What's in your backyard?

We enjoy watching the birds in our backyard anyway but we made a more formal experience out of it this weekend by participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count, presented by the Audubon society. We had fun with it, but it might have been more fun if a few more birds had actually shown up. I blame the cold and semi-snowy weather and also the one big bird that did show up. This bird has been visiting our backyard every day in fact. He likes to hang out on our swingset, stalking the neighbor's bird feeders. I've never seem him get a little bird -they scatter long before he shows up and don't come around again until long after he's gone. But he must have some success here since he's in our yard so often we've even named him. Meet Taylor Hawks:

We think he's a sharp-shinned hawk based on our research, but we could be wrong about that. So far there have only been 18 sharp-shinned hawks reported in our state all weekend, including ours.


We also counted 18 Canada Geese in the lake behind the house. Not as interesting as the hawk since we have tons of geese around all the time. This picture was taken in the fall. I miss that green grass...


If you want to participate, there's still time if you're reading this before the 17th of February. Go to audubon.org to find out more.