Feathers on Friday

Purple finches from this Spring

HEre is Prairie Birders post

Weekly What Bird Wednesday

Can you guess this bird?

In Loving Memory of Bandit

This post is concerning the best dog in the world, Bandit, who we had to put down several days ago because he was getting very old. He has been losing hair for a while, his eyes were leaking brown stuff, and the vet told us he had cancer. Several months later though we were told he didn't have cancer, just skin allergies or something. He still had lost a lot of fur and wouldn't be able to last the winter. We also got a new puppy, and we didn't want him teaching her bad habits. We buried him under a apple tree out back.

Here are some pictures of him.

One of my favorite pictures of him

 This one is also one of my favorite

In as bad of shape as he was, he was still in really good shape, he could run like it is nothing and would never miss a chance for a car ride. He ran along, hoping to get in the car not knowing it was his last trip to the vet.

"Steeeeeetch!!!"

"Itch!!!"

Feathers on Friday

A bunch of small shorebirds in Churchill, I am not sure what they are. Maybe Sanderlings??? Please help me with the identification.

Sanderlings???

Here is Prairie Birders post

Weekly What Bird Wednesday

I now have over 20,000 views (according to blogger) of my blog! I have had this blog for just over a year. May has the record for the highest amount of views, beating April by 9 views. The views went down a bit as the slow summer dragged on. October was the month with the least pageviews, with only 422. Since November my monthly amount of pageviews hasn't gone under 1300. The pageviews jumped in November, from the lowest for a month to close to one the the highest still (1795). November is when I started doing Prairie Birder's Feathers on Friday, that brought lots of pageviews. Thanks Charlotte, that really got my blog out there. I have had 10,000 pageviews in the last 5 months , so I know my blog is growing a lot! Thank you everyone! Keep checking, comment and share (and I should get another Churchill posts out pretty soon)   

Now for the W.W.B.W. Can you guess what this bird is? Leave a comment below, even if you are not sure what it is.

Bridget and Matthew guessed last weeks correct, White-crowned Sparrow

Other W.W.B.W. posts:

Ethan at Bird Boy | What Bird Wednesday

Feathers on Friday

Semipalmated Sandpiper in Churchill

Semipalmated Sadnpiper

Check out Prairie Birder's post

Weekly What Bird Wednesday

Can you guess the bird below?

Leave your guess in the comments.

Last times birds were Great-horned Owl, Blue Jay, Black-billed Magpie, American Crow and Common Raven.

Churchill Day 1

Finally! A Churchill post.

My brother made a temporary title for my blog with some of the Churchill pictures. If you want to know all the birds we saw, look on the Churchill Bird Trax I temporarily put up. 

The first day we set out at 5:30 AM in the car for Thomson, where we would take the train at 5:30 PM to Churchill. Since we were up so early I was able to get pictures of the sunrise while we were driving.

Sunrise on Manitoba prairie

We stopped at Pisew Falls on the way and had lunch, there was a boardwalk around the impressive falls.

The board walk

Pisew Falls

 When we were on the road again, we stopped so I could take a picture of an Osprey on a nest.

Osprey fling from nest

 After an 18 hour ride on the train, we arrived on a misty morning in Churchill. We were planning to take a picture of our family in front of the sign but we decided to wait until after we settle into the hotel.

The Town of Churchill Sign

The first birding we did was at the Granary Ponds, where I got 7 lifers I think. The first being Arctic Tern, which greeted us as soon as we stepped out of the rented van by dive bombing us and bombing us.

Tern Shaking water off

Arctic Tern

I spotted the egg that it was so feircly guarding.

The Tern Egg

 Until after we got home I didn't know we had saw a Green-winged Teal, I photographed this family thinking they were mallards, but after looking at the picture, I spotted the green wing.

Arctic Tern

 On of the lifers was Short-billed Dowitcher, I spotted them across the ponds.

two Short-billed Dowitcher

 We saw a Red-breaster Merganser Hooded Merganser sitting on the water.

female Hooded Merganser

 I believe the bird below is a Lesser Yellowlegs, please correct me if I am wrong.

Lesser Yellowlegs (I think)

Arctic Tern sitting on rock

 Here is a picture of lots of the birds in the pond, American Black Ducks (lifer), Mallards, Red-necked Phalarope (lifer), Arctic Terns and Herring Gulls were the bulk of the birds in the pond.

The rest of the day was spent driving around Churchill, birding and looking for bears. We went to Cape Merry and saw some Whimbrels (lifer!), as well as a dying bear across the river.

Ring-billed Gull at Cape Merry

Whimbrels flying over Cape Merry

Whimbrels

 There were also a lot of Sandhill cranes, apparently attracted by the grain from the grain from the trains.

Sandhill Cranes

Me birding at Cape Merry

 We went to the harbour and saw a family of Common Eiders (lifer) and an Osprey

Osprey diving

Osprey

 I believe this is a Stilt Sandpiper Lesser Yellowlegs, though I am not 100% sure, please correct me if I am wrong!

Stilt Sandpiper Lesser Yellowlegs (I think)

Stay tuned for the next day of Churchill!!!

Fur on Friday

This might be a bit off topic, but we got a new puppy last night! It is a mix of Golden Retriever and Golden Lab. Our other dog, Bandit, is getting very old, he is 14. He was losing hair and we were told he was dying of cancer, but now the vet says maybe not, it could just be allergies. We think we are going to name the new puppy Winnie, but we aren't 100% sure yet.

The puppy in her cage

Here is Prairie Birder's post

Off to Whiteshell

We're just about to leave to the Big Whiteshell to go camping for a couple days. Unfortunately I will miss the Weekly What Bird, even though I have missed it for a couple weeks before this because of the Churchill trip. I don't have time to make it automatically post on Wednesday, so I'll just miss it this week.

Mississippi Kite in Winnipeg

Yes! There is a Mississippi Kite in Winnipeg. Two actually, nesting. The first nest in Canada by this species. There nest is expanding northward, very quickly actually. If you look on the BirdTrax I have on my blog, which shows the recent eBird activity, and you click on 'rarities', it will be Mississippi Kite, Mississippi Kite, Mississippi Kite, ect...

When I saw it, I kind of got really excited. "Mom, can we see the kite?" "Mom, we should contact someone to see exactly where the kite is!"
Then Christian Artuso made the blog post on the blog about it, and about how it was nesting. Then I got really excited and we contacted Christian and he agreed to take us to the nest. So in the afternoon we went and saw the magnificent bird. It is actually really funny, when I was obsessed with raptors, I saw in our birds of Canada book that Mississippi Kites are accidentals in Canada. I thought they were such cool looking birds, I said they were my favorite raptor, and now, there is one nesting right in our city!

Kites catch dragon flies on the wing, they catch them with there feet. The birds demonstrated this many times while we were there.

Mississippi Kite with dragon fly

The kite flying

 Here's a picture of it with a dragon fly in it's talons

Mississippi Kite

 And here is the nest of the kite, you can see a fluffy white ball sticking it's head up, that's the baby!

There was a conifer that was a favorite spot for the kites. They kept landing there week after week.

Mississippi Kite

Mississippi Kite in the tree

 Preening and scratching.

Mississippi Kite

Preening

 Chimney Swifts kept flying over while we were there, a Manitoba Lifer!

Chimney Swifts

I will post more picture in a couple weeks, I only have smaller versions of the pictures. Christian sent them over email so he had to make them smaller, he will give us a USB stick with the pictures next time we meet.