Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Birding outing

We went out with Christian Artuso this past Saturday. Christian Artuso is the coordinator of the Manitoba Breeding Bird Atlas, and a good friend of ours. We have been out together birding a couple times before (see Assiniboine Park - English Garden Photos  post). I always email him when I have a question. I have learned so much from him!  
Like I said in the last post we got some incredible photos of Rough-legged Hawks. I had a great time. Also like I said in the last post we got a new camera. Its great! My brothers used it while I used Christian's camera.
We went all the way to the Grand Beach area. When we were on the highway we saw Rough-legged Hawks every couple minutes. There were many, many Common Ravens too.
We went to some feeders and watched the birds there for a bit. We  saw woodpeckers, chickadees, and nuthatches. I haven't seen a Red-breasted Nuthatch in quite a while.
We saw some Snow Buntings on the shoulder of the road, we would stop and take pictures. Sometimes we use the van a blind; we would walk along side of it while it moved very slowly forward. When we were close enough it would stop, we would peek around the corner and snap some pics.
When we were on our way home, we saw a Northern Shrike fly across the road. We turned around to see if we could find it, but no such luck.

Here are the checklists from ebird that Christian made: ebird checklist Scanterbury areaebird checklist Gull Lakeebird checklist, Patricia Lake

Thank you Christian for taking us out!!

Here are the photos I took with Christian's camera.
Black-capped Chickadee

Black-capped Chickadee

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Double-crested Cormorant at Gull Lake

Hairy Woodpecker

Red-breasted Nuthatch flying

Black-capped Chickadee getting ready
to fly


Rough-legged Hawk hovering, getting ready to dive at prey
Rough-legged Hawk hovering,
diving

flying


Snow Bunting























































































The rest of the pictures my brothers took, they shared our new camera. They took some fantastic photos also: 
Black-capped Chickadee

Common Ravens, flying off sign

Double-crested Cormorant

Christian on the right, me next to him, my brothers beside me

The moon was out, so I took a picture quickly

Black-capped Chickadee

Patricia Beach

Patricia Beach

Patricia Beach

Red-breasted Nuthatch, I love the look of the wood

Red-breasted Nuthatch starting to fly, and Black-capped Chickadee

Rough-legged Hawk

Rough-legged Hawk


Rough-legged Hawk


hovering




Rough-legged Hawk hovering

Snow Bunting


2 comments:

  1. It was a lot of fun birding with you all. I am extremely impressed with the photos, especially Rough-legged Hawk hunting sequence...

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I think they are incredible. I never thought I would be able to take pictures like that at my age. My brothers took some great pics also.

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