Sparroworking in Québec

CHANGE OF SCENE ...

2007-10-01T20:44:00.001-04:00

Finally, we have managed to install "usable" blogging facilities on our own website and so we ask you to please update your bookmarks/favourites and follow us home to ...

http://www.sparroworks.ca/wordpress/

... whence the story will continue. we think you'll like the new format, it's more flexible than this and easier to maintain.

CHANGE OF SCENE ...

2007-10-01T20:44:00.000-04:00

Finally, we have managed to install "usable" blogging facilities on our own website and so we ask you to please update your bookmarks/favourites and follow us home to ...

http://www.sparroworks.ca/wordpress/

... whence the story will continue. we think you'll like the new format, it's more flexible than this and easier to maintain.

Kenauk - for the tenth time

2007-09-14T15:21:00.000-04:00

Kenauk 2007

Sunrise at Kenauk

As some of my faithful reoders have noticed, there has been a dearth of postings recently - these have been due to editorial inanition and a lack of really good birds to write about. However, we are now back to normal. This past week has been spent, as the week of my birthday has been every year since our arrival in Canada ten years ago, in a very isolated cabin on the enormous and remote reserve that those good folks at Fairmont Hotels keep at "Kenauk" in the Ouatouais region of Quebec. Total isolation, many lakes, boreal forest, lots of birds, bears, beavers, moose, bats, canoes ..... Just a wonderful place to mark being a year older whatever it costs (lots, but it'll be the last luxury we give up). We've said it before and we'll say it again - this is what we came to Canada to find.

The cabin we rent every year in a bay off the northern end of Lac Papineau

... and the view from the cabin

Morning mist

The previous ten years have been universally warm & sunny so it was time for a change and the first day was unremittingly wet so we poked about, read uplifting books, ate a lot and drank plenty of wine & whisky (Highland Park 12yo). After that, cool air & warm sun was good for birding as well as fishing. Morning & evening trips in the canoes to see Wood Duck, Loons & a family of three beavers were de rigeur.

Fishing varied between a fine Bass first cast off the dock to bloody hard work to 14 Bass in one hour ... Not bad at all. No Trout as they are very deep this time of year (Lake Trout = Char) and I don't have the gear but the Bass fight hard and make up for it. Last cast of the holiday from the dock produced the two largest Bass of the week ... And no, we didn't eat them - strictly catch-and-release these days. The "killer" technique involved none of that ironmongery so beloved of the N.American fisherman but a simple light fly rod, a floating line and a single grey hares-ear nymph with a brass, weighted head fished slowly with occasional small jerks - the old ways are often the best ways, at least when it comes to fishing. The last and best fish of the week was taken off the dock on the "last cast of the day" - a big one and a fighter.

Worthy of note was the squirrel rustler who lives on Ile des pins - he has clearly become habituated to boats bringing lunchtime snacks from friendly fisher-folk and he was quickly into our bags looking for just the right goodies - home-made sourdough olive bread and peach stones seemed to be the winners.

The squirrel rustler of Ile des pins checking our bags for lunch

The magic fly

Lac Jackson - cabins at Kenauk come with a boat on the main lake
plus a private"stocked lake back in the forest that you are guaranteed you don't have to share

Birding - Loons, Wood Duck, Broad-winged Hawks, TVs, Pileated Woodpecker, Ruffed Grouse, plenty of migrating fall Warblers ... Yellow-rumped, Blackpoll, Blackburnian, Bay-breasted and Chestnut-sided ... Kingfisher, Red-shouldered Hawk, many, many Northern Flickers and Blue Jays, soaring groups of Ravens, Mergansers and all the regular guys.

Yellow-rumped Warbler

The Merganser family set out for a morning's fishing

Juvenile Common Loon

Next year at Kenauk will see me celebrating my 60th ... Something to look forward to indeed and it's already booked.

PS: these notes have been compiled on the dock looking over smooth water to the sunlit forest on the opposite shore ... All made possible courtesy of my handy HP iPAQ PDA - see, even in the wilderness tech-toys have their place!

Birding abroad

2007-08-26T15:23:00.000-04:00

Today we took ourselves into foreign territory and crossed the border into Ontario to visit Marais Cooper. Usually we go there in the spring but somehow hadn't managed it this year - so a late summer trip was due.

The birds of the day were the Common Yellowthroats which seemed to have been everywhere - in fact that applies to the whole of the year I think. Also seen in the same group of birds were Redstarts and a Canada Warbler.

Cedar Waxwings are one of our favourite birds but not always easy to photograph though today they behaved themselves immaculately. They were in a mixed flock with Rose-breasted Grosbeaks but the latter kept in the leaves so although i have photos they aren't worth showing here.

"coming up"

"made it"

Cute eh?

Green Heron

Monarch butterfly

Osprey with his lunch

Northern Flickers

We ended the morning with 36 species - nothing rare, but all good for the time of year and the time of day.

