Winter Birding around the White Memorial "Main Area"

For the birders reading this blog, you might be interested to know that you can see a fair number of species (as in 21-23) around the Museum Area, Ongley and Activity Fields, and Ongley Pond Trail with very little effort on a January afternoon. On Monday and Tuesday of this week we were out in these areas. Monday's primary mission was filling the bird feeders, but in the course of doing that we saw 19 species of birds, including a Purple Finch. In the evening we heard a Great Horned Owl hooting from the Interpretive Trail woods, and then I saw a gray-phase Eastern Screech-Owl fly up from White Hall Rd. by the Pike Marsh with a small mammal in its talons. On Tuesday, while checking and moving a duck nest box at Ongley Pond, we saw a Pileated Woodpecker working on a dead tree, and a Red-breasted Nuthatch, a Brown Creeper, and 12 Golden-crowned Kinglets among a large group of birds foraging in the Hemlock grove behind the pond. As I write this, 2 Eastern Bluebirds are flying back-and-forth among the trees in front of the Museum.