Great-horned Owl nest!

A few days ago I was alerted (via the internet) of a nest of Great-horned Owls behind the Home Depot in Seekonk, Massachusetts. The owls have taken over a nest in a Great-Blue Heron rookery which we have known about for quite some time. Yesterday along with our grandparents we visited the rookery.

When we arrived we were greeted by a miniature army of binocular wielding birders and an extra large nesting flock of croaking Great Blue Herons. After many minutes of scanning nests some bird filled, some empty, we finally found the one the birders were talking about (there were tons of nests and hundreds of disobliging twigs and sticks in the way and refusing to move). The owl chicks were cute though we never got a good enough look at it to see anything other than grayish fluff. I think that there were three owlets in all. The adults were off somewhere else doing owling stuff.

On recent a bike ride down the East Bay Bike Path. We found: a drake Eurasian Wigeon, one or possibly even two Glaucous Gull (the identification was made solely on size, the coloring of the primaries and the fairly recent report of a Glaucous Gull at Watchemoket Cove only a few hundred yards away), and a year bird Great Egret which we found while taking a pleasant tour around one of the scenic neighborhoods which over looks Bullocks Cove and the East Bay Bike Path.

Yesterday while driving along Route 95 we saw four dead Turkey Vultures scattered along the side of the road. I now have my eyes peeled for a vulture fall-out like the dramatic (though not half as dramatic as a vulture fall-out) blackbird fall-out that occurred this January.