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September 2007

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Sun, 9 Sep 2007 16:26:28 GMT
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September 9, 2007

I returned home Friday night after three and a half weeks working in sunny, HOT, southern California. I have been enjoying all the reports of red-breasted nuthatches apparently swarming into the Ohio, and I have been wondering if they had made an appearance at our conifer-less farm. (Actually, for the botanical record, there is one tiny stunted cedar in the northwest corner.)

This morning as the rain began, aborting the dogwalk, I looked out at the white-breasted nuthatches always present around the suet feeder and, sure enough, there was a little striped-eyed guy grabbing sunflower seeds from the adjacent seed feeder, along with numerous house finches, and our resident hoard of house sparrows.

I have seen red-breasted nuthatches here before, but not often. I will have to see whether the previous sightings were odd or even years, as per Bill Whan's comments on the biennial periodicity.

I haven't taken any extensive walks since getting back here Friday, but during yesterday's stroll through the fields I spotted three birds perched in the uppermost branches of an ash snag in the adjacent wood's edge. A quick binocular look revealed a robin, a flicker, and a rose-breasted grosbeak. The grosbeaks nest here, but I kind of doubt that this was one of the locals. They probably left a while ago. I don't see them here often in the "autumn."  (Does anyone know about the timing of r-b grosbeak migration?) Interesting for me was the behavior. A few seconds after my binocular view the robin took off across the field with the grosbeak in hot pursuit, aggressively mobbing (a mob of one) the robin. Curious...

When we circled around and came back past the aforementioned snag, it was now full of 8 cedar waxwings with others in the trees nearby.

Bob Evans
Geologist
Hopewell Township, Muskingum County
DeLorme 70 A1

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