{"id":1898,"date":"2012-02-22T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=1898"},"modified":"2012-02-21T14:57:09","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T19:57:09","slug":"a-walk-that-was-for-the-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/02\/22\/a-walk-that-was-for-the-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"A walk that was for the birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Did you get a chance to take part in the annual Great Backyard Bird Count this past weekend?   I admit I put it off until Monday afternoon \u2013 the last day of the count \u2013 and decided to count birds during the first part of an afternoon walk with my partner and our dog.<\/p>\n<p>We startled a flock of 7 American robins in the scrub along the roadside, and counted 4 black-capped chickadees on the other side of the road.  Within a few minutes, my partner, Paul, spied a great horned owl sitting in a tree not far off our path.   It resembled a big, scruffy cat and we were pleasantly surprised to see it in the middle of the afternoon.   While we gawked, the owl watched and patiently swiveled its head, back and forth, between us and a small murder of crows.   I\u2019d forgotten my camera and binoculars.    So, here\u2019s the best image from my smart phone:<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1899\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/02\/22\/a-walk-that-was-for-the-birds\/norowlpic2\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1899\" title=\"norowlpic2\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2012\/02\/norowlpic2-181x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"181\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2012\/02\/norowlpic2-181x300.jpg 181w, https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2012\/02\/norowlpic2.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 181px) 100vw, 181px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The courtship of the great horned owl usually begins in late January and into February, and I\u2019d been hearing pre-dawn \u201choots\u201d the last couple of weeks.   We also saw what we thought was another large owl in a tree off in the distance &#8212; a mate, perhaps?   But we couldn\u2019t include it in our count without a closer look.<\/p>\n<p>So, the final tally: 1 great horned owl, 3 crows, 4 black-capped chickadees and 7 American robins &#8212; all within 15 minutes.   Next time, I\u2019ll remember the binoculars and a better camera.   You can visit this link for more info about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.birdsource.org\/gbbc\/\">2012 Great Backyard Bird Count<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you get a chance to take part in the annual Great Backyard Bird Count [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6220,72,4819,6205,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}