Hawk watch fogged-in - Not much happened yesterday during my hawk watching from the tower at Magee. After three straight days with high temps of 65-70 under sunny skies, yesterday's temperatures were in the low to mid 40's during the morning with a lot of fog. The winds were from the northeast at five miles per hour. Visibility at 9:00 A.M. was about 150 yards. I could barely see the nature center from the tower. By 10, visibility only improved slightly. By 11, visibility was about a mile.

The only raptor I saw was a local immature Bald Eagle that flew low over the tower just after Noon while I was leaving. It was too foggy to observe other birds flying about. The marsh is still frozen. The small opening near the nature center is a little bigger. Before the warmup, the opening was about 50 feet long and maybe 40 feet wide. During my first four visits to the tower this spring, there would be over 100 Canadian Geese in and around the opening. There must be more open water somewhere else or the Geese just moved on, because yesterday, there were only a handful of geese hanging around the opening. Without the geese, it was much quieter.

There were several male Hooded Mergs in the small water opening. They were chasing and fighting with each other. It was comical. Sometimes the feathers in their heads would be collapsed, so only a small sliver of white could be seen. Then they would flare their head feathers, so it looked like a baseball was attached to their head. They were shaking their heads back and forth and doing all kinds of funny gyrations, like standing up on the water. There were a couple female Hooded Mergs present.

There was also one American Coot. Sometimes he was in the water and sometimes he was pecking around on the ice. I heard a Fox Sparrow sing. I saw an American Tree Sparrow. Other usuals were singing. That's about it.

The best part was having CP with me. She's on spring break. She spent a little time reading in the nature center, but most of the time she was on the tower with me. She kept busy dancing or exercising. It was just the two of us, so that was fine. I had my radio with me. On the way to the tower, we stopped and got Krispy Kreme doughnuts and iced molasses Archway cookies. We each had two doughnuts and we ate all of the cookies. So we junked out, chatted, and laughed. That was the most fun I've had on a northeast wind day.