Shorebirds

2007-08-22T18:00:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again. water levels on the river are starting to fall revealing wide expanses of mud which attract the small shorebirds thgat are already starting to migrate south. last night we visited the shores of Anse a l'Orme on the northwestern shore of Montreal island and saw a good selection of little guys skittering about.

The birds must have been very keen on feeding as they allowed us to get much closer to them than is normally the case.

Solitary Sandpiper ("go away cruel world - I want to be alone")

Lesser Yellowlegs with a Least Sandpiper by his toes

Killdeer

Least Sandpipers

Semipalmated Sandpiper

St-Thimothée

2007-08-19T17:26:00.001-04:00

Our weekly birding day is usually Sunday and we took ourselves off today to St-Thimothée marsh which we have not been to since the spring.

Being a marsh, of course, it has plenty of frogs ...

... and being a nature reserve it has the biggest, soundest, most earthquake-proof hide in the world courtesy of our friends at Hydro-Quebec:

Anyway - plenty of good birding. We go here for a short stroll to see what's happening and rarely get away in less than three hours despite it being really quite a small area. Highlight was shared between two birds - one photographed and one hardly believed. The photographed one was a very nice American Bittern that we watched for quite some time catching its afternoon snacks - look carefully at the picture - he's right in the centre:

... and the other bird of the day? I'll come back to that. First, there was a small group of very noisy Killdeer

... several flocks of red-winged Blackbirds starting to gather (and thereby signalling the end of summer approaches), GB Herons, Belted Kingfisher, Least Bittern (heard) and various other marsh critters including this Kingbird

But the other bird of the day seems scarcely credible. A red russet with white and black bird streaked out of a reed bed right in front of us and dived out of site in more vegetation. "Wazzat" we cried and confirming we had both seen the same field marks grabbed our copy of Sibley. Given the territory and behaviour it could only have been a Red-necked or else a Horned Grebe; both pretty uncommon hereabouts except occasionally seen in passage at the end of the season. "Ah well", we thought, "one or the other" when damn me if it didn't fly back again and pretty well clinch itself as being a Horned Grebe. We never did see it on the water because of the high reeds but it could not have been anything else at all. Breed out west, breed in the Iles de la Madeleine but certainly not hereabouts so we count this as good tick indeed.

St-Thimothée never fails us - a good place indeed.

Tropical gardening

2007-08-17T17:29:00.000-04:00

Quite a surprise this year - we had pretty well given up on the Lotus plant but suddenly in the hot weather the pond warmed up and out came this glorious flower ...

... and the Hummingbird (devilishy hard to focus on these guys) came to check out the food potential of the Buddleia we planted last year.

Active Day

2007-08-10T17:58:00.001-04:00

There have been reports of birds on the move in the last couple of days - today's garden visitors included a juvenile Carolina Wren, an American Redstart, a Blue-headed Vireo, a small flock of Baltimore Orioles and a Yellow-rumped warbler (see below) plus a mystery bird, the ID of which will be added once we decide what it is.

The "mystery" bird ... best estimate to date on its ID is a Tufted Titmouse which makes it the one hundredth species in the garden since we moved to live here and a very welcome visitor indeed !!

News

2007-08-09T20:26:00.001-04:00

Hi - I`m a young Redwinged Blackbird hoping to grow up and have flashy epaulets .....

Been a quiet period for the last couple of weeks culminating yesterday in the surgical amputation of a couple of toes from Princess Pushy the Fenland cat resulting from the discovery of a rapidly growing tumour (diagnosis awaited) - she is now home again and in full appetite catch-up mode. They make 'em tough on the fens.

Meanwhile, supper this evening was enlivened by the appearance of a Flycatcher in the garden - but which variety? Empidonax spp. are devilishly hard to identify - could be a Least Flycatcher and we have had convincingly strong evidence brought to our attention that it could be a Yellow-breasted Flycatcher. Tricky little buggers - if based on nothing else than the fact that Leasts have visited before I think we'll go with that for now but keep the question mark in place.

Quiet days

2007-08-06T15:10:00.000-04:00

The birds have slowed down for the summer and we are in the quiet period before southwards migration starts. Seems strange to be thinking of birds heading south for the winter when it's the start of August and we have had several days here with the humidex values in the mid 40s but that's the way things are. There have been several reports of early warblers on the move (Tennessee mostly) and the shorebirds will be arriving soon - though how many we see here I don't know as the river water levels are still high and exposed foreshore is not as plentiful as some years.

Not so lazy days

2007-07-25T17:44:00.000-04:00

It is very hot and humid this week and this evening we added Baltimore Oriole to the garden year list which now stands at 63 species since January first. I have been told of a nearby Merelin's nest which I hope to get to see in the next day or two.

A friend up the road has a large quantity of rocks in her garden to dispose of and so the last couple of nights I have been barrowing huge weights between out two houses as we have plans for using rocks ... not the same plans, we have to reach a mutual plan, but plans nevertheless. Fortunately, our garden is down hill from the source - I honestly don't think I could barrow this weight up hill.

