In the last week, riding my regular route 6 of the 7 days, I found the following FOY birds: Bullock’s Oriole, Black-headed Grosbeak, Evening Grosbeak, Western Grebe, House Wren, and Blue-winged Teal. Plus, a pair of Swainson’s Hawks have taken up residence in a nest they built a few years ago (and got ejected from by some Red-tailed Hawks). The nest is 3 blocks from my house. 😉 But I still haven’t found where the neighborhood Cooper’s Hawk nest is. I only know the vicinity. 🙁

I’ve been able to tally 40 or more birds on 4 of my last 7 rides, with Willow Lane Athletic Complex a magnet for some of the FOY’s, plus YR Warblers, Cassin’s Finches (male and female), Downy Woodpecker, BH Cowbird, etc. My one long ride of 22 miles netted over 50 birds.

BTW, I’m sure a bunch of you are familiar with Bird Cast, which tells you the expected nighttime migration in your area. The link is here: https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/local-migration-alerts/. Just put in your location, and it will give you their prediction. For Boise it has been predicting “High” migration, meaning 3,000 migrating birds per kilometer per night, for the last few nights and the next 3 nights. It only predicts 3 nights out, and it only continues until June 1. Check it out.

Tom McCabe, Boise

Great find, Marty!  That is the singular place in Idaho that I have found that bird in past years.  It’s a good sign that it is still showing up there!  Dedication Point seems to be a ‘sparrow magnet’ – we used to see about 6-7 species
right there.  If my memory serves me right, they were ‘Black-throated’, “Sagebrush’, “Vesper’, ‘Brewer’s’ ‘White-crowned’, “Savannah” and “Lark”.  Enjoy the weekend…Jonathan

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