Spring Birding (Part 2 - St. Vital Park Birding)

Hello again! This is the post you've all been waiting for! Spring Birding #2! (applaud) I will be making these Spring Bird posts all spring, to document the birds that we see in Winnipeg during the spring time, for you're enjoyment (and mine, I like doing these). So if you ever wanted to know what spring birding is like here, read these! I will hopefully post them at least weekly, probably more frequently. So stay an active reader! And enjoy!

William's violin teacher's place has a lot of birds at it. One of them is a Merlin.

Merlin

During migration, we always have quite a lot of birds hit our window. Primarily Redpolls, Purple Finches and Juncos. A few weeks ago we had a horrible amount of redpolls hitting our window. It was after they left that we remembered we had a screen for that window! I was trying to think of some way to stop them from hitting, and the screen would have solved all our problems.

So, here's a female Purple Finch that hit the window. I'm not sure if it died afterwards.

Purple Finch

Okay, now for the Saint Vital Park birding. We went here for our homeschool group, as it is nearby to the place we meet. It has a duck pond and some woods, nice for taking a walk. Actually, next month, Christian Artuso is giving a speech for our homeschool group, then we will go birding at St Vital Park! That's going to be one of my favorite times.

There were mostly Canada Geese at the duck pond, but there were some other birds also. Many of these photos are William's! I didn't feel like trying to figure out which ones were who's, so I just put them all as (c) Josiah ....... He doesn't care a whole lot.

Just warning you, we took a lot of photos! A lot.... Maybe I should have split it into two posts.... Well, I hope you are a persistent reader and won't give up half way through when you realize it never ends. ;)

Canada Goose

Canada Goose

Mallards were one of the other birds we saw there.

Mallard

Dabbling it's beak.

Mallard

Mallard

Canada Goose

Male and female Mallard. The male seems to be have a snack. Yum Yum! Aquatic plants!

Mallard

Ring-billed Gulls were another of the birds that were at the pond.

Ring-billed Gull

This picture isn't to good, but it looks just so funny! So I thought I'd include it anyway.

Canada Goose

I like this photo, I kept the Mallards in color and made everything else black and white. Two male Mallards hangin out together.

Mallard

Mallard pair

They slip into the water from the ice.

Mallards

female Mallard

One of my favorite birds at the pond was, Wood Ducks! They were mostly hiding along the island in the middle under cover of bush, so it was hard to get good pictures. One female came out onto the ice

female Wood Duck

A beautiful portrait shot!

Female Mallard

Another beautiful portrait shot!

Mallard

And another!

Mallard

We decided to go walking through the woods, maybe look for some birds as well. We crossed a marsh (and I just had shoes (and was holding the camera)) on logs and made it safely across. It was actually a flooded out path. We found a feeder, and some friendly chickadees that landed on our hands. After staying by the chickadees a while we started back. Suddenly a Great-horned Owl flew out and landed in plain view for all of us! What a spectacular bird they are!

This one looks rather white, compared to ours that we have come back every winter. After taking a billion photos with the camera, it finally flew off. I actually only have two photos on the blog, which I'm kind of surprised about. I usually put on like ten for a bird like this ;). I think everyone agreed it was really fantastic to see it, even if they weren't into birds like us.

Apparently it was really sleepy, it kept yawning. I would be sleepy to, if someone woke me up in the middle of my sleep, and started taking pictures of me! Actually... that would just be weird! Anyway, in the pictures it looked like he's singing.

"Grumble, groan. Yawwwwn. Why'd ye wake me up so early? YAWWWWWNN!" 

Great-horned Owl
"AAAAAAHH! EEEEEHH AAAAHHH!!" he sings.

Great-horned Owl

We had looped back to the duck pond. Perfect! The wood ducks were out! So we got some good pictures of them.

This photo isn't the greatest, but I love the Mallard squaking at the Wood Duck, and the Wood Duck is swimming away as fast as possible.

Mallard, Wood Duck, Canada Goose
"Get away from here!"
"On my way!"

And the flashy wood duck showing off his beautiful hair. My friend now calls it the 70's duck, with it's funky hair.

Wood Duck
"Look at my nifty hair!"

Wood Duck

Wood Duck

And yet again, Wood Duck! :D

That's all folks! Thanks for reading! It is a long post, but I'm glad you read through it.

Please Comment and share! And stay tuned for the next Spring Birding Post!