Another cold front passed through today, making our first day of Christmas break a very rainy one.  We were cooped up inside all morning, then finally I couldn’t take it anymore and we went for a walk between showers.  It was an unusually active walk (or maybe I’m already used to our Standard Time nighttime walks with no birds!)  We saw Bow Tie (our neighborhood Yellow-throated Warbler), an Eastern Phoebe, dozens of Palm Warblers and Yellow-Rumped Warblers, Mallards, Blue-Winged Teals, Lesser Scaups, a Ring-Billed Gull, a Female Canvasback, Snowy Egrets, several flocks of White Ibises, Pied-Billed Grebes, and my first Wilson’s Snipe at Stoneybrook West.

The walk started out on a somber note with a sighting of a Cooper’s Hawk in our backyard.  On top of our big bird feeder!  But he left without causing too much birdie distress.

There has been a small group of Lesser Scaups at the pond at the intersection of Tour Pointe and Town Commons.  Usually the birds are off on the other side of the pond, but today they were on my side and I could get some closer pictures (but with horrible overcast lighting).  The birds are very skittish; as soon as you start to approach the pond at all, they swim away…

I’ll post this last picture just as proof…we saw a Wilson’s Snipe at the Spinnaker Cove pond!  I approached the water to photograph a Snowy Egret, then heard a little indignant sound and saw the snipe fly away.  I tried to approach him, but he flew as soon as I got at all close.  Boy can he blend in well!