Pajareo sin fronteras

After a  brief but spectacular  period of peak fall colors, the leaves began to disappear and the weather in Washington DC slowly got colder- yes, DC really does get winter! The cold weather part at least, if not really the snow. A late November visit to Fort C.F. Smith Park drove home that winter really was on the way- the warblers were all gone, the leaves were turning brown, and insects were dormant. The sparrows were still there though, including a small flock of Chipping Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows  foraging in a holly bush.  Last of the remaining leaves Fungus of some sort Chipping Sparrows The Pine Siskins I'd seen on my last visit were gone from the bird feeders, but there were still the usual residents, including Dark-eyed Juncos and an unusually tame Red-bellied Woodpecker. Dark-eyed Junco Red-bellied Woodpecker For Thanksgiving I made a quick trip home to Michigan (my first Thanksgiving I spent at home since 2010!)

Fall has never been my favorite season, mainly because of the progressively cold weather and the long, dreary winter that comes after it. I probably just made some people I grew up with mad with that first sentence, but let's just say there's a reason I choose to live in the tropics whenever possible. That said, there are always two things worth looking forward to in fall: beautiful fall colors and fall migration. The peaks of those two things seem to come at different times in DC, but I suppose that just gives me a slightly longer period when I can enjoy the fall before resigning myself to winter. It was around the peak of the latter when I made my first visit to Hain's Point Park, located at the tip of a large island in the middle of the Potomac River between Virginia and Washington DC proper. It's DC's birdiest birding place, with  over 250 species  recorded. Since it's in the middle of the river, it gets a nice mix of water birds, land birds, and flyove