Carrie made a nice egg casserole for us this morning. After a relaxing breakfast, we drove to Sand Ridge State Forest where Red Crossbills had been reported by several birders over the last couple of weeks. When we got into the forest, we saw Jim Mountjoy and stopped to chat with him for a moment before continuing to the location. We saw Mike Ingram walking down the road near the location where the crossbills had been spotted. So we got out and followed him. I walked ahead of Mike and Carrie a little and I heard crossbills nearby. Then I was able to get on one with my binoculars in the Virginia Pines.
I motioned for Carrie and Mike to join me. Then several others popped up. There were at least two males and three females. Tony Ward and Colin Dobson drove up after the crossbills flew back further back into the woods and told us that they had seen more of them there today. Red Crossbill was a lifer for Carrie, and it was only the second time that I had seen them.
We followed Tony, Colin, and Mike to a location where a Pine Grosbeak had been reported by Kevin Richmond, but none of us saw it there. Carrie and I continued to Spring Lake bottoms to look for the Northern Shrike, which had been reported there, but the shrike was nowhere to be seen. However, we enjoyed the Belted Kingfisher, the Northern Harrier, the Great Blue Herons, and the Mute Swans.
We decided to go back to crossbill site again to see if the crossbills had returned. They had not, but on our way there we saw this adult male light morph Rough-legged Hawk.
And we saw a nice Red-tailed Hawk on our way out of the forest. We did pretty well with raptors today. In addition to the Northern Harrier at Spring Lake bottoms, the Rough-legged Hawk near Sand Ridge, and the Red-tailed Hawk in the Sand Ridge forest, we also saw several American Kestrels, and a Bald Eagle on the drive over bringing our raptor species tally for the day to five.
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