If you pay attention to wild birds you’re bound to see a sick one at your feeder from time to time. Birds get sick and die for a myriad of reasons, just like humans – old age, accidents, disease. They also get taken by predators (both the natural and human …
Hello again! I hope you’re enjoying spring migration. It seems to be a little slower than normal up here but this month, we’re finally seeing a few migrants moving through. In late April, I was thrilled to see a flock of Rusty Blackbirds in my yard. They stayed for just …
Through the generosity of a rancher south of Calgary, the help of my local birding club and the encouragement of some photographer friends, I had the opportunity to see and experience my first grouse ‘lek’. The grouse species in question was the Sharp-tailed variety, and a lek is “…an aggregation …
Hello and welcome to our Toronto backyard! What a month it has been since our last post. What an April! Snow, no snow, more snow, no snow, and this was how it was like on a number of days early in the month. A pretty morning out back. By the …
Ted Floyd, Editor of Birding Magazine, recently wrote an article called Birding is Easy and Hard (http://blog.aba.org/2016/03/birding-is-easy-and-hard.html). It was inspired in part by two earlier blog posts of Greg Neise, who’d come down on both sides of the argument at different times. Floyd took up the challenge of clarifying the seeming …
Hello again! Despite today’s freezing rain storm, Spring has finally arrived in Northwestern Ontario. This post will likely be mostly a photo essay. I’ve been busy with the camera these past few weeks as migrants have been moving in. These first 2 are not migrants but I thought the photos …
Well, I was lucky to get another morning or two watching some Albertan Great Grey Owls in action, so I thought I’d share some of the resulting images. My focus was on in-flight images and I managed to capture some shots that I have long dreamt about. My paltry writing …
March and April are always interesting months in our backyard. The calendar says Spring arrives, but Winter puts up quite a fight to stay around. The first of our Spring/Summer migrants have arrived, Red-winged Blackbirds and Grackles. We’ve been making sure the feeders are well stocked to help them out, as …
Once again, it’s big industry over citizens and the environment. In this case, five new anchorages are being proposed by Pacific Pilotage Authority (PPA) for the northeast stretch of coastline of Gabriola Island, along Whalebone and Sandwell beaches. If the PPA has their way, capesize freighters could soon be anchoring along these …
Hello again from NW Ontario and welcome to Spring 2016! Since you last heard from me, we’ve lost about 18″ of snow and I actually have a bare patch of grass in my backyard now, where the snow was thinnest. Unfortunately today, we’ve reverted back to winter and it was …