Brig 2/3--Green-Winged Teal, Sharp-shinned Hawk

Green-winged Teal with Mallards

Let's all put on our little tin-foil hats and talk paranoia. When Mike, Pete, & I arrived at Brig at 7:45 this morning it was a brisk 18 degrees as shown on the dashboard thermometer. It was cold but with no wind I was actually able to stand at the Gull Pond and check out the few ducks on the ice (one of which turned out to be a FOY Green-winged Teal) without wearing gloves.

Our group went around the dikes twice. The sun came out, there was still no wind to speak of & it felt warmer, as you would expect. Yet, when we exited around 2 PM, the dashboard reading was still 18 degrees. As soon as we hit Rt 9, the reading changed to a more realistic 32 degrees. This is not the first time we've noticed this phenomenon at Brig: the temperature you go in with is the temperature you leave with, no matter how long you're there or what the weather does. Something, somewhere at Brig is jamming the temperature gauges on cars (Mike's is not the only one where we've seen this effect). WHY, the paranoid asks, doesn't whoever runs Brig want us to know what the real temperature is? Or is there something just strange with the weather station that is out in the middle of the refuge that has the effect of freezing car thermometers? It happens in all seasons too. You could go in  there on a summer morning at 72 degrees, be on the dikes at noon under a blazing sun, sweat pouring down your forehead into your eyes, yet the the little LED on the dashboard will still flash "72." And if there are radio waves effecting the car, what other alterations are they making in other electronics...or in our brains. Keep the tin-foil at the ready!

Because it is winter and because it is still very cold every other day, most of the water at Brig was, as Pete says, "stiff." Thousands of Snow Geese didn't care, but as to adding new birds for the year, the only other bird was at our last stop of the day, Mott's Creek, a part of Forsythe about 2 miles away, when we had a Sharp-shinned Hawk fly up off the road and over the car.

As we got on to the Wildlife Drive, we saw on the north dike a long line of cars and knew that one of the long-staying, supposedly rare, Snowy Owls was being viewed. We made our way to it. It was a life bird for at least one person in our group, so I shouldn't be dismissive of the bird, but really, when they're around, they aren't hard to find and they stand out like blobs of snow in the brown grass. The good thing about Snowy Owls at Brig is that you can look at them guilt-free, since they are almost always separated from photographers by moats of water and thus can't be harassed.

For our two trips around Brig I had 37 species, a respectable number given that many birds are smarter than birders and left long ago for warmer climes.
Snow Goose 3925
Brant 200
Canada Goose 150
Mute Swan 12
Gadwall 1
Mallard 55
American Black Duck 85
Northern Pintail 3
Green-winged Teal 1
Bufflehead 6
Hooded Merganser 7
Red-breasted Merganser 3 Two hens, one drake
Great Blue Heron 9
Black Vulture 1
Turkey Vulture 2
Northern Harrier 2
Cooper's Hawk 1
Bald Eagle 1
Red-tailed Hawk 2
Ring-billed Gull 1
Herring Gull 55
Great Black-backed Gull 3
Snowy Owl 1 Very white, with little streaking, indicates male.
Blue Jay 1 Heard
American Crow 3
Carolina Chickadee 3
Tufted Titmouse 1 Heard
Carolina Wren 2 Heard
Eastern Bluebird 6
American Robin 15
Northern Mockingbird 1 Gull Pond
Yellow-rumped Warbler 20
White-throated Sparrow 4
Song Sparrow 1
Northern Cardinal 1
Red-winged Blackbird 2 Road to Gull Pond
House Finch 7