCHING—

Each winter I participate in Project Feeder Watch in conjunction with Cornell University. As volunteers, we count birds seen at our feeders for two consecutive days every other week between November and March. My season finished the 25th.

I had a total of 27 different species of birds visit my feeders this winter. Twenty different species was the high for any one weekend.

My top averages for those weekends were: 11.8 Cardinals, 10.5 Mourning Doves and 10.4 Juncos. Those birds also led my high, weekend counts at 20, 21 and 15 respectively.

I had six species where I saw only one bird, one time, the entire winter. They were: brown creeper, grackle, fox sparrow, eastern towhee, starling and robin.

Populating the rest of my sightings were: wood ducks, red bellied, downy and hairy woodpeckers, northern flickers, blue jays, chickadees, tufted titmice, white breasted nuthatches, Carolina wrens, tree sparrows, song sparrows, white-throated sparrows, cowbirds, house finches, goldfinches, and house sparrows.

I also was able to count a belted kingfisher this year. They don’t eat bird seed but he clearly was attracted by the feeding activity one busy morning. The kingfisher dives into the pond’s surface and catches his meals on-the-wing.

Naturally, they don’t hang around much when the pond is covered with ice.