A little bit of snow on a cold morning

The image above was from my short walk around the TNC's Cape Island Preserve. I took the photo with the camera on my phone as the snow was blowing quite rapidly. It's kind of hard to tell from the low resolution of this image but the main reason that the trees in the distance are obscured/blurry was due to the quickly falling snow.

Aside from the beauty of the snow (I have to say there is just something about falling snow that seems to captivate ones attention) there was not a whole lot of activity around "the Preserve" this morning. I walked north along the railroad tracks and then back south through the fields a bit and came up with 32 species (see list below) which is not all bad in my opinion. While I was not able to dig up any unexpected species, it was just nice to get out for a cold walk before work.

I did meet up with Bob Fogg for the latter part of my morning jaunt who told me that had seen an Orange-crowned Warbler when he arrived near the trax/entrance gate area off Wilson St. Also toward the end of our walk we saw a raptor shoot in from the west low and ultimately perch in a tree reveling itself to be an adult Red-shouldered Hawk. Always a welcome sight to my eyes!

Before heading inside I decided to check out the patch of open water on Lily Lake. There are still loads of Gadwall and Wigeon (no Eurasian, best to try Villa WMA. See Don's post below). There was one Green-winged Teal and a female Bufflehead. No Redhead that I could see though I really did a rather quick scan/count. I had heard that there was at least one Redhead on this patch the other day. Also no Cackling Goose.

To my knowledge the Eared Grebe on Cape May Harbor has not bee refound in a few days. I've heard now word about the other grebe up at Stone Harbor.

I guess there is always tomorrow.

Location: Cape May - Lily Lake
Observation date: 1/21/09
Number of species: 14

Canada Goose 20
Mute Swan 22
Gadwall 95
American Wigeon 55
Mallard 15
Northern Shoveler 4
Green-winged Teal 1
Ring-necked Duck 25
Bufflehead 1
Hooded Merganser 3
Ruddy Duck 12
Double-crested Cormorant 1
American Coot 12
Ring-billed Gull 2

Location: Cape Island Preserve
Observation date: 1/21/09
Notes: 6326 steps = approx. 4.1 miles
Number of species: 32

Canada Goose 26
Mallard 4
Northern Pintail 1
Turkey Vulture 2
Red-shouldered Hawk 1
Herring Gull 3
Rock Pigeon 36
Mourning Dove 25
Downy Woodpecker 3
Northern Flicker X
Blue Jay 6
American Crow 12
Fish Crow X
Carolina Chickadee X
Carolina Wren 14
Hermit Thrush 1
American Robin 25
Gray Catbird 1
Northern Mockingbird 6
European Starling 45
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1
Eastern Towhee 4
Savannah Sparrow 45
Fox Sparrow 4
Song Sparrow 10
White-throated Sparrow 55
Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) 3
Northern Cardinal 12
Red-winged Blackbird 25
House Finch 15
American Goldfinch 20
House Sparrow X

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2