I'm pretty new to bird watching and am very excited to have joined this online birding community. I live in Central-Eastern NJ. My usual feeder guests this time of year include chickadees (a favorite), white-throated sparrows, house sparrows, red faced finches that I figure are house finches or purple finches (still can't tell those buggers apart!), dark eyed juncos, and downy woodpeckers. Now that spring is starting to approach, we've been getting an occasional red-winged black bird, blue jay, white-breasted nuthatch (another one of my favorites), red bellied woodpecker. I haven't seen a titmouse in a VERY long time... they’re one of my absolute favorites so I’m bummed about their absence. Well, I'm hoping they'll show up with our spring migration rush - last year's special visitors included a Brown Thrasher, a Rose Breasted Grosbeak, Yellow Bellied Sapsucker (I didn't realize they actually existed outside of classic TV jokes), white-crowned sparrows, fox sparrows, and a dark crane trying to fish at our Koi pond!
Last week was a pretty interesting time for me. An absolutely frigid time as many of my birding travels took me to the shore, but an interesting time none the less!. I saw several difficult (for me) to ID birds - including a very small gull that's either a Bonaparte's or a "Little" gull at Cape May, a juvenile Sharp Shinned Hawk / Cooper's Hawk in Elizabeth, and a small rufous sparrow at Sandy Hook that I've ruled out as Fox, Chipping, or Clay-colored. Might be a song sparrow... but I've never seen one before so it's hard to say.
But the most exciting thing has to be when I was taking pictures of blue jays in Elizabeth, NJ. I'd never heard blue jays be so loud or make such strange and varied sounds before. I started taking video with my Canon S3 when something swooped in from behind me. A small hawk had just landed on a bush above the tree that the jays were in! The jays stopped their medley and started calling out a new, single, extremely loud cry - repeatedly. The small hawk seemed quite irritated at them, as he peered into the bush. Finally he flew and clawed at the bush as he went by... landing on a fence 15 feet away from me! He stayed there for quite a while, eyeing the bush and eyeing me. Finally he flew on, and the jays in the bush mysteriously stopped calling and froze. After a long silence, the first jay emerged from the bush letting out what sounded very much like a victory call. The other jays and sparrows soon flew out and away in safety. It was one of the most exciting birding experiences of my life.
