Two lifers for me

In the past two days I've had confirmation of two "lifers" for my bird list.

I took this photo December 12/09 and had a terrible time catching this little bird standing still. I had no idea what it was and couldn't seem to pin point it in my ROM Field Guide to Birds of Ontario . Finally today I saw a photo online of what looked like the same bird but it wasn't identified. Hmmmmm, what to do??? Ding! - that's the sound of the light bulb coming on - I showed the online photo to a co-worker, Al Fewster, and he suggested it might be a Wren. Hmmmm, what to do next??? I went to Cornell's All About Birds, typed in Wren and from a list of suggestions I discovered that my little bird is a Carolina Wren!

My second mystery was a large bird that flew over the trail while I was walking this past Sunday morning. At first glance I thought it was a hawk. My photo is poor (my apologies) but there was enough info that, after looking through my ROM Guide, I thought it might be a Bald Eagle or a Northern Goshawk. So, to get a professional opinion I emailed Mike Bergin at 10,000 Birds, and Mike was kind enough to post my photo and identification dilema as a Diabolical ID Challenge. And the consensus is that it is, in fact, a Bald Eagle!