The first day of 2010 began with a cloudy sky gradually breaking up to allow a bright sun to shine through, a strong wind that shook the branches and few dry brown leaves of the white oaks outside our bedroom windows, and the song of a Carolina Wren from somewhere along the edge of the woods in our back yard. Half a dozen Black Vultures blew by, soaring, circling against the clouds, flying high and fast.<\/p>\n
As the day went on, the cold, blustery wind swept away all trace of clouds, leaving a clear, pale blue sky. A few birds were active around the feeders and bird baths in the front yard \u2013 the usual suspects \u2013 Titmice, Chickadees, Mourning Doves, Cardinals, and a pair of Downy Woodpeckers \u2013 but it was the musical, defiantly colorful songs and trills of Carolina Wrens, strong even against the wind, that captured the spirit of the day. <\/p>\n
On a late afternoon walk through the neighborhood, I saw and heard amazingly few birds, maybe because of the wind, and only counted a total of 12 species, with many of our most common birds not seen or heard. The most interesting sightings were several Cedar Waxwings, whose high thin calls sparkled in the air as they flew over, and about four or five Common Grackles also calling as they flew over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first day of 2010 began with a cloudy sky gradually breaking up to allow a bright sun to shine through, a strong wind that shook the branches and few dry brown leaves of the white oaks outside our bedroom windows, and the song of a Carolina Wren from somewhere along the edge of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}