With the start of a new year and a new decade, I plan on and increased effort at blogging about my regular “field trips” into nature.

Therefore, I decided to start with a morning walk down the country road where we live with the round trip being about 1 mile. This short walk down a paved road transects several different types of habitat areas, including an open field of about 50 acres, some shrubby grassland areas, a nice woodlot, a meandering stream, and associated wetlands.

New Years Day, 2020 in our neck of the woods, was a bit brisk and cloudy. The temperature during my walk was around 34 F., with a slight wind. I have to say that the wildlife results of my walk were a bit disappointing. I hope this is not an indication of things to come.

As soon as I walked out the front door, I saw some movement in the old fence row that is beside our house and field and quickly spotted a House Finch and 4 House Sparrows. (So…my first “Bird of the Year” was a House Finch.)

With that, I started my leisurely walk down the road of 1/2 mile to the East and the intersection with a major highway, where I turn around and walk back to the house. All the way to the highway and about 3/4 of the way back to the house…I never heard and never saw 1 bird! Nothing…not one. About 200 yards before getting back to the house I spotted a lone Blue Jay fly across the road and land in a tree for a few seconds. Walking another 25 yards I noticed a Red-tailed Hawk perched on top of an old power pole that is located in the olf fence row beside our house. I walked just a bit past our house to check a small stream and wetland area across the street from home…and saw or heard nothing.

So the summary of this mile-long walk-in “nature” is a total of 7 birds of 4 species! Not a Chickadee, not a Cardinal, not a Morning Dove…I know it is winter…but that is pretty bad. The pictures below I took while walking as a documentation of where this walk took place. If you look closely at one picture you can sort of make out the Red-tail on top of the old power pole…and a blurry one of the hawk after it flew off and over the road.