Guest post by Bob Lefebvre Next week is our annual family reunion/camping trip which we usually spend on Lesser Slave Lake in northern Alberta. The campsite, at Lily Creek in Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park, is a beautiful spot in the heart of the boreal forest. There is a huge …
Greater white-fronted geese are mythical birds. A myth perpetrated by the oil industry so that some of us jump in our gas-driven cars and spend hours cruising through the country looking for them when they’re reported on the local bird alert. Again. This was intended to be a post about …
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 …
Here I was, all excited to get to species number one hundred on my yard list. I keep track of the birds actually in the yard, as well as those seen from the yard, as in flying over (F). This is a rather bizarre list, as we live in the …
There is a clear order of preference at my bird feeder. These pictures were taken in a two hour period during the storm on Saturday, in this order. Squirrels get first pick, followed by the black-billed magpie, blue jay, mourning doves, red-shafted flicker, house finches, red-breasted nuthatch and a busy …
Attention all you birders who love a challenge! One of my blog readers in Edmonton, Alberta sent me this bird picture he took last August, and asked for some help with the identification of this species. While yes, at first glance it does look like a blue-winged teal, a closer …
Black-billed magpies survive because they are clever, and quick to take advantage of any food source. Driving down the highway the other day, I burst out laughing when I saw this bird chowing down on an enormous pile of feed grain. Prairie farmers often leave piles of grain like this …
