Sparrows and an Eagle

While Alison toiled away at her desk, I made another late-morning visit to the Rogers Center yesterday. I’ve decided that it’s a nice enough spot, reminiscent in many ways of the large city park in another Hamilton that served as my “home patch” for a couple of years. Canada Geese abound, and on a nice fall day the Center is heavily visited by humans, too; but there are fine out-of-the-way corners where a birder can simply bird.

I went back chiefly to enjoy again the Field Sparrows I’d seen the day before, but I found that they had moved on, whether to another hedgerow or south to their wintering grounds I can’t say. The small flock of first-winter White-crowned Sparrows was still present, though, and as I was watching them, a Vesper Sparrow flashed in and perched above me for several minutes. I assume that this is a fairly uncommon bird here, and it was great to see one in the east again.

One of the great advantages of the Rogers Center is that it is surrounded not by housing developments but by farmland along the Chenango River. A quick scan of one of the fields produced a flock of 31 American Pipits, too shy for a close approach but still enjoyable.

The edge of that field, where corn was still standing, hosted a few Chipping Sparrows, too. Slate-colored Juncos,  White-throated Sparrows, and a single Swamp Sparrow filled out my emberizid list for the day.

So it had been a good and birdful walk, but with clear skies and light winds, I’d been disappointed to see so few raptors: a couple of Turkey Vultures, five Red-tailed Hawks, most of them probably locals, and a brown Northern Harrier. I knew that something had to be moving, and Alison was of the same opinion; I peeled her away from her work and we set off north of town for Lake Moraine, a place she’d visited before and warned me would be nearly birdless.

She was right about the lake proper, which harbored little more than a couple of Ring-billed and a single Herring Gull. The skies were a different matter. We were there for just a bit more than half an hour, and while it would be a severe exaggeration to speak of them ’streaming’, Red-tailed Hawks passed over at a good rate, and a big black speck flew in to become a juvenile Golden Eagle! This was Alison’s first in the east, and one of very few I’d seen at this longitude, too. Enough to turn me into a state lister.