Greensboro Birds

Continuing yesterday’s birding tale, when Happy and I returned from Bur-Mil, the welding and metal-cutting was still going strong. So we took off across the street, winding through the woods to the pond at Country Park and on to BarkPark for a little off-leash fun.

Yesterday brought two new birds to Greensboro Birds. This Double-crested Cormorant is the second one. It was sunning on the platform in the middle of the pond. (We saw it in the exact same spot again today—did it ever move?) Greensboro is supposedly in this bird’s migration range, but they do tend to be more numerous inland than other cormorants. I have a lot to learn about which birds live here when. (Aside: A bird-list friend once called this a Double-breasted Cormorant, so I always think of it with that name.)

Up the hill and into BarkPark, where Happy enjoyed running free through the woods while I enjoyed the lingering Dark-eyed Juncos and numerous Bluebirds, including this female.

Pretty soon, though, I realized the Bluebird was paying close attention to this hole in the tree next to it. Hm, Bluebirds are cavity nesters.

Yep, before too long, the bird hopped over to the edge of the cavity and peeked inside…

…and eventually climbed in all the way. I watched her repeat this several times. It occurred to me that the park is riddled with dead trees inhabited by various woodpeckers and so forth. No wonder there are so many Bluebirds here—they have hundreds of acres packed with enticing hollow trees!

After a half day of killing time/birding, Happy and I went home to discover that our part of the noisy work had been postponed till Thursday. No matter, Happy and I had a great time. She had an extremely long nap while I began plotting our birding plan for Thursday afternoon.