At 3:30 this morning I was awakened by one of my favorite sounds-a Western
Screech Owl. I smiled in the dark, thinking this would be the start of my
day list.
But when I woke up to a snowstorm, I figured I wasn’t going to be able to
bike today. Then, when the sun came out, I started eyeing the streets for
bikeability.
Along the way, while doing “poop fairy” duties in my yard, I was visited by
a wonderful Sharp-shinned Hawk, putting my day list at 10 and scaring
everybody with feathers. This made a bike ride an absolute necessity. After
all, I can’t write them down unless I do a bike ride. 😉
So off I headed, with the streets not nearly as wet as I had expected and
not icy as I had feared. I was greeted at Esther Simplot by a flyover of an
Osprey. Now I had 15 birds and 3 of them were raptors . I rounded up the
usual suspects, including the lingering female Greater Scaup at Veterans
Pond and a Common Goldeneye on the back pond. By the time I left the park
and headed downstream, I was up to 29 birds.
A quick detour for my favorite Great Horned Owls was disappointing at first
when they weren’t in their usual tree, but as I stood looking around, one of
them hooted to let me know they were still in the neighborhood. Then I had a
flyover by a Cooper’s Hawk near Veterans Park, followed by a flyover by a
Bald Eagle near Willow Lane.
I rode downstream on the Boise side until I found the wintering N. Pintail
and saw a small raft of Lesser Scaup at Silver Lake. Along the way I came
upon another Sharp-shinned Hawk, this one having dinner al fresco. Bird 39
was a DC Cormorant back at the Whitewater Park, and a flock of California
Gulls on Quinn’s Pond put me at 40.
My neighborhood Red-tailed Hawks seemed to be hiding when I got home, but
then they got noisy and active again and made me happy. That brought my
final tally to 42 birds in 13 miles, with 7 of them raptors. Not bad for a
day that looked like a snow day in the morning.
Tom McCabe, Boise
P.S. As I sit here at my computer, my friendly neighborhood Western Screech
Owl is calling constantly and making me smile.
