I’ve been listening to recordings of different birds, on Merlin and on a CD. When out walking today I heard a sound I recognized as a Pileated Woodpecker call, I looked and sure enough there he was. I almost got an even better picture of him on the side of a tree a few seconds later, but a person was walking from the other direction and the bird flew away. 

Activity 1: I watched the Red-Tailed Hawk cam for a little while, and got to see a hawk preening its feathers while sitting on some eggs! What a special view. The hawk used its beak to clean feathers on its belly and sides. We got a nice zoomed in view of two or three eggs in the nest. This hawk is not just preening, but incubating as well! After a while, the hawk stopped preening and went back to sitting still and looking around.   Activity 2: I watched the Cornell Feeder Cam for a bit, and noticed a few different feeding behaviors. A European Starling picks up seeds and cracks them in its beak, eating the insides. A Mourning Dove picks up seeds it can easily eat, and does not break them. Unlike what I read in the lesson, the Blue Jay I saw eating at this feeder selected seeds it could quickly swallow whole. A strange, fluffy bird with four legs and a big tail arrived to eat a snack. It scared all the other birds away. I could not identify this bird in the Merlin app, leading me to think it was a VERY rare sighting! ;)   Activity 3: I listened to birds on the feeder cam. I recognized a blackbird, a chickadee, and a goose. Because this is an east coast camera, there were many other sounds I did not recognize.