It is a very strange year for birders in this area. Our winter birds are still here, while reports are increasing daily of returning spring visitors. The weather is ideal, with day after day of sunshine and temperatures around 13C (56F). Staying indoors on Sunday was just impossible, so we …
Birds are an important part of the environment in which we live. By monitoring bird distribution and habitat use, we can assess the health of the environments they inhabit (in essence, our environment). The Prairie provinces support hundreds of bird species during the breeding season, and we need to collect …
We took a prairie birding drive yesterday, looking for snowy owls. Naturally enough, this post is therefore about black-billed magpies. This is the countryside where we looking for owls. White owls. Some trips they are easy to find, perched on power poles, fence posts, graineries and hay bales. Some trips …
Sometimes the birding urge just overtakes you. Completely ignoring a mountain of work at home, my husband and I decided to spend a sunny November Sunday tooling around the prairie countryside looking for snow geese. When we left at 8:30 am, it was a brisk 2C, and the sun was …
Canada’s federal government has been taken to court over their own endangered species legislation. A coalition of nature and environmental groups brought the suit against the federal government, charging they had failed to protect key habitat for endangered species in general, and the prairie-dwelling sage grouse in particular. Their argument …