Hawks and Merlins at Thickson Woods

A couple of weekends ago, we dropped over to Thickson Woods again, for an evening walk. It began sort of a bit boringish, not much to see. Plenty to hear but we had no idea What we were hearing. We spotted a Flicker but I could not get a good enough shot of him because he remained in the thicker and distant trees.

Then, we headed over to the more open area of Thickson Woods and began seeing Red Starts in the trees. I got a shot of a female, but with much difficulty. It seemed most were females and we didn't know what they were until we discovered what I had photographed once we uploaded the images to the computer.

Things got more exciting when we rounded a corner to come upon what we thought was a small hawk perched on a branch of a dead tree. We learned that it was a Merlin. Such a cute bird! I called to it and it looked right into my eyes. Eventually, a Blue Jay bothered it by landing right near and the Merlin attacked and chased it off.

Heading out, we spotted quite a few bunnies. Also, we heard what we were sure was a hawk, which appeared above out heads in the sky. Coming out onto the roadway that heads down to Thickson Woods, we saw a couple on their bikes, looking up at something so we figured the hawk, which sounded close, must have landed on a pole. Sure enough, there he was, on the top of a hydro pole. It was a red tailed hawk. Got what a birder referred to as the "pooparazzi shot" lol!