Feathers on Friday

Spring migration has been slow the past few days, but we've seen kinglets and quite a few other birds.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Other FoF posts:

Bird Boy
Prairie Birder
The Cats and the Birds

Weekly What Bird Wednesday

Here is a really bad picture, but I thought it would be good for guessing, maybe a bit easy though.

Leave your guess in the comments

Other What Bird Wednesday posts:
Bird Boy's
JC's
Cat's and the Birds

Feathers on Friday

Sorry for not posting for so long, I've been a bit busy. I just realized how long it's been since I've done a Feathers on Friday post.
Yesterday migration finally came in earnest. Golden and Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Brown Creeper, Song Sparrows, Flickers, Cooper's Hawk. The weather is finally warming up.

But here is a photo from a while ago, a Pine Grosbeak at the feeder.

Pine Grosbeak

Other FoF posts:

Bird Boy
Prairie Birder
The Cats and the Birds

Long-eared Owls!

A few days ago we saw a medium sized owl fly out from the trees, actually quite a familiar sight for us. It was a Long-eared Owl! The past two years a pair has come back to our yard, and last year they nested right in our forest!
This is the third year they have come back, and it's pretty exciting! Now to see if they will nest in our yard like last year.

I've also seen the Cooper's Hawk, which has been coming back to our yard for years and years.

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 Returns

So most of the snow melted but now it all came back! Okay, not all of it, but we had a snowstorm and there's a lot on the ground. There is actually water and slush under most of the snow, and it should melt soon, but snow is coating everything. It stuck to all the trees looks very beautiful and it is exactly like what happened last year (Birding in a Winter Wonderland).

First of all here are some pictures of the snow.

This branch was sagging so much under the snow it was nearly touching the ground

Now some birds. There were a bunch of juncos flitting about in the snow bushes and some American Tree Sparrows! The first of the year for me. That's when I went back to the house to get the telephoto lens.

Dark-eyed Junco

American Tree Sparrow

American Tree Sparrow

American Tree Sparrow

American Tree Sparrow

American Tree Sparrow

 And of course, there are always Black-capped Chickadees everywhere.

Black-capped Chickadees

American Tree Sparrow

 Here our dog Winzy is standing in the exact same spot as the post from last year about the snow like this (mentioned above).

Here is the ebird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S28263597

Spring has come!

And it's come fast! In less than a week most of the snow has melted, the ditches are full of water, and geese have come back. I've seen some robins, juncos, Bald Eagles.

We went birding the other day with Christian Artuso and saw Black-backed Woodpeckers and some owls. I should get a post out soon.

-Josiah

Weekly What Bird Wednesday

I've missed quite a few lately, but here is another one.

Can you guess what this bird is?

Leave your guess in the comoments

Last time's were Wood Storks, as Prairie Birder Guessed


Other What Bird Wednesday posts:
Bird Boy's
JC's
Cat's and the Birds

Florida (Part 4)

Another post at last...

These are some pictures from various places, and one of the highlights of the trip, Florida Scrub Jay.
Without further ado... photos:

These few are just from the resort, there was a pond there with some birds..

Pied-billed Grebe

Double-crested Cormorant

Muscovy Duck

White Ibis

young White Ibis

 We drove around a bit just looking for birds, we found a few hawks, which we had seen previously on the trip, but didn't get photos.

Red-shouldered Hawk

 We went back to Canaveral Island, and at a nature center there, and we heard there were painted buntings there. So we went to the feeders there and before long a few Painting Buntings showed up.

Painted Bunting

Alligator 

Alligator

 A very strange thing for us, is that there were just orange trees there...

Orange

 Here's a tiny snake.

Snake

 There were a lot of brown lizards, but we found a few green lizards to.

Strange looking spider 

Painted Bunting

Painted Bunting

Alligator

 We then headed to where we heard the Scrub Jays were often seen, also on Cape Canaveral. On the way we saw this Osprey eating a fish.

Osprey

 It was actually quite easy to find the Jays, they are very rare but common to see in one specific spot. These birds are endemic to Florida, which means they only live in Florida.

Florida Scrub Jay

Florida Scrub Jay

Florida Scrub Jay

Florida Scrub Jay

Florida Scrub Jay

This was an amazing highlight for the trip, a very rare bird, and a amazing one too.

And that's the end of the post... Stay tuned for another one.