Sleeping in followed by birding, what better way to start a Saturday?

Just before crossing the street in front of the assembly building, an enormous bird flew out of one of the trees. It took me completely by surprise and was gone before I had a chance to dig my binoculars out of my backpack. I did manage to see a red tail, so I’m guessing it must have been a Red-tailed Hawk.

I followed the usual route behind Phys Plant but without much luck. Just as I was getting discouraged, I saw a flash of brown behind the pond that I didn’t recognize. I tried to follow it, but it was too fast for me too keep track of. However, while trying to find out where it had gone, I happened to see a Mourning Dove that I wouldn’t have otherwise. It was high in the branches of a pine tree, and it very cooperatively sat still for me. I’d seen Mourning Doves before but only briefly, so it was nice to get good look.

I moved on to behind the soccer practice field where I got the best view I’ve ever had of a Blue Jay. It was having its lunch, and I watched it for several minutes. It would sit on the top of one of the soccer goals, locate an insect on the ground, casually fly down and pick it up, then return to its perch and enjoy its catch.

The Blue Jay eventually moved on, and then I saw what I think the brown flash earlier must have been. A brown bird with a white belly and white ring around its neck crouched in the middle of the grass soccer field. Every so often it would give a call, fly up for a while, and then land. I’d never seen one of these before, so I once again took some mental notes, hoping to get the colors in the right order this time. A quick search on Whatbird once I got to the library allowed me to identify it as a Killdeer. Not exactly rare, but I was still pretty pleased at being able to figure that out on my own.

The Brown Thrasher nest I’d watched being built a few weeks ago was close, so I decided to check in on it. I found the nest, but neither its occupants nor their eggs were present. Does that mean the eggs have already been laid, hatched, and the young birds left, or would they wait this long after building the nest to lay the eggs?

I decided to swing by the front of campus, hoping to perhaps get another look at the Loggerhead Shrike I’d seen on Wednesday. Amazingly, there was one sitting in the very first pine tree I came to! It refused to give me a good profile view, but I’m quite certain that it was the same kind of bird I saw last time, and it definitely matches the pictures I saw of Loggerhead Shrikes while trying to identify it earlier. That also means that I was dyslexically colorblind. Loggerhead Shrikes have a grey head and white belly. :-)

The final sighting of the morning was a group of what looked like European Starlings. But their wings were very brown instead of the black I’ve been used to seeing. Everything else about them still looked like Starlings though. Were they Starlings or something else?