Hello All:
Kind of a kooky bird day here in Thompson, despite the cloudy coolness.  Started off with veery brazenly hanging out in the driveway looking for something to eat.  Next eastern phoebe hovered near me on the porch steps.   Male pileated on the suet, something they don't often do here.  Then a pair of brown thrashers--our first this year--perused the lawn and shrubs.   Got a nice comparison view of M/F house finch and M/F purple finch on opposite sides of the feeder at the same time.   A red-tailed hawk bombed in behind the car and got a smallish rodent (sq? chippy?) and had trouble getting airborne again (not something we usually see).  A poor downy crashed into a 2nd-floor window and recovered in the potato patch.  Later watched female rose-breasted grosbeak with nest material, another veery delivering a worm, a male chestnut-sided warbler singing lustily despite a beakful of green caterpillars, and blue-winged warbler wheezing happily way up high.  The highlight this evening
  was a twenty-minute hooded-warbler dogfight that took place all around us as husband Dan and I stood near our little stream...the two males chased each other relentlessly, with wonderful speed and agility.  More than twice the little yellow-and-black blurs whipped right by less than a yard from our heads as we tried to keep track of them.  My husband noted that after a while they didn't seem to be flying as quickly--one or the other would stop a moment, rip out a song (both "ta-whit, ta-whit, ta-whitee-o" and variant) then be off again.  We gave up before they did, and moved on to watch a downy nest.  Seen/heard  today on our property:

wild turkey
red-tailed hawk
5 mourning dove
2 ruby-throated hummingbird
2 red-bellied woodpecker
1 yellow-bellied sapsucker
3 downy
2 hairy
1 northern flicker
1 pileated
4 eastern wood pewee
1 eastern phoebe
1 great-crested flycatcher
2 red-eyed vireo
4 blue jay
3 american crow
3 black-capped chickadee
2 tufted titmouse
2 white-breasted nuthatch
2 carolina wren
3 house wren
4 veery
2 wood thrush
2 american robin
3 gray catbird
2 brown thrasher
2 blue-winged warbler
3 yellow warbler
2 chestnut-sided warbler
1 mourning warbler
5 hooded warbler
3 scarlet tanager
4 eastern towhee
2 chipping sparrow
2 field sparrow
3 song sparrow
5 northern cardinal
7 rose-breasted grosbeak
4 red-winged blackbird
2 common grackle
5 brown-headed cowbird
2 purple finch
2 house finch
2 american goldfinch

What a fun day.....whew!

Britt & Dan

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