Even tho I got great looks & photos Monday, I thought since it was not far, I’d try again this morning. Another birder who had arrived earlier had caught a distant glimpse of one and it wasn’t long before we spotted the pair over the same soybean field as in Monday on the E side of Rt 13. It was around 10:00am.

The pair did not venture v close this time, hunting for awhile low over the field but then gained altitude, then disappeared farther SE w/o crossing Rt 13. Still wonderful to watch these graceful birds. They were finding dragonflies or some other kind of flying insects at fairly high altitudes as I could see them eating on the wing. Many swallows were flying high as well. I saw Tree & Barn but as most were pretty high, I didn’t spend much time trying to ID them.

I drove part of Quarry Rd to see if I could spot them from another angle but no luck.

I did see a Red-headed WP on a utility pole on Quarry and there was a medium-sized falcon dive-bombing something in a mowed field. It was distant and was gone by the time I got my scope set up but size, coloration and harassing behavior made me lean towards Merlin.

There was also a v large counting of crows, 50+ in another mown field in sight from the kite stake-out spot with 12-15 others perched in a tree. Have no idea what the convention was about.

I swung by the Hebron fish hatchery on the way home but none of the pools visible from the road had shorebird habitat/water levels—all filled or bone dry.

Peggy Wang
Granville
Sent from my iPad
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