Yesterday afternoon during the snow storm I noticed lots of Robins in
the yard & what at first glance appeared to be several sparrows. A
closer look revealed that while there were a few sparrows there, most
of the smaller birds were AMERICAN PIPITS, the first for my yard list.
When I went for a walk a couple of hours on my local dirt roads later,
Ebenezer Church Rd & Yellow Schoolhouse, there were lots of Robins in
the road and a lot of smaller birds as well, many of which were
AMERICAN PIPITS. At first I thought they were picking up grit but
when they let me get closer, within 10' of them, I noticed some of
them were pulling up partially frozen worms and eating them. At one
spot there were at least 20 pipits with several others scattered up &
down the roads. What I first thought was a merlin, but turned out to
be a SHARP-SHINNED HAWK, scattered all of them at one point.
This morning there were again lots of birds on the dirt roads, busily
eating & reluctant to move out of my way.
Birds at my feeders over the past few days have included up to 6 FOX
SPARROWS and 2 WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS.
Joe Coleman, near Bluemont, Loudoun Co.
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