Relaxing on the deck afterwards and beginning to think about cold drinks, we looked up and saw Chimney Swifts flying back and forth high up in the insectosphere while in the corner of the garden a couple of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds were having a hissy-fit with each other. very aggressive little bundles of fluff are Hummers. Later yet, we were entranced to watch one of the Hummers deleiberately seeking out and flying in and hovering in the strong spray from a watering system we were using to wet the potatoe and blackcurrent beds - he seemed to be having a whale of a time.

Lazy days

2007-07-21T16:54:00.000-04:00

There are ever more junior birds of many species in the garden at the moment - I don't know how many we have aided in successful breeding this year but certainly the boskier the herbaceous borders and the wild corner become in the garden, the more breeding there seems to be.

The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are back - attracted by the stand of Monarda.

Sourdough discovery

2007-07-15T14:40:00.001-04:00

I have been making sourdough breads for years but this morning J created sourdough blueberry pancakes from a portion of the infamous "Breadzilla" starter I lovingly tend ... superb, light, fluffy and absorb the butter and maple syrup like a sponge.

There are still things the new world can teach us old-worlders then!

Summer joys

2007-07-14T12:15:00.001-04:00

Number one ...

A happy hour in the sunshine picking pounds of ripe, fat blackcurrents to the singing of Song Sparrows

Number two ...

Standing in one of my huge compost heaps turning the mix when I find I am also standing on the roof of a wasp's nest ... took me quite a clamber to get in there and about a nanosecond to get out. Ouch!

Babes in the Woods

2007-07-10T19:45:00.001-04:00

As I said earlier - the garden is full of junior birds trying to become teenagers ... this young Song Sparrow had just been for a bath in the pond - not like human kids, he/she bathed voluntarily!

Fruit

2007-07-08T13:10:00.000-04:00

A gardening post this time - no birds other than a note that the garden is suddenly full of apprentice Woodpeckers, Chickadees and Grackles plus innumerable Song Sparrows let out by their mums to learn how to be big birds.

Suddenly it's real summer - have just picked some early gooseberries, there will be baskets full of blackcurrents in the next week or so and Friday we had the first "new' potatoes from the garden, than which few things taste better. It has always been a puzzlement to us that it seems impossible to buy genuine new potatoes in North American stores. A unique taste which people would pay for - they do in Europe and I'm sure they would here given the opportunity but all you can get are small or large red or white or yellow when it comes to potato varieties. Here in Quebec we can buy grelots which are as close to new pots as are sold but, nice as they are, they aren't the real thing ... and so this year's decision to replace the tomato bed with spuds is beginning to pay off.

Vancouver Island - June/July 2007

2007-07-06T12:18:00.001-04:00

We have just returned from a couple of weeks on Vancouver Island - wonderful place (with weird right wing politics) and a collection of photos will appear shortly elsewhere for thos interested - details to come - meanwhile, here are some impressions and details of the birding ... and the restaurants:

Sunday 24

Flew to Vancouver - plane sat for ages on tarmac at V airport waiting for a storm to pass and make it safe for groundcrew to allow us off. Rental car "trendy" PT Cruiser and hotel on Robson St. 40 storey tower with rotating restaurant. Dinner by harbour - Herons Resto - v. Good food with stellar service.

Vancouver

Monday 25

Mostly spent birding in Stanley Park - wonderful trees despite the storm damage from last winter. Birds seen included Red-breasted Sapsucker, Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Three-toed Woodpecker and Violet-green Swallow. Walking back from SPark we watched Bush Tits fossicking around their strange hanging nest in a tree. Intended to have a light (and cheap) meal in evening but somehow found ourselves in CinCin's superb (and expensive) Italian resto instead - another stunning meal followed by a walk through Gastown.

Red-breasted Sapsucker in Stanley Park with his sap-well "farm"

Cute, eh?

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

Tuesday 26

Not a birding day, though we did add Bald Eagle. Quick visit to walk over the 450ft. high wobbly Capilano suspension bridge ($30 each for entry !!) which was remarkable and lived up to its reputation even if some of the presentation was a little commercial. Then Horseshoe Bay and an hour-and-a-half ferry crossing to Nanaimo on V-Island. Saw flock of birds on crossing just too far off for good ID but probably Alcids of some species. Howard-Johnson hotel this time - slumming it.

Vancouver Island from the Nanaimo Ferry

Wednesday 27

In bright sunshine we drove from Nanaimo via Qualicum beach - Caspian Tern - and the utterly amazing 800 year old huge Douglas Fir and Hemlocks of Cathedral Grove (800 year old trees mean that all the birds you can hear are five times higher above you than usual - many birds heard, almost none seen) then along the Port Alberni summit road down to Tofino on the west coast of V-Island. The Wickaninnish Inn is a stunning place - on a glorious rocky/sandy beach (lots of creature-filled rock pools for J) that we walked along before an outstanding dinner in the restaurant looking out west over the sea to the setting sun. Bald Eagles were not hard to see including one on its nest surrounded by perching, noisy Crows. Several Black Oystercatchers puttered about on the barnacle covered rocks, occasionally flying up in small groups to shout at the world. Does life get better than this?

