birding

I went on a bird outing this morning for the first time in a couple of months. It was fun, I guess. The people leading it weren't as good as usual. Jim G. was in charge, and he admits he isn't good at birding by ear--I do a lot of that, especially with sparrows. He's more interested in nests, which I admit are relatively interesting but I'm still at the stage where I want to see the bird and not what they're building. David T. often leads these. He's obsessed with sparrows, which is a drawback, but he'll announce every bird he sees or hears, which I find very helpful. I started announcing everything I thought I saw or heard, too. I was right fairly often, which is nice. I'm definitely learning. We saw a V of waterbirds fly overhead and Jim at first said Canada Geese, but I hesitated and said, "I don't think so." Then he said they were double-breasted cormorants. They have a very similar shape to Canadas when flying, but they're all black. More importantly, and what clued me, is that Canadas are to my knowledge at least never silent when they fly. They keep up a flight song. I had never seen cormorants flying before, but I'll remember now. Jim said fishers didn't like them, and I can see why: we probably saw 100, which is a LOT. We also saw Great Blue Herons and Wild Turkeys. We saw 2 American Kestrels fighting over a nesting spot in an electric pole. We got a great view of an immature or female Northern Harrier flying steadily in a line with us. I got good looks at 4 barn swallows and heard their song: they make some little clicks in the middle. We saw lots of tree swallows, which have blue irridescent backs. We saw one sedulously guarding a nest box, probably mate-guarding. They like to nest in the bluebird boxes or the purple martin gourds, except they're far more territorial than martins and so often will chase others away from the other gourds. We did see a few purple martins, fewer than I had hoped. We saw one Eastern Meadowlark singing on a short pole. I heard lots of field sparrows: I was pleased to identify its song, which is like a ping pong ball dropping.