Burnt Mill Creek (24Mar2014)

Took a trip to Burnt Mill Creek before work today to try and get the Yellow-crowned Night Heron that Amy McLane reported.  No dice on the Heron, but I did get great looks at a Great Horned Owl being chased and harassed by an American Crow.  Not fast enough with the camera to get a good shot.

The owl somehow managed to fly down into this broken off tree trunk and the Crow sat on top doing his best to annoy the heck out the owl.

Red-Shouldered Hawk - always plenty of these here.

GBH - always a gorgeous bird.

Two Cooper's Hawks were chasing each other, most likely a pair.

A bit blurry, but here you can see the long rounded tail and the largish head.

Seeing that these birds need to make their living by mostly catching other birds, they need to be fast and that they are.

Osprey.

In the afternoon during George's soccer practice, I took Luke back to Burnt Mill to try again for the owl.

Beautiful day so Luke and I played Pooh Sticks in the creek and with the ultra slow current it took a while but Luke won both games.

While chasing (walking very slowly) my Pooh stick, I noticed what looked like an extremely small Great Blue Heron from the back.  As I got closer, I knew it was my original target bird from this morning.

Yellow-Crowned Night Heron.

The Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers were everywhere.

Great Times!