Caspian Tern

800 year old trees in Cathedral Grove

Starfish - Tofino

Bald Eagle on nest at Chesterman Bay - with "chorus" of Crows

Thursday 28

Very wet for much of the day (this place receives 10 feet of rain annually and rain falls on 2 out of every three days throughout the year) but we watched Bald Eagles perching in the trees along the shore right beside our hotel room balcony and heard the fluting call of quite a number of Swainsons Thrushes in the trees ... and the rain just got heavier! On the sea, far enough away to be unidentifiable as to species. were assorted Alcids etc but in the early light we did add a definite Leach's Storm Petrel (this season they come to land at night for nesting - we checked) to the list. So - despite the breakfast waitress's comments about this being a "pyjmas day" we borrowed rain slickers from the hotel. and spent several wet and happy hours walking the cliffs and the rain-forest until finally we saw, rather than heard two Swainsons Thrushes. Then back to the hotel for another beach hike, a check of rock-pools for crabs and starfish (many) and a superlative gourmet meal.

Chesterman Bay

Osprey

Bald Eagle

Friday 29

We left the best (and potentially most expensive) hotel we have ever stayed at and set out to spend the-Canada Day w/end with friends in Campbell River on the other side of the island ... needless to say, it was raining heavily again but all those years vacationing in Scotland have trained us for this sort of stuff but by the time we had reached CR on the opposite coast the day was coot but dry and an evening stroll brought Rufous Hummingbirds, Savannah Sparrow and Western Tanager as new sightings for the trip list.

Rufous Hummingbird

Saturday 30

Spent the day at the Woodhus Slough reserve on the shore south of CR - superb mixed habitat, forest, marsh, fields, shore, shrubs. Amongst species seen (apart from snakes) were close-up Bald Eagles, Surf Scoter, Purple Martin, Bonaparte Gull, Least Sandpiper, Willett, Spotted Towhee, Savannah Sparrow, Pigeon Guillemot, Pacific-slope and Olive-sided Flycatchers (plus maybe a Hammonds?), families of Common Mergansers and a flotilla of 15-20 Harlequin Ducks. A very fine day ... and good beer at a good pub at the end of the trail.

Spotted Towhee

Sunday 1 July (Canada Day)

Evening fireworks and appropriately patriotic CDay things like that were preceded by a marvelous day spent across the channel on Quadra Island, mostly walking trails on Rebecca Spit where Bald Eagles along the shore were ten a penny but this time behaved impeccably in the sunshine and posed for their pictures. Birds also seen included Rufous Hummingbirds, Common Loon, Spotted Towhee, Common and Thick-billed Murres, a 75% certain Black-throated Gray Warbler, a 50% possible Orange-crowned Warbler, Vesper Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow and Ravens. Lots and lots of Ravens who first announced their presence with loud, mechanical "ker-chung" calls in the trees around us followed by deep croaks and then two of them flew into sight and escorted us out of their territory. Later we enjoyed watching a couple on the shore squabbling over a tasty crab (see photograph). Quadra Island is a pretty fine place - I have decided that a house on the eastern shore of QI with an upper-floor office overlooking the water would perhaps make a good place to pathologise from in semi-retirement (if only it was in Quebec - people here are very nice but have funny politics and strange tin-hut roadside churches of a fundamentalist leaning).

White-crowned Sparrow - large breeding population

Beach on Quadra Island - a nice place to live?

Ravens squabble over a crab for lunch

Harlequin Duck flotilla

Yet "another" Bald Eagle

Monday 2

Drove S to Victoria - little to comment upon other than the hotel was as centrally placed on the inner harbour as you could wish, the weather was warm and sunny and the bird of the day was a House Sparrow. Dinner at an award-winning brew pub was excellent - Swan's import their malt and hops from the UK and brew a better "English" beer than many English breweries ... The accompanying shepherd's pie was very good indeed but nothing like the real thing, much too sophisticated.

Tuesday 3

Lunch and dinner at Swan's pub, and a touristy exploration of Victoria.

Swan's Pub - wonderful beer and food

Wednesday 4

Several hot and sunny hours spent exploring the Butchart gardens - we are life-long, seasoned garden visitors but these were impressive ... amongst the best anywhere, including England, especially impressed by the roses and the Japanese garden. Earlier in this posting I referred to the weird religious tendency that is overly-visible out west (though if religion becomes compulsory, then the tiny Church of the Vineyard is the one for me), well the B-Gardens were infested with demure girls in Victorian costume shepherded by their menfolk - Mennonites, I assume (?) - why do these women put up with it? Later took the ferry back to Vancouver - beautiful crossing threading between the gulf islands in hot sunshine with eagles and seals and far off one brief glimpse of an Orca.

Roses in the Butchart Gardens

Entrance to the Japanese Garden

In the Japanese garden

The Gulf Islands on the return to the mainland

Thursday 5

Early morning flight back to Montreal and familiar eastern birds. An excellent vacation.

C'est tout ...

