Owls at Hecla Island

On February 4th we head up to Hecla Island with Christian Artuso to see if we could see some winter birds. It is a two hour drive, and is located on Lake Winnipeg.
We took a lot of photos, and I have not gone through them yet, so I am just going to make a quick post with a few photos for now.

The first notable bird was a Northern Hawk owl that we saw as we crossed the causeway to the island, though it was a good distance away and we didn't get a good picture of that one.

Northern Hawk Owl

From then on we saw numerous owls, totaling 4 Northern Hawk Owls and 4 Great Grey Owls. We sat in the car watching the Great Grey Owls for a while, waiting for a good photo opportunity. They would take off and fly every once in a while, which made for some great photos.

Great Grey Owl

Great Grey Owl

By looking for 'scaling', that is bark stripped of trees,and listening for tapping, we were able to find a Three Toed Woodpecker. It was a lifer for us! They are very quite elusive, but quite approachable when found. The one we found was pecking on a tree only one foot of the ground, so it made for great pictures.

 Other birds we saw were grouse, both Ruffed and Sharp-tailed.

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Northern Hawk Owl

As we were sitting watching the owls, I decided I could take some short videos to compile together. Here it is:

I still hope to make another post more fully covering our trip, but it might be a bit before I can process all the photos.

It feels like Spring!

It has been very warm in Winnipeg in the past few days. Today it went up to -2 C, and it felt like Spring was coming. We even went biking, which is very strange to do in January.

Anyway, there were some nice redpolls and Purple Finches at the feeders. I got some nice photos, so I  thought I'd share them.

Downy Woodpecker

Common Redpoll

Common Redpoll

Downy Woodpecker

Common Redpoll

Common Redpoll

Common Redpoll

Common Redpoll

Our dog

My twin brother biking in the snow

Boreal Forest Birding

First of all, sorry for hardly posting lately, I've been busy with school and other hobbies.

A few weeks ago we met up with Christian Artuso for a birding outing, searching primarily for Black-backed and Three-toed Woodpeckers, and owls. We were successful and got some nice photos.

So here it is...

We drove east towards into the Boreal Forests, where owls and the uncommon woodpeckers we were after are usually.

We didn't see much until we hit the boreal forest. When we hit the boreal forest we saw a Northern Hawk owl, very cool birds! It was very far away but we got a decent look at it through Christian's spotting scope. Unfortunately we couldn't get any half decent photos at that range, so I didn't even bother having one in this post.

The next notable bird we saw was a Northern Shrike, the photo is very bad because it was so far, almost as bad as the Northern Hawk Owl's, but since I've never gotten a photo of a shrike before I thought I'd include it.

Northern Shrike

 We turned off on some country roads, passed some buildings and a guy sitting at a train track in his car, some buildings, and lots of trees until we came to another owl. But first I'll say the trees were very beautiful, there was a lot of hoarfrost on everything that morning and the trees looked gorgeous. This is the landscape we were birding in:

Manitoba winter landscape

 And the owls.. We spotted two shapes on the hydro poles ahead, and with binocular identification Christian announced there were two Great Grey Owls! It was a little unusual for the two owls to be right beside each other so we thought they might be a pair.

Great Grey Owl

Great Grey Owl

Great Grey Owl

 Now it was time to get down to searching for Black-backed and Three-toed Woodpeckers. The method is to drive slowly along the road and look for scaling (stripped bark off of trees by these woodpeckers). If we saw significant amounts of scaling we stepped out of the vehicle and turned it off and listened for several minutes (maybe some of us walking out in front of the vehicle and some behind). We were listened for tapping, Black-backed Woodpecker tapping on trees. Then if we heard tapping we would go into the forest and search it out and photograph it.

We did that over and over again (they're not common woodpeckers) and we saw some other birds along the way, including Grey Jays.

Grey Jay

Finally after a long while of stopping and listening we heard something.. Tapping! We plunged into the deep snow of the forest and got my boots full of snow. Finally we found the woodpecker... A downy? Yes, a Downy Woodpecker. A bit of a disappointment but we kept trying, and we were rewarded.

A Black-backed Woodpecker! A lifer! It was rather high in the trees so the pictures are the greatest, but they're still quite good.

Black-backed Woodpecker

Black-backed Woodpecker

We ended up seeing several of these woodpeckers, no Three-toed but I'm not disappointed, one is enough to be expected. 

Black-backed Woodpecker

Black-backed Woodpecker

 After pushing am intoxicated driver that was backing up in the middle of nowhere on an isolated country road out of the ditch we headed to Elma to check at the feeders there for any birds.

