Birding in Hartford

Today, on Sunday, I took a short drive out to Hartford, about 30 minutes away from my house in eastern CT. My dad and I went to the Riverside Park, and even though it was cold some of the water was unfrozen and there was some good birding there.

We came in and saw a Northern Flicker, but it flew away too quickly to get a photo. When we got out of the car we would hear crows galore, and they were easy to see! There had to be 150 crows there, and they were very loud the whole time.

 These crows were some of the many crows that were in the trees, and there were many different individuals. Some of them were standing on the ice, and some were in the trees. But wherever they were they were calling loudly.
There were also some seagulls there. I didn't get any good photos, but I did get some. They are on Flickr, and the link is on the bottom of the post. I actually don't know what it is, but I am believing they are Ring-billed.

Tufted Titmouse

We saw some ducks in the distance, but had no idea what they were. So we went closer, and it actually yielded some other sightings. More crows, of course, and we saw some songbirds in the woods that we went by. We saw a Tufted Titmouse, a Northern Cardinal (no picture), we heard a Black-capped Chickadee, and we even saw a Downy Woodpecker in the trees, pecking. We also spooked some Mallards, who flied away quickly. I kinda stink at getting flight shots but I tried to get some.

Downy Woodpecker

The highlight however, was a flight picture. It was a juvenile Bald Eagle, which was something we were aiming to see the whole time. It was in flight, and since it was just soaring very slowly I could get a good picture. One of them is below, in flight. It was great to see the Eagle, which even though it isn't a lifer, is always a delight to see. We looked for the adult bird but we couldn't find it. We saw a quick view of a Red-tailed Hawk flying away, but we couldn't get a picture of it. But the eagle was certainly a highlight.

Juvenile Bald Eagle

So soon we got to a place where we could see the ducks that were just a dot on my vision a while away. One was a Brant, all by itself in the river. When I reported the sighting to eBird I found out that that Brant was the first Brant sighting ever reported to eBird! I was very excited when I found this out. We kept going (this is when I heard the Cardinal and then saw it, but we couldn't get a picture), and we found out the other birds were Common Mergansers. It isn't a life bird, but it's still a good sighting. We walked back, took some more crow pictures, and saw a small group of Canada Geese on the way out. Later we saw robins, starlings and pigeons too. But it was certainly great to see the eagle.

To see more of the photos: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/100012535@N07/sets/72157641775733483/

To see all my photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/100012535@N07/