Birding continued to be slow in January, but birder migration through Stillwater were busier than usual! We hosted a birder friend in January and we are eagerly looking forward to have another friend visiting us soon! We decided to take our birder friend Rebecca to some good local birding spots since we could not afford to let her think that the Stillwater area is terrible for birding. I am not saying it isn’t…

What did you say? Okay okay, I take it back. It’s not that bad either! Anyway, we took her to a favorite Short-eared Owl spot. Unfortunately, the owls were nowhere near as numerous as last winter! We still managed to see at least 3 of them along with a good number of Northern Harriers and some other raptors. Although we didn’t find the Northern Shrike reported in the area, a Loggerhead Shrike agreed to pose for a nice habitat shot.

Northern Harrier (male) aka Gray Ghost.

Loggerhead Shrike.

A favorite Short-eared Owl photo from last year. Yet to get a good one this year.

The best part of the evening was a stunning sunset! There wasn’t any good foreground for sunset photography, but it was so good that we had to stop our car several times to just look at it. The sky was literally on fire!

Sky on fire!

The best foreground we could find!

Rail tracks are also not bad as foregrounds. I like how it takes you to the fiery sunset.

Looking back at the sunset as we took off for the day.

Content, we came back, had some nice dinner cooked by Sreemala and of course played some Wingspan. Rebecca had played it before; so, it was a lot of fun. We hate the fact that there aren’t many Wingspan players in Stillwater. We consider ourselves Wingspan experts and would love to welcome any local challengers who might be interested!

Among some common birds that we photographed this month was this Carolina Wren. Earlier in the month, we stopped at OSU Botanical Garden where a cooperative one sat on one of its favorite snags and posed for us. Frankie the Red-shouldered Hawk did pay us a brief visit, sitting on the leafless pecan tree and trying to look for a rodent or two down in the grass. A female Downy Woodpecker posed cutely while checking out the suet feeder.

A Carolina Wren always makes the day bright!

Frankie the Red-Shouldered Hawk.

A cute Downy Woodpecker.

Are all woodpeckers always this cute, or only when they are looking for getting some food at the feeder? This one is a Red-bellied Woodpecker.

The winter birds that we were hoping to photograph throughout the month were either completely absent or not cooperative at all. Golden-crowned Kinglets and Winter Wrens eluded us, Fox and Field Sparrows didn’t give us photo ops and Leconte’s Sparrow still remained a nemesis bird. A day trip to the Tulsa area on a beautiful day ended up being the worst photography day of my life as we both ended the day with zero keepers. It had never happened before.

This January turned out to be a good month for sunsets. We watched some beautiful sunsets from the backyard, and took off to Lake Carl Blackwell to see some more. It was great to spend some time with a few White-tailed Deer at sunset. One doe looked quite sick and I couldn’t help wondering if it might have COVID. There wasn’t any specific symptom pointing to such conclusion, but the fact that COVID had been found in many individual deer across several states made me wonder about that. Who knows how many more animals will be sick from this virus? The beautiful sunset, funny silhouettes of ducks landing over the lake and the “beautiful” call of a Great Blue Heron eventually made us forget about it.

Curious White-tailed deer

Portrait of a doe.

Nice sunset at Lake Carl Blackwell.

The sky looked like a painting.

Never underestimate the power of duck silhouettes to make you happy for no reason.

Beautiful call? Just kidding, of course! Great Blue Heron.

It has been scientifically proven that the best sunset, moonrise etc always happen when you are at the grocery store parking lot. I had been previously warned by Walmart staff for taking photos (of Great-tailed Grackles) in the Walmart parking lot (I have no clue why the person who complained was bothered about it, maybe they were just mad that the “annoying crows” who just whitened their cars were getting so much attention), but the beautiful warm-colored moon was hard to resist. I took two separate photos so that I could focus stack and make this composite.

Wolf Moon rising over a leafless tree at Walmart parking lot. How romantic!

This weekend was a warm one with butterflies fluttering around and our tulip plants taking a peek from under the ground asking “Is it spring yet?” Well, not quite. We are going to have some snowfall and subzero temperature all day for two days this week. Stay warm Stillwater! Will be back with our next monthly update as soon as February ends!