Nashville, TN birder Graham Gerdeman came up Wednesday afternoon to try for
Short-eared Owls. Upon his arrival, Alison went out to tell him there was a
hawk in the back yard. She had first seen it moments earlier as it zoomed by
the kitchen window. I was working in the shop behind the house and looked up
to see Graham & Alison standing some distance away and motioning silently for
me to come to them. When I got there and looked back, I could see an immature
Red-shouldered Hawk sitting in a walnut tree behind the shop. A mature
Red-shouldered Hawk spent several winters here, but until yesterday, I hadn’t
seen a Red-shouldered Hawk in a couple of years. We both got good pictures of
it before we set out looking for owls.
At Parsons Pond, as we neared the dry, weed covered basin, Graham spotted a
coyote on a distant hillside. Soon afterwards, a Short-eared Owl passed
overhead, followed shortly by a second owl. Graham followed one of them
through his scope with attached camera. I followed the other one with
binoculars, kept on it until it landed and got my scope on it. The one Graham
was following dropped below his horizon without landing. We hadn’t yet
reached the spot where I had flushed some owls on Dec. 3, so we left my scope
fixed on the owl on the ground and walked a little further. A third owl flew
up from nearly the same location where I had flushed 5 on Dec. 3. It too
dropped below our horizon before landing. When we got back to my scope, the
owl I had fixed on was gone. Graham got some pretty good flight shots
considering how limited our opportunity was.
Here are links to our shared ebird lists with Graham’s pictures -
frank@xxxxxxxxxxx - near Dot in Logan County, KY