Going West

2007-06-22T12:30:00.001-04:00

There will be a couple of week's break in service - the Sparroworkers are heading west to see what Vancouver Island has to offer the eastern birder and collector of decent reataurants ..... normal service will be resumed somewhere around 8 July.

Birding (& working) - Puerto Rico June 2007

2007-06-16T13:03:00.000-04:00

Life, some would say, can be tough at times but when the Society of Toxicologic Pathologists decided to hold its annual conference at a beach resort in Puerto Rico who was I to complain. Of course, I did do a lot of hard work (and a deal too much networking - it's nice to catch up with old friends and former colleagues but I can happily pass the rest of the BS) but here I will confine comments to birding rather than pathology.

Beach-birding at dawn

So - day 1 at 6.00am finds me out on the beach ticking off the first lifers of the week. Lots of good birds - mostly fairly common ones for PR but nevertheless lifers for me and including Pearly Thrasher, Black-necked Stilt, Gray Kingbird, Orange-cheeked Waxbill, Laughing Gull, Great, Snowy & Cattle Egrets, PR Flycatcher, Clapper Rail, White-winged Dove, Green-backed & Little-blue Herons, Shiny Cowbird, Greater-Antillean Grackle, Plain Pigeon and Semi-palmated Plover - other species included Brown Pelicans, Red-tailed Hawk, Ruddy Duck, Pied-billed Grebe, Common Tern, Tree & Barn Swallows and a regular Killdeer or two.

Great Egret and Little Blue Heron

Pearly Thrasher

Gray Kingbird

Other sightings worthy of note mostly revolved around vorious lizards and Iguanas, some of which achieved a huge size of up to 4ft or more in length. They were lounging around all over the nearby golf-course with a subsidiary colony under my hotel room balcony

Iguana - about 4 feet long

This first day was rounded off by an arrangement with friends to be out again on day-2, only this time at 5.15am. Well worth it - at dawn we were in the lower reaches of the El Yunque rainforest park where, in the space of the next 90 minutes or so (until, that is, duty called us back to the conference) we heard and saw a lot of really neat birds starting with the loud, distinctive and repetitious calls of the Puerto Rican Screech Owl. Good birds that followed then included the target bird for the whole week as far as I was concerned - the Lizard-eating Cuckoo and also Red-legged Thrush, PR Bullfinch, PR Tanager, Bananquit, PR Tody and a small number of obstreperous Green Mango and Emerald Hummingbirds.

Bromeliad

Mid-afternoon, suffering from ennuie, I took a turn outside and, over the bay east of the hotel was lucky to be able to see two magnificent Magnificent Frigatebirds, another highly desired "tick"... and I needed a boost as the evening "entertainment" revolved around a company bonding session for pathologists from all of the CR sites worldwide ... Yawn (plus, the food was pretty average - this being a sort of "colony" of the US.)

And then to Day 3 - the morning conference papers were OK-ish (pre-work strolling added a Yellow-crowned Night Heron) but the afternoon was free and we took ourselves off for an expedition in the El Yunque rainforest ... As everywhere on this island there were the ever-present calls of the Co-Qui frogs but a good hike along a trail found us some very scenic tropical waterfalls, a number of glorious Bromeliads and eventually a nice flight display from a Scaley-naped Pigeon.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Back in the hotel grounds we saw some friends with a spotting-scope peering earnestly into a stand of bamboo where they had found a pair of roosting PR Screech Owls of which we now have photographic proof. A good day.

Puerto Rican Screech Owl at its daytime roost

Puerto Rican Screech Owl (trust me !!)

Last day - out in the forest again at dawn where a Black-whiskered Vireo was added to the list. Otherwise things were generally quiet until a Lizard-eating Cuckoo appeared on a branch very close to us and sat there for several minutes while we admired him and congratulated ourselves on our birding skills (no camera naturally but I have witnesses) ...... the payoff for this unexpected good luck being a sudden and blattering tropical downpour - rarely have I been so wet, so fast.

That's it - 21 lifers in 4 days. Worth the travel and the conferring.

Boreal Birding

2007-06-03T18:21:00.000-04:00

We spent a happy day today in Parc Tremblant, a couple of hours north on Montreal, searching for boreal species of birds. Very quiet, hardly anyone else in the park - plenty of birds but so many were heard and so many were hard to see ... if nothing else this sharpens the ear-birding skills (aided by judicious reference to the ever-to-hand iPod without which no birder is a complete birder IMHO.

Amongst the many species seen and heard, stars were Boreal Chickadee, Bohemian waxwing, Spotted Sandpiper and Spruce Grouse - but any bird is a good bird you know. The Spruce Grouse was sighted, as they usually are, throwing itself under the wheels of our car on the dirt road linking the Diable and Pimbina sectors of the park - we have seen more SGs this way than in any "real" SG habitat.

Bird of the day was a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly - there were many of these around but only one stopped still long enough to have his picture taken, mostly they just flew by taunting us.

