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January brought some good birding, and a new life bird for me. We started off the new year with a new activity for me – snowshoeing. Of course, I had to take my binoculars along with me if we were to encounter any birds. While there, the area we went to on New Year’s Day didn’t offer much in the way of birding, but I did catch a new life bird – a pair of Black-Backed Woodpeckers perched in a tree at Hope Valley near Carson Pass. It took a while to identify them, but we finally did. The only other birds we saw were three Steller’s Jays. I’ve been in love with those birds ever since I first saw them years and years ago. I’ve always admired their blue body and black crested head.
I was birding in Capay Valley today (exact location undisclosed because I was allowed on private property), and I got to watch one hawk pursue another while flying because one of them caught what appeared to be a mouse or small rodent and wanted it. The pursuit was interesting to watch as the drama unfolded in the sky. The pursuer never caught the hawk with the rodent before it was lost to sight, but there was a lot of bobbing and weaving and sudden turns from the hawk that had the meal. Those little dogfights are fun to watch. I could not determine what type of hawks they were because the sky was overcast, and they appeared almost as dark silhouettes in the sky without any color. More than likely, they were Red-Shouldered Hawks, as I was able to identify one a little later in the area, but I can’t be sure that is what they were.