Happy New Year 2015!

As I lay in bed last night listening to fireworks and other noise at midnight on New Year's eve, I instead was thinking about a whole new year of bird watching. I felt optimistic for a change about what I might see and/or photograph in the new year and decided that I would try to do a better job at recording my sightings. So today when I visited Palmer Lake Park like I often do on the first of the year, I tried taking at least one photo of every species I saw. Then at home it made it easy to enter my data into ebird.org. It would be neat I think to do this from now on so that at the end of 2015 I could look back and easily tally up the number of species. My very first bird of the year was an American Tree Sparrow on the east side of the park. Though still a sparrow I kind of appreciate them now as they are only here in the winter and tend to disappear come Spring. I spent a while at the Duck Pond this morning trying to catch a photo or two of the Mallards bathing themselves and splashing water everywhere. I did manage a few neat shots but I really liked all the color in this one as he was preening. It was during a short time when the sun stayed out. The next thing I saw was a pretty good sighting I think for the very first day of the year. I noticed a Great Horned Owl fly from it's perch over the wood chip trail and land in another area. I hiked back to where I'd already came from and found not just the one Owl but a second one as well! This is the time of year when GHO's are "pairing up" in preparation for mating and nesting in Feb - March. When I took this photo the first one had already taken off. I saw a total of 15 species today during my hike which is not a lot by any means but fairly average for this time of year. I was happy to add some Mourning Doves to my list near the end of my walk. They tend to overwinter in the park near the northeast side.