Chutes Croches

Common Loon

Spotted Sandpiper

The elusive Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Pterourus glaucus)

Male White-tailed Deer

Identity

2007-05-30T12:48:00.000-04:00

Finally - the secret of adding a graphic to the blog title has been solved - the new title strap (hope it's to your liking) was taken at Le centre éducatif des Laurentidesi at St-Faustin, about 90 minutes north of Montreal.

Birdless

2007-05-27T18:08:00.000-04:00

Ideally, we would have gone birding today but it rained - yesterday was spent making the garden a better place for the birds that have passed through and gone north. First meal of the summer in the open air though and record heat for the end of may (before the rain, that is) so all has not been lost.

We garden too ... with birds

2007-05-21T14:59:00.000-04:00

First of all, if you are here to see pictures of Sandhill Cranes, they were talked about in the day before yesterdays posting which you can find a bit below this one – but please read this on your way there, it's full of interesting stuff ...

Yes, it's true, we garden as well as bird and having spent two days hard gardening and this being La journée des patriotes (Victoria Day elsewhere in Canada but are good republicans so we kinda like the Quebec alternative - it's a day off whatever you call it) we decided to get down in the dirt.

But first the almost-but-not-quite garden bird of the day .... a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak. there has to be a flashy male somewhere but she's nice too, in a restrained sort of a way:

As we were settling down for our post-labours cuppa tea (the British genes still function in us) we were visited by a new bird for the garden list, not just for this year but altogether - a Scarlet Tanager ... definitely the garden bird of the day and year and not at all restrained

It had clearly been a hard day for him as well as he decided to take a dip in our special bird spa ...

And now for the garden - it always looks good and bosky at this of the year so for those of you have not seen it, or have not seen it recently, here is how it looks today:

The front garden with the huge paper birch tree, the nicely growing rowan tree (lots of autumn berries for the birds) and quite a few narcissi still blooming

The newly repainted and planted window boxes at the front

The "wild" garden under the larch tree

The rock bed

Fresh fern shoots around the waterfall plus hostas and lily of the valley

What passes for a vegetable garden - raised beds worked on the no-dig principle with fresh compost overlayed for the worms to incorporate. We have decided to give them a rest from tomatoes this year and have planted potatoes to loosen up the soil (and because they taste good freshly dug) with a corner for salads and herbs to come.

Worra weekend

2007-05-20T18:21:00.000-04:00

First of all, if you are here to see pictures of Sandhill Cranes, they were talked about in yesterdays posting which you can find immediately below this one – but please read this on your way there, it's full of interesting stuff ...

After yesterday's triumphs, today we went to Ile Bizard to see what was around. The early wind kept some of the birds quiet for a while but we finished with the following collection of 46 species – which included the first Hummingbird of our year sunning himself on a twig, several Marsh Wrens displaying and telling the world to b-off on reeds right beside the passarelle, many gorgeous Baltimore orioles including one in a tree full of blossom (inevitably, having a guest with us, I had decided to travel light and not take the camera this morning, a decision I regret), a Thrasher displaying on a tall tree and a Least Bittern that emerged at high speed from a clump of green reeds, hurtled across a 30 foot gap just above the water level and dived from sight in another reed bed hoping nobody was looking. Sora and Virginia rail were heard. Finally, a beautiful female Pileated Woodpecker was knocking seven bells out the base of a tree by the roadside just to left as you cross the road from the car park – bits of splinter flying everywhere, most impressive.

About 11.00am we returned to the car feeling all was beginning to quieten down as the day warmed up and midday approached and almost called it a day - however we stuck with it and made a short stroll towards the acceuil and the river to find the trees there full of totally different species to the main part of the park. Lots of warblers in the trees near the beach including Bay-breasted amongst others and between the car park and beach “flocks” of Redstarts and a mini-flockette of GCFlycatchers.

The final count for the day was 46 species making the weekend total a gratifying 64. Today's birds were:

Pied-billed Grebe - Great Blue Heron - Least Bittern - Canada Goose - Wood Duck - Mallard - Virginia Rail (heard) – Sora (heard)- Greater Yellowlegs - Ring-billed Gull - Common Tern - Black Tern - Ruby-throated Hummingbird - Hairy Woodpecker - Pileated Woodpecker - Great Crested Flycatcher - Eastern Kingbird - Tree Swallow - Marsh Wrens in profusion - Gray Catbird - Brown Thrasher - Wood Thrush - American Robin - White-breasted Nuthatch - Blue Jay - European Starling - Red-eyed Vireo - Yellow Warbler - Magnolia Warbler - Black-throated Blue Warbler - Yellow-rumped Warbler - Black-throated Green Warbler - Bay-breasted Warbler - Black-and-white Warbler - American Redstart – Ovenbird - Chipping Sparrow - Song Sparrow - Swamp Sparrow - Northern Cardinal - Red-winged Blackbird - Common Grackle - Brown-headed Cowbird - Baltimore Oriole - American Goldfinch - House Sparrow

Lac St-Francois

2007-05-19T17:38:00.000-04:00

There was a BPQ field trip to the Philipsburg reserve today (>90 species apparently - but nothing to match our "star" described below) and the Mountain was expected to be full of warblers and was almost certainly full of birders, but we have a friend visiting from California who had first pick of where to go and so, contrary as usual, we were almost, but not quite, the only people at the Lac St-Francois wetland reserve down at Dundee .... and were we glad we were!

