As expected, there's hardly anything to see in my yard this year, what with the Cooper's having taken up residence in the block. The only bird I see every day is one or both of the pair. I know there are birds out there, because occasionally I see the hawks eating. On Wednesday, one hawk was dining when the other (female) flew in, & he left the catch for his mate. I didn't know animals shared like that. (There's an earlier posting on the board of the male giving up the prey to his mate, who then carried it off to the nest. The Lithuania female ate it in situ.)
I'm having to do nearly all my backyard birding by ear this year. I'm spending a lot of time with the Peterson Birding by Ear. At first I put down all those musical warbles to robins, until I saw a rose-breasted grosbeak singing a similar song. So I decided that the musical ones must be rose-breasted grosbeaks, until I actually saw a robin, and it was singing "like a robin that had taken voice lessons" (Peterson description of a rose-breasted grosbeak). So I had to modify my data from "robin" to "robin-like". I thought I was okay on the flicker too, until I heard one of the hawks give a call that sounded like a flicker (it says something for change in species distribution that the Peterson audio guide doesn't even have a section on Cooper's, so I couldn't research its sound until I got the brilliant idea of checking out allaboutbirds), instead of its usual thoughtful call to announce to all the prey that it is now sitting up & hunting.
Saturday night & again last night I had a treat of chimney swifts.
