As I was getting ready to leave Esther Simplot Park, headed home, I noticed a white bird flying towards me from the direction of State St. The wing beat was inconsistent with the wingbeat of a gull, the most common white bird l see. As I watched, I realized it had black wing tips. It flew right over me, and I made a preliminary decision it was a Snow Goose. It then circled Quinn’s Pond and headed back the way it came. As it got further away, it started losing altitude.
I raced back to the back pond at Esther Simplot, and there, floating on the pond, was my Snow Goose. It hung around out in the middle, but I was able to take a seat on a park bench and get a good steady perch for my binos. I finally left around 1pm and it was still floating around near one of the “bubblers” that are intended to keep the pond from stagnating. Hopefully it will find the place to its liking, but my impression was that it viewed all the ponds at Esther and decided the back one had the least traffic. Too nice a day for it to stay that way for very long.
Still have a Blue Jay coming in for sunflower seeds. And between Am Goldfinches & Pine Siskins, filling the thistle feeder at least once &, sometimes, twice a day. Have had as many as 7 Bald Eagles along the river, all at once. Ranging from a 1st yr bird, to a 3 yr old (with that almost Osprey-appearing face), to an adult pr nesting.
A new foy bird appeared this AM. A Brown Creeper working its way up cottonwoods. Another one was a DC Cormorant drying its wings on a snag in the river, yesterday. Up until this past week, had also been seeing up to 5000 Snow Geese coming over in waves.
I thought I saw an osprey sitting on the cell tower by the water treatment plant off Veterans Parkway, late this morning. Since I was driving, I didn’t get a clear look, but figured it had to
be an osprey or bald eagle.
I’m not sure how many folks have already seen an Osprey this year, but my FOY came by yesterday as I was biking the greenbelt. Some other birds have become harder to find, and today I had to extend my ride to Hulls Gulch in order to keep my string of 40-bird days going. (33 days and counting)
I agree with Larry Arnold that birding is perfect during this Covid crazy time, but the greenbelt was more like a weekend yesterday because of all the closures. Today the cold seemed to reduce the numbers.
Yesterday afternoon there were well over a thousand swans in a field on the northeast corner of the north Menan butte. Many geese (Canada) and ducks. To date I’ve seen no Snow Geese in the general Menan/Roberst area.
and we’d take a corvid over a covid any old day 😉
we’ve been relishing in the thought that birding is a perfect fix for our current dystopian reality, since we’re usually in the outback where we see few hominids of any origin if gas stations close we’ll bike-bird the Boise greenbelt even more… eh?
Carolyn Bishop and I did our winter raptor survey north of Idaho Falls today and saw one flock of about 200 Snow Geese flying along 97th North between 15th East and 5th West. Later we saw a flock of probably 2000 Snow Geese flying near 3100 East between 530 North and 650 North. We also checked out the area along 105th West north of the Arco Highway. There is still a lot of snow there and also a few snow melt ponds but no geese. There was one flooded area with about 100 gulls, three California Gulls among the many more Ring-billed Gulls. We also saw many Trumpeter Swans both in the air and in the fields.
Started red top ponds ducks we were seeing 4 canvas back a few shovlers buffle head,scaup ruddy then the snows started coming in by the hundreds on to fort boise as expected tons of snows lots of white front on to roswell marsh triple header tons of snows some white front back side off opal road sandhills out in field
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