Now That’s A Birding Day!

There are times when the natural world just leaves you in awe. Standing in the middle of a field with binoculars around your neck, and your mouth hanging open.

Last Saturday was one of those days.

The local bird alert line had mentioned the sighting of a gyrfalcon near a little town on the outskirts of the city. Our weather had improved considerably by last weekend, so after a round of Saturday errands, we decided to take a run out there. I had high hopes, but realistic expectations – I’ve gone looking for gyrfalcons before without success.

Our destination was a a grain distribution company that has multiple grain piles and many large graineries. The site not only has grain, but more importantly, it has masses and masses of pigeons. Sorry, rock doves, also known as falcon food.

The minute I stepped out of the car, an adult prairie falcon flew over our heads. This was a good sighting in itself, but the object of the flight was to mob a huge great horned owl sitting on top of a telephone pole. After two or three passes by the falcon, the owl flew to a nearby copse of poplar trees. Which was unfortunately full of magpies, who picked up where the falcon left off.

All of this happened so fast I didn’t even get my camera turned on. I was too busy watching the falcon/owl/magpie/owl interactions.

Just as things had calmed down, I turned around and was greeted with the sight of a grey morph gyrfalcon flying just overhead, coming towards me. Bins plastered to the eyes, I didn’t even think about trying to take a picture. When he flew out of sight, I was so completely astonished I didn’t even do my lifer-happy-dance. See reference to standing in field with mouth open…

We watched the pigeon action for awhile, with no further falcon sightings. The owl had nestled itself deeper into the poplars, and the magpies had retreated.

As we turned the car around, I noticed a lump on top of a telephone pole. And another lump on the next. Two juvenile prairie falcons were decorating the poles. They were completely unimpressed by this lunatic of a woman mushing through snowy ditches to get their picture.

As we drove through the town, we noticed 18 doves sitting in a poplar tree. It’s January in Alberta so any dove sightings are unusual, and that many at once made us stop to take a look. Instead of being pleased at seeing that many mourning doves, I was astonished to discover they were all Eurasian-collared doves. Eighteen of them!!

Sightings of the invasive Eurasian doves have been on the increase for the past few years all over southern Alberta, and a few had been reported from that location last summer. They obviously like it there. Sigh.

After we finished counting doves, I managed to snap only one photo before they flew away.

The next tree over held a small black lump – a common grackle.

We had only been there about 30 minutes. By this time my head was spinning, and I was beginning to wonder if we’d fallen down the rabbit hole. Where are we again? What season is it again? Gyrfalcons & grackles?

Making our way home in the falling light, we passed another big grain pile. This one had an owner though – a lone female mallard had the treasure all to herself – standing proudly on the top of more food than she could eat in her life.

So my objective for this week is to get some work done. My objective is NOT to drop everything I should be doing and head out to birding nirvana. We’ll see how I do…