Throughout most of the year, I have a good variety of birds passing through my yard, including the occasional rarity like a boreal owl or pileated woodpecker. During most of August however, I’m generally stuck with the good old house sparrow. Many, many house sparrows as the young of the …
We’re into the dull birding month in my yard – I have house sparrows and more house sparrows, as the hatch year juveniles are now flying with the adults. House finches, mourning doves and black-capped chickadees make the occasional appearance, but it’s basically sparrow-world out there. A couple of days …
I used to like the squirrels in my yard. During the summer months, I generally cut back a bit on the bird food I put out. During the winter months the feeders are always full, but when there is so much natural food around, I put a smaller amount into …
For the past few weeks, several times a day, I have been forced to quickly abandon whatever I’m doing in the house and run outside. No, it’s not an earthquake. We have (at least) four merlins playing in the sky above my house, all calling me with their continual ‘kee kee kee.’ …
It took this young hairy woodpecker a while to figure out how to get any food from this busy feeder, but he managed it eventually. I resisted the urge to put captions on these photos, but it was hard!
At this point in my life, you would think I would be used to the idiotic decisions made by the super brains in our provincial parliament, but apparently not. The latest issue of Nature Alberta, the magazine from the Federation of Alberta Naturalists, has shown me otherwise. Earlier this year, …
Have you ever been so astonished by a bird sighting that your brain shuts down? No synapses firing, just a blank white void where your bird identification skills should be? It’s most disconcerting, I can tell you. One blisteringly hot prairie day earlier this month, my husband and I took …
The Rocky Mountains are a great teacher. They teach humility – their massive, magnificent presence puts a tiny insignificant human and their problems in perspective. They teach stability – they’ve been there for thousands of years in spite of how fast we whip through our daily lives, and will still …
If it’s summer in Alberta, then Highway 40 must be open. This magnificent drive, an hour west of the city, meanders along the eastern slopes of the Kananaskis Range of the Rocky Mountains. The highest point of the drive is Highwood Pass, at 2210 m (7250 ft), the highest point …