Arriving early we started with the Great Egret Trail and found ourselves right from the start immersed in bird song as we got out of the car - Yellow Warblers, Common Yellowthroats, Baltimore Orioles - all sorts of good stuff

Of course, while we were ready for a good walk and good birds what we "really" hoped, but never really expected, to see was one of the Sandhill Cranes that had been reported here in the last few days. So, just a few hundred yards into the walk I was concentrating on photographing a Swamp Sparrow (saw several later but never did get a photo) when my companions cried out "look up" and there was the desired Sandhill Crane flying right overhead calling to others out in the marsh who called back to it as he circled a couple of times before landing. later in the morning we occasionally saw Crane heads poking out of the reeds but they never flew again. Why the excitement? Because these critters are not really supposed to be here, that's why - if they had read the books they would realise that they are supposedly limited to the land west of Quebec but clearly just a few of them have had enough of our prime minister and his anti-environmental western cowboy antics and so have made a break for freedom and civilisation and a chance to star in the Quebec year lists of those of us lucky enough to track them down. Long may this trend continue - fine birds, very fine.

Below is a map showing the locations of the Cranes that we saw should you wish to try for them also - clicking on this map will give you a larger version that you can print off .... another service to birding from Sparroworks

Other birds seen included Common tern, Black Tern, Snipe (heard), three species of Swallows, Great Egrets (sorry Mark, there are Egrets on the Egret Trail !!), a Wood Duck, Catbirds, DC Cormorants, Kingfisher, harrier, Bald eagle, TVs, Marsh Wren, Veery and the first shorebird of the year, a Lesser Yellowlegs in a muddy field pool over the road from the main welcome centre for the reserve as we called in to have some lunch.

Yellow Warbler

Mum, Dad and the kids

Another Yellow Warbler trying too had for a tasty morsel

Tree Swallow in a flap about something

Reticent Baltimore Oriole

Common Yellowthroat - very common this day

Lesser Yellowlegs

Great Egrets at a distance

Great Egrets at an even greater distance

And then on the way back we dropped in at the field on St-Angelique just behind the St-Lazare Pinery only to find it infested with horses and horsey people having a gymkhana at the nearby farm and everything in the sparrow field seemed ominously quiet. A lady on a horse stopped to (kindly) tell us she had seen a hawk a couple of weeks before but seemed strangley uninterested in sparrows ..... anyway, the odd LBJ was doing its stuff and we finished the day with a 90% certain Savannah Sparrow.

Life is good.

Ever onwards

2007-05-17T17:37:00.000-04:00

As of today the garden year list (mostly seen but just a couple of "heards") is now at 57 species as follows (OK, 56 if you don't count that Prothanatory Warbler but still pretty damned good for suburbia):

DUCKS, GEESE AND SWANS
Snow Goose
Canada Goose
Mallard

HAWKS, EAGLES AND KITES
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Cooper's Hawk

GULLS
Ring-billed Gull

PIGEONS AND DOVES
Mourning Dove

OWLS
Great Horned Owl

HUMMINGBIRDS
Ruby-throated Hummingbird

WOODPECKERS
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker

TYRANT FLYCATCHERS
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Least Flycatcher

KINGLETS
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet

WRENS
Carolina Wren
House Wren

THRUSHES
Swainson's Thrush
Hermit Thrush
American Robin

CHICKADEES AND TITS
Black-capped Chickadee

NUTHATCHES
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch

CREEPERS
Brown Creeper

CROWS AND JAYS
Blue Jay
American Crow
Common Raven

STARLINGS
European Starling

VIREOS AND ALLIES
Philadelphia Vireo

WOOD WARBLERS
Yellow Warbler
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Bay-breasted Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
Prothonotary Warbler (** yes, really - but see note posted yesterday)
Canada Warbler

SPARROWS, TOWHEES, JUNCOS
American Tree Sparrow
Chipping Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco

SALTATORS, CARDINALS AND ALLIES
Northern Cardinal
Rose-breasted Grosbeak

BLACKBIRDS, ORIOLES, GRACKLES, ETC.
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird

FINCHES, SISKINS, CROSSBILLS
Purple Finch
House Finch
American Goldfinch

OLD WORLD SPARROWS
House Sparrow

Warbler fallout

2007-05-15T21:43:00.000-04:00

Garden list for the year now equals 52 species

It seems to have been a good warbler day today all over the area .... visitors to our garden included Black-throated Green, Yellow Rumped, Bay-breasted, Blackburnian, Black and White and Canada Warblers as well as Swainson's Thrush, Philadelphia Vireo, White-throated Sparrows and House Wren.

... and then, and then.

