American Robins in January and Other Bird Tales

We've had an interesting week here in the Southern Tier of New York State, as temperatures have been above normal and our world has defrosted. 

My spouse and I (mainly my spouse) are beginning birders, having just a couple of years of experience, a lot of it in our backyard.  But sometimes, in our walks, we run into birders.  One, in fact, is someone I worked with years ago (he's retired now), and I had never known until about five years ago that he was an experienced birder.

The interesting thing about looking for birds is that you end up observing so much more.  I am a city girl (New York City) born and bred (my parents both lived their entire lives in New York City, except for my father's military service in World War II) but always felt the call of nature.  That's why I love walking in parks rather than in more urban settings.

On a January 4 exercise walk in Otsiningo Park, we saw a woman staring intently up in a tree.  We joined her.  I tried taking a picture but even my iPhone 13 mini at maximum zoom couldn't get a good shot at what we saw.  It was a large bird, hawklike in shape, with a light colored breast and upright stance.  Nearby in the same tree, a grey squirrel didn't seem to be a bit alarmed at its proximity to this bird.

My spouse tentatively identified the bird as a Cooper's hawk.  We lucked out later in our walk, with my former co worker and his wife walking in the other direction.  He had seen the bird, too, and confirmed our sighting.  It's a bit interesting about the squirrel not being bothered by the hawk's presence - did the squirrel sense that, perhaps, the hawk wasn't hungry?

American robins (Turdus migratorius) migrate in the fall and when we see them in the spring, it means spring has come, right?  Well, not necessarily.  What we've learned is that, increasingly, our robins stay put in the winter.  They can gather in large flocks and forage together.  They are skittish and don't like people getting near.

October 7, on the Vestal Rail Trail, we saw at least 15, if not more, robins on the ground.  I couldn't get close.  Again, maximum zoom.

 But they were definitely robins.  And this was as close as I could get.

 If you aren't familiar with American robins, you can see much better pictures here, along with pictures of other winter birds.  Although the blogger I linked to is in Canada, we share many of our winter birds.

What other sights did we see on these two walks?

Sorry - these birds look like tiny grains of pepper

On the walk we saw the robins on, spouse viewed these birds high up in the sky.  These must be large birds, but what were they?  There was no apparent organization to their flight like European starlings might have shown in the beautiful murmurations we sometimes see in the fall.  They were also higher than we normally see starlings.  And they were silent (or, at least, we couldn't hear them).

Several trees with birdhouses. All I know is that they are new to those trees. I don't have a clue as to what birds the park is trying to attract.

A defrosting puddle.

There's more but I may wait until Friday to show you.

Have you seen anything interesting on a walk lately?