A new season begins

Well It's April and time to start checking Buebird boxes!  I love this time of year.  Gearing up for the birds to come back.  A beginning to new season as a Bluebird box monitor at a local Metro Park.  Bluebird Box monitoring is a fun and rewarding hobby that gets me out in the field early and keeps me out into the first week of August!  In April it's that anticipation of seeing the first eggs.  I went out to check my appointed boxes on Friday evening as I knew the weather was going to turn bad over the weekend.  I was rewarded with eggs in my first box!

As it turned out this was the only box with eggs, but there is hope as another box has a full nest in it.  Maybe an egg will be laid in it this next week. 

I was also rewarded with my first of the season Hermit Thrush.   A happy greeter, early in the spring.  They usually arrive a little before the other thrushes do, and this guy was a welcoming site.   As I was taking his picture I could hear another early bird, an Eastern Phoebe, but I never saw him. 

As usually in April, one of my favorite rituals is to look for the newly fledged Great Horned Owlets.  I have found them in 2005, 2006, 2008 and now in 2012!  Yes, I found a baby Owlet!  I didn't realize until I just looked it up, that it had been 3 years without finding the babies.  There was only one there, which was disappointing.  I have seen 3 before, but usually there are 2. 

  

Normally as I search the woods for the baby owls, I spy one or even both of the adult Great Horned Owls.  They don't usually let you get very close.  Most the time, my first glimpse of them is as they take flight.  This time started out the same.  My first view was of her flying away, but she didn't fly far, and ended up perching in a fairly open area.  I snuck through the woods and I saw her again from a pretty good ways off.  She was watching me too. This might have been to my advantage, because I was able to sneak up, in plain sight, to within about 60 yards. I snapped off a few clear photos before she took off again.

What I nice night at the park.  It ended with getting to hear and eventually seeing an American  Woodcock.  Well, I saw a brief view of him as he whirled by on his way back down. I do enjoy staying until I hear them sing, and if I'm lucky, to see a little of their evening flight.