And there were some birds, but it was a sad sight. There was a flock of Evening Grosbeaks at some feeders, but almost everyone had eye disease. There eyes were looking in very bad condition and some were crusted over entirely. They seemed quite blind as we could walk up pretty close to them.

We knocked on the house's door and advised the owner to clean the feeders and not put them up for several weeks to try and stop the eye disease.

Evening Grosbeak with eye disease.

Common Redpoll

 One more stop, the Seven Sisters Dam to see if there were an ducks or anything around the open water. Along the highway we saw this Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle

 No ducks at the dam but some really amazing ice formations which I think was worth it.

A photo of me at the dam:

This is me :)

 Thanks for reading, and thank you Christian for spending the time with us!!

Winter Update 2015

It's not very wintery here in 'Winterpeg'. It has been very, very mild so far. The snow came late, and now it's melting! It's been up to 4 Degrees Celsius (39 F)!! Now there are large grass spots around the yard.
It is not often at all that you can go biking in December! We can't even go snowmobiling anymore because there isn't enough snow.
Also, every year we set up a skating rink in our backyard, this year, it looks likely that we won't. Not only because it's so warm now, and there is another reason...
We are going to Florida soon! We are going to drive there over Christmas, we're leaving on the 16th, only a bit more than a week. It's going to seem like an extra short winter, because it's warm and because we're going to be away for a few weeks. It's going to be strange for me, because I've never been away for Christmas, and I'm used to -20-30 C days all winter.
We are going to miss the Oak Hammock Marsh Christmas bird count, but going to Florida is worth it. We'll see many lifers I'm sure, I've never been down south before.

Two Saturdays ago, we went to Oak Hammock Marsh with Christian Artuso, to look for owls. We saw 12 owls in total, 3 owl species. We saw 2 Snowy Owls, 8 Short-eared Owls, and 2 Great-horned Owls. The main focus of the trip was Short-eared Owls, which was a lifer. I will try to make a post soon.

I haven't been posting too much, except for Weekly What Bird and Feathers on Friday, I've been quite busy with school, and learning a language (Dutch). In November I also did a writing challenge month.

Here is a photo earlier in November, as you can see it was still green, sometimes we have snow then.

Pileated Woodpecker

 For several days in a row, William saw the Great-horned Owl (I'm pretty sure most of you know about it, it has been coming back to our yard every winter for many years) and took some nice photos.

Great-horned Owl

Great-horned Owl

Great-horned Owl

We've had some other special birds around our yards, Grosbeaks! This is the first year we've had Evening Grosbeaks here, and the first year in many that we've had Pine Grosbeaks. In fact,  the last time I saw a Pine Grosbeak was before I was even interested in birds!

Evening Grosbeak

 The first time a Pine Grosbeak has been at our feeder for four years.

Pine Grosbeak

Pine Grosbeak female

 This Pine Grosbeak hit the window. I waited a while, and thought it might be dead, so I went out and checked on it, it wasn't. I went back inside and waited a while longer, after a while I thought it might be dead. When I went out to look at it, it flew away.

Pine Grosbeak

Spring Birding - Part 3

Sorry for taking so long. I meant to make this so long ago. I have pictures from almost a month ago.

I can hardly believe how late it is into migration already. In a few days the trees turned green, more warblers will be around, sparrows, waterfowl, shorebirds. So much! I can't believe it! I have finally caught up on organizing my bird photos so I should be able to get a few more posts out quickly.

I have been biking quite a lot the past month, so, with out further ado, my bird photos since near the beginning of April!

Common Grackle

American Robin

Mallards and Killdeer

 Yellowrumps have been around awhile, as well as kinglets. Today we saw our first Palm Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Cat at a friends house

Fox Sparrow

 One highlight was a Oregon Junco! They are rare here, but still can be seen. That was a treat!

Dark-eyed Junco "Oregon"

Cooper's Hawk 

And our dog apparently likes the water in the bird bath.

Winzy our dog drinking from the bird bath.

 My brother and sister's violin teacher has a cute little dog that I couldn't leave out.

Puppy dog

Downy Woodpecker

 I also enjoy just photographing things other than birds. Like this moss clump on the forest floor.

After some rainy days we had like fifty robins on our lawn.

American Robins

 Yellowrumps come to our suet sometimes, this is a bright male and a junco.

Yellow-rumped Warbler and Dark-eyed Junco

 There is a nice tree out the back of our road that is quite nice especially at sunset. It is a single tree beside the highway. William named it the Soller-Tree (the name of a hedgehog from the series Redwall) because it is a solitary tree.

The "Soller-Tree"

 We often bike to the Red River floodway, where Hooded Mergansers are quite common.

Hooded Mergansers