Noisy Blue Jays roused up a big female Cooper's Hawk this morning which flew into a tree right over my head and perched prettily for some first-class hawk viewing. This was an adult bird with broad red lines on her chest, a long banded tail with a rather wide white tip and a fierce reddish eye. The Blue Jays did not find it hidden in the tree canopy and the bird actually changed place a couple of times without being seen by the jays (but always square in my binoculars).
There were a few other birds around including a whole gang of Common Yellowthroats (perhaps a single family), a Black-and-white Warbler, both wrens (House and Carolina), Eastern Phoebe (two or three), White-breasted Nuthatch and a Ruby-throated Hummingbird near the head of the marsh. An eerie quiet reigns on the marsh and marsh edges these days with the virtually total disappearance of the Bay Avenue Purple Martin colony and local Barn Swallows plus the abandonment of breeding territories by the Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles.
Eric Salzman
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