Red-shouldered Hawks making baby hawks on Theodore Roosevelt Island this morning! 🫣

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Dark-eyed Junco side-eye at Oak Hill Cemetery in DC yesterday. 👀

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Cooper's Hawk: mighty hunter /massive derp, depending on viewing angle 🤪. This one was surveying Montrose Park in DC yesterday in the freezing cold looking for an unwary bird to swoop down on but eventually flew off towards Georgetown without catching anything.

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Emerged from the office for a quick walk around Constitution Gardens this afternoon and found this magnificent #MurderBird sitting atop a tree above the Albert Einstein Memorial, on the look out for unwary squirrels.

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Brown Creeper spiralling its way up a bald cypress tree in Hains Point Park, D.C yesterday. These little chaps have such great camouflage - "no bird here only tree bark, plz move right along."

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Pied-billed Grebe hanging out in the Tidal Basin in D.C. yesterday morning. You can still see that name-sake "pied" bill on this little one, although many birds lose it entirely during the winter: the black vertical bar on the bill will get darker and sharper and the rest of the bill will get paler as breeding season approaches.

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Double-crested Cormorant surfacing in between dives for freshwater snails, which it was bringing up and tossing back like popcorn, in the Carp Pond at Constitution Gardens in D.C. yesterday.

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Northern Shovelers are such a great part of #WeirdDuckSeason. That honking great big bill is lined with little comb-like projections called lamellae which it uses to sieve tiny crustaceans and invertebrates out of the water. This handsome chap in breeding plumage was shoveling away on Carp Pond in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall yesterday with several dozen of his friends.

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Met this gorgeous, fierce little Merlin in Hains Point Park, D.C. yesterday. Like all falcons, merlins kill their prey with their beaks (unlike hawks and eagles which strangle prey with their feet): they use the "tomial tooth", a sharp triangular projection in the cutting edge of the upper mandible, which you can see here just behind the hooked tip of the beak, to quickly and cleanly sever the prey's spinal cord.

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Carolina Wren going full #borb today in Dumbarton Oaks Park after temperatures dropped overnight in DC.

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Female Red-winged Blackbird: neither black nor red-winged but perfectly evolved to blend into reedbeds and confuse the heck out of new birders (and some not-so new ones: every once in a while I am see one and have a minute of thinking I've found some sort of rarity I've never seen before 😂).

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Yellow-breasted Chat feasting on a pomegranate tree @USBotanicGarden@twitter.com this afternoon, hopefully just fuelling up on its very belated way down to Central America for the winter!

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Came across this lovely wee Hermit Thrush today, busily turning over the fallen leaves in a path in Dumbarton Oaks Park looking for buggy nibbles. It looks to have some sort of basal growth right above its nostrils but it didn't seem be bothered at all by it and looked perfectly active and healthy!

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Black Vultures allopreening high in a tree at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington DC yesterday. Black Vultures are sociable birds and mate for life: preening each other reinforces the bonds between mates and relatives, usually focusing on gently nibbling each other's heads and necks as the parts a bird can't easily preen for itself.

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Happy Monday from me and this lovely little Savannah Sparrow which was hanging out with its friends at Kenilworth Park in Washington DC yesterday. One of my favourite winter sparrows not least because they're not quite as skittish as a lot of grassland sparrows and will often post up on top of shrubs or fences to eye you up before deciding you're not a threat and popping back down to forage at fairly close range.

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"This is just to say
I have eaten
the crayfish
that were in the lily ponds

and which
you were probably
saving
for spring

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so crunchy."

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Great Blue Heron enjoying a nice crunchy crayfish for Sunday brunch @KenAqGardens@twitter.com this morning.

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[Video: a heron stalking, catching and eating a large brown crayfish in a shallow pond]

Pileated Woodpeckers are such magnificent dinosaurs: I spent a happy twenty minutes or so watching this handsome chap hammering away at tree branches on Theodore Roosevelt Island last weekend.

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Mr Northern Flicker watching me watching him beside the Swamp Trail boardwalk on Theodore Roosevelt Island last weekend. 👀

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Thought this afternoon's birding expedition was going to be a bit of a bust after various public transport mishaps and was plodding grumpily along the trail on Kingman Island when I saw my first DC Bald Eagle and my mood instantly went from 😠 to ☺️.

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