Birding with Kenn and Kimberly

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kim writes: While the weather here in northwest Ohio the last few days has been downright balmy, we suffered through a stretch of incredibly brutal weather for several days. Temps at or near zero, 25+ mile per hour winds, and everything was coated with a thick layer of ice. It was really hard to force ourselves to even go outside. Several Christmas Bird Counts scheduled for last weekend were canceled. You KNOW it's rough outside when birders decide not to do CBCs. As a result of the weather, I spent a great deal of time last weekend keeping the feeders filled at the Observatory. Turns out, that can be interpreted in a couple of ways, depending upon your perspective. What I meant by "filled feeders" was this.... A human's idea of "bird food"... And, here's what "filled feeders" means from a different perspective... Oh yeah! Look at all that bird food... This immature Red-tailed Hawk must be really desperate. It was haun...

From Cape May, New Jersey, Kenn writes: Now is the season when birds of prey, or raptors – the hawks, falcons, eagles, and their fellow-travelers, the vultures – are migrating south. For the most part, these birds move on a broad front, spread across the landscape, and we don’t notice them in big numbers except in a few places where they’re concentrated by geography. But there are a few favored spots where the hawks follow ridges or shorelines and where huge numbers can be seen under the right weather conditions. Cape May, New Jersey, is one of the best such concentration points north of the Mexican border. The entire southern one-third of New Jersey is a peninsula, of course, and at Cape May it narrows to a point just a few miles across. During their fall migration, especially when winds are from the northwest, raptors will move south along the outer coast of New Jersey. When they get to the tip of Cape May Point they face a quandary, because most of them are reluctant to cross the o...