The last few days there has been a lot of Raven activity in the lawn on campus. They seem to be finding something they like to eat, but I don’t know what it is. I have noticed other lawns that look like they have seen the same attention, though I did not see ravens on them at the time.
I spent a few minutes with my family this evening watching the swallows over Swan lake. It looked like there were close to 10 of them. I assume they were all Tree Swallows, but I’m not sure. There was also a male Canvasback (which I heard about last week) and a male Northern Pintail, probably were other birds as well, but I didn’t have too much time to spend looking.
I took a quick look at the Turnaround this evening and saw a couple of Marbled Godwits and a couple of Dunlin (I think, they were far away). It seems that this year the large-ish flock of Marbled Godwits that appeared the last couple of years and spent a fair amount of time on the SJC lawn (among other places) has not come together this year. There has not seemed to be a shortage of Marbled Godwits as far as I can tell, but they just don’t seem to be flocking up here for some reason.
When we got back, I went over to talk to one of the neighbors and a pair of hairy woodpeckers stopped by.