Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

In the months since I started working in Syracuse, my birding has taken a hit with the needs of working life sucking away free time on the weekends and evenings. However, as the dead of winter threatens us with cold winds and driving snow, there have been moments and opportunities to foster ornithological curiosity and observation. Most of the birding that I do in Syracuse is usually accomplished during my morning and evening commutes to and from the zoo. Just as I was leaving work today, an adult Cooper's Hawk ( Accipiter cooperi ) belted over Conservation Drive and into the tangle of cedars and houses on the other side of the fence. Even in the city, nature finds a way in, around, or throughout, eventually. Anyway, this morning as I was driving down Lodi Street, waiting for the most treacherous traffic lights I've ever experienced to change green, I noticed a small bird navigating the wind. It looked more aquatic in its handling of the wind, diving and cutting upwards and...

As January comes to a close and the new year continues on, I have taken some time to look for a common bird that everyone seems to notice, but rarely talks about. No, I'm not talking about feeder birds like titmice or finches, or ducks and geese that winter on our shores, or common city birds like sparrows. This bird can be seen with regularity soaring over any farm field, scanning a highway corridor at rush hour, or sitting on a wire like this one I saw at Kaveski Farm Conservation Land in Concord, MA. It is the Red-tailed Hawk ( Buteo jamaicensis ) and while they are as easy to see as I've described, I feel like they are often overlooked as well. Maybe it's because they're so common that the people that see them so often get used to them. Even in recent years as I became more of a birder than a naturalist, I would note where a given species was and then move on to the next one I saw or heard. It wasn't until I read and then reread Lyanda Lynn Haupt's Cro...