Winter 2015/16 has proven to a bumper ‘winter finch’ season, at least here in the Calgary area, where the redpolls, grosbeaks, siskins, crossbills, etc showing up in good numbers. I just love the colours of all these finches, so made quite a number of outings over my Christmas vacation specifically …
December 2015 started off rather interesting in our Toronto backyard. We were still getting visits from Red-winged Blackbirds! I can only recall one other December in the near decade where we had such birds still visiting. We always call the Red-winged Blackbirds our first sign of Spring. The weather was …
Birding is purported to be the fastest-growing “hobby” in North America. Apparently, one in five Canadians consider themselves birders (http://globalnews.ca/news/1978047/birding-hobby-soars-in-popularity-across-north-america/) and the 2009 US census states: “24 million Americans play basketball, 23 million baseball, and 9 million play American football — at the same time, there are estimated to be nearly 60 …
Visiting family and friends in Australia for the first time in 3 years is my excuse for not delivering my monthly post in November, but I’ll do my best to make up for that this month! So to catch up… Late September and October in southern Alberta is a great …
Rob and I feed the birds year round, but even they get a few extra treats on Christmas Day. Since 2009 we’ve set up what we call the “Critter Christmas Tree” in our backyard. We don’t have a tree in the yard that would work, so we buy an evergreen …
My bird-feeding habits are seasonal. In the spring and summer I let most of the birds fend for themselves. Natural food abounds and I like them to eat the larva and bugs on the trees and bushes. It’s cheaper and easier for me, and probably healthier for them. I do, …
Another month has passed already and winter is right around the corner. We had a really sloppy (for lack of a better term!) storm last week that brought some heavy rain in the morning before turning to wet, heavy, slushy snow by noon. I picked that afternoon to take a …
With September ending off with our first Junco appearance to the backyard; I didn’t think we’d be getting Red-winged Blackbird appearances through the first 2 weeks of October. Sure they were sporadic, like 1 among a flock of 100 or so Common Grackles, but they were popping in. A couple …
My first passion was not birds but words: I started writing in my twenties, but only discovered birds in my mid-fifties. So maybe it’s not surprising I have a thing about how birds are named. As a novice birder I expected (foolishly) that the common name of a bird would …
Hello, again! Another month gone and now, winter is right around the corner. We had our first official dusting of snow on October 16th. Crazy how fast time goes and it’s funny: it seemed to CRAWL by when I was a kid! Anyway, I don’t really mind the approach of …