Good Sightings with a Good Friend!

Today I hiked around the park with a friend of mine. Pretty sure this was the first time in a long while that I've visited the park both Saturday and Sunday. The temperature was slightly warmer than yesterday and in the mid-twenties. We started from the northeast side of the park near 73rd Ave. N. and made our way around the entire park. Along Shingle Creek on the north side we spotted a group of 6 to 7 deer in the back of the townhomes there. The snow has been melting ever-so-slowly this spring due to the colder than usual temps but in places where the grass was exposed we noticed "Snow-mold" coating the ground. I'm not really sure what this stuff is but it looks almost like fine spider webs. Later we ran into someone who said they just saw an Owl fly overhead. So we took one of the woodchip trails looking for it but never did spot it. Instead though we spotted a Northern Shrike! This is a bird I've not seen since early February making it a fun sighting. It flew in and perched high above and was kind of in the sun and I had to try a bunch of different angles to get a photo. On the south side of the park my friend shouted to look up and there soaring not too far away was a very large Raptor. We both thought it was a juvenile Bald Eagle and I steadied my camera on it as it came soaring past us one more time. I guess I don't have a very good eye for Hawks because after I got home and looked more closely it was clearly a Hawk. But what kind? It was clearly not a Red-tailed as evident by the prominent dark patches referred to as "wrist patches" near the outer wings. Because of the rich, rusty red coloring I was guessing a Red-shouldered Hawk. My friend suggested a Rough-legged Hawk and upon looking through my new Stokes field guide, I found a photo that looked almost identical! I fell in love with this field guide upon first seeing it in stores but it is quickly proving itself to be the most useful guide I've owned so far. Not only does it have unbelievably detailed photos but there are anywhere from 4 to 8 photos showing juvenile and adult of both male and female! The field guide even helped me ID this bird as a female "light morph." One clue that I will try to remember now is that the Rough-legged has just one dark band across it's tail –different from both a Red-shouldered as well as other similar looking Hawks. This is only my second ever sighting of one. Near the end of our walk we spotted this White-breasted Nuthatch on a large cottonwood tree just inside the paved trail. In my opinion any bird that holds still and give me a good opportunity is worth a photograph. I find it very helpful to study the photo afterward and I often pick up on small details that you will rarely notice in the field. I think this is one of the better Nuthatch photos I've gotten!