Due to the late start of 2:15 PM in Riverhead, Tom Moran and I decided to ride the local farm roads in search of larks and longspurs, in addition to looking for gulls/shorebirds at both Iron Pier Beach, Jamesport, and Mattituck Inlet. With the fields blanketed with snow, Horned Larks and Lapland Longspurs can usually be found "feeding" by the roadsides. Today we encountered many larks, but nary a longspur ! The beach and the inlet did not live up to expectations, but we did find 3 Snow Buntings at the latter. One of the "pluses" of driving to I/P/B, is that you can route yourself past Mary Laura & Eric Lamont's home...and their feeders ! When we arrived, to our good fortune, Mary Laura was busy filling some of them. We stayed for ~ 20 minutes, left, to check out the beach, and then returned, after M.L. had completed refreshing her "feeder complex". Her backyard, which "butts up" against The Northville Preserve, is a birder's dream ! It houses ~ 12-15 feeders (of all persuasions) and can best be described as "very active". During our stays there today we totaled 21 species, of which 8 were sparrows, including 2 Fox Sparrows. For all we saw in her backyard, the highlight of the day was what we heard coming from the preserve. Mary, of course, heard it first and called our attention to it. Even though the hour was ~ 4:30, but still bright, a resident pair of Great-horned Owls were calling back and forth - calls, she was able to ID by gender. After she explained that the lower of the calls were made by the female, with the males being higher, Tom and I were able to distinguish between them ourselves ! Cheers,Bob . --
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