Colliers Mills 2/14

Walking on the east side of Colliers Mills Lake this morning I saw a man and woman out on the ice. They were preparing to ice fish. The man waved Hello to me and I shouted back, "You're very brave." In response, he just sort of shrugged his shoulders and hollered back, "It's 9 inches thick." Which I guess is more than enough to safely stand on ice. But it made me wonder, who is the meshuggeneh that first goes out there with an augur to find out that the ice is thick enough to stand on and what if it isn't? And for what--the only fish in that water are pickerel and you'd need a lot of pickerel to make a meal. 

Meanwhile, this meshuggeneh was walking on top of frozen snow in the woods north of Success Road looking for Red-headed Woodpeckers which finally turned up after I had walked farther than I planned. Two finally flew out of the woods, across the field, and into the next stand of trees, too far and too fast for photos, but at I had won my little game again. 

While Success Road was clear, nothing else was, so it was slow going through the fields and over the berm and down Hawkin Road. The temperature was just high enough to start melting the hard-packed snow so that occasionally my foot would plunge through it. Birds were at a premium--obviously no waterfowl today but walking down a side road I looked up and saw in the branches just above my head, a Red-shouldered Hawk which was very calm and didn't seem to care that I was right below it. 

Only 20 species for the day.

American Herring Gull  36
Turkey Vulture  1
Red-shouldered Hawk  1
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker  1
Red-headed Woodpecker  2     
Red-bellied Woodpecker  3
Downy Woodpecker  1
Blue Jay  5
Common Raven  1     Croaking
Carolina Chickadee  3
Tufted Titmouse  5
White-breasted Nuthatch  6
Brown Creeper  1
European Starling  1
Eastern Bluebird  1
American Robin  20
Dark-eyed Junco  25
Song Sparrow  1
Red-winged Blackbird  2
Northern Cardinal  1