January 2023
January 1 Walking around the pond this afternoon we saw maybe a hundred hooded mergansers , swimming and diving together in one group. Wonderful to see so many all at once. January 4 Hoodies still at the pond, dispersed into several groups of ten to twenty; one group had a single female common merganser in its midst. Further along, two female common mergansers diving together. January 7 This afternoon Susan and I went for a walk at Habitat, an Audubon sanctuary in Belmont, right next to Cambridge. On our way back to the visitor center, as the sun was getting lower in the sky, we heard an owl hooting and headed towards it. As we got close, a family pointed it out to us: a great horned owl , perched high up on a pine branch, conveniently right by the trail. We could hear a second one, too, the pair hooting back and forth, duetting; Susan soon found it in a nearby tree. Over the next few minutes several other birders stopped by, everyone totally delighted w...