This is NOT, for reasons that will become obvious, a bird we are lightly claiming for our year lists, but this evening at around 18.30 we both watched through the rain a strange bird for several minutes around the top pool of our garden waterfall in somewhat subdued light. It was large warbler with a distinctively long, very slightly curved beak, dingy (that may be due to the light - could have been brighter in daylight) yellow face and chest, no eye-bars or rings etc, olive greenish back and back of head, no wing bars on greyish wings, no cap on head. It hopped around the pool and bathed where we could see that the lower under body was pale/ slightly streaked beige between the legs as seen from the front. Very strange - an hour or so research with all the books at our command and the internet rather leads us to think we could have been visited by a female Prothonatory Warbler although that would be unbelievably rare around here .... there are no Quebec breeding records and in fact the closest breeding birds are up-state New York or southern Ontario - however, there are records of vagrants in Quebec including sightings on the Mountain and in Drummondville (see the Breeding Bird Atlas) and Pierre Bannon has records on his website of sightings at almost exactly this date in 1996, 2001 and 2004. It's therefore possible though we are not going to make claim without corroborating evidence (needless to say the camera was indoors because of the rain!) ..... or can anyone suggest anything else from that description? This wasn't a snatched glimpse, this was what a US friend of ours calls a "soul satisfying view" of the bird.

Alternatives that it might have been (the 'differential diagnosis')? Well, not many. We considered, first of all, a female Scarlet Tanager but a Tanager is an inch or two longer than this bird and lacks the yellow colour, being more greenish/yellow and with a pale eye-ring plus the beak is proportionately shorter than the bird we were looking at. A Vireo perhaps? That was considered, but too small, not chunky enough, and they have clear eye markings of one sort or another which ours certainly did not.

Frustrating, is it not.

Ile Bizard - first time this year

2007-05-13T15:16:00.000-04:00

After a day spent in garden centres yesterday (always a good way to spend a day if not birding) and, as always, spending way too much money on desirable plants we took ourselves off very early this morning to Ile Bizard, generally reckoned to be the best birding site in the Montreal area. Not everything was a bird and not every bird was photographed but as we also like squirrels here's a North American Red Squirrel doing 'cute" ...

Anyway - it was a very good few hours birding - here are some fo the highlights - the ones you won't see, such as the American Bittern, you will just have to imagine ...

Song Sparrow

Swamp Sparrow

Swamp Sparrow at rest (for a moment)

Tree Swallow

Tree Swallow family

Great Blue Heron with nesting material

A Turtle - not a bird

Common Moorhen - 'look at my fine green legs"

Green Heron

Hooded Merganser flying too fast to focus on

With all that white on its rump and the very long tail the first thouught is that it has to be a Northern Harrier but, not sure ..... watch this space for definitive ID as soon as possible. Damned hard these guys.

American Goldfinch

Yellow Warbler
- there should also have been a picture of a Black & White Warbler who spent ages calling and calling from somewhere very close but we never did a view of him

Baltimore Oriole

And finally a Gray Catbird

Good Day

2007-05-09T19:48:00.000-04:00

Things started moving last night - today in the garden we had White-crowned Sparrow (the ones in the cycling helmets), Black-throated Green Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Least Flycatcher amongst others.

Flowers, birds and expenses

2007-05-08T19:56:00.000-04:00

It really is very springlike at the moment but although some of the seasonal arrivals have started to arrive we are still awaiting the big rush of exotica. Meanwhile, we have consoled ourselves with the fact that the garden list now stands at a quite respectable 38 species for the year (a Hermit Thrush appeared today) and that the myriad white and purple violets in the garden have produced this delightful hybrid ....

Of the birds that I have manged to get "snaps" of here is a Goldfinch in its grown-up summer plumage - and, note, not sitting on a feeder -

... while here is a Ruby-crowned kinglet. perhaps one of the most frustrating birds on the planet to photograph. They are small and twitchy and never stop zipping - hard, hard to get a good focus on.

One of the reasons we have not got out much in the last couple of weeks is that we had the roof re-shingled and immediately followed that by having the siding replaced as the following pictures show (now, of course, this needs to be paid for). The work had to be done for very practical reasons but we were very pleasantly surprised at how much nicer it has made the house look ...

The old metal siding just before its demise

When the old stuff came off we found even older real wood siding beneath
- peeling brown paint and all

And the finished result - altogether an improvement.

On Sunday we took ourselves off north to check out a small bird sanctuary that BPQ owns near to Piedmont and which nobody has visited for a good 5 or 6 years - just forgotten about it. Very interesting and while we need to go back in a couple of weeks to see which migratory birds have moved in for the summer we were delighted by carpets of flowers - Sanguinaria, Red Trilliums, Yelleow Toad lilies and many others. The site is a section of Laurentian forest on a rising slope with a massive stone cliff face to one side - well worth watching.

Land surveying

2007-04-29T19:36:00.000-04:00

The wonderful Philipsburg migratory bird sanctuary which BPQ owns down near the
Vermont border is being surveyed for bird populations and J and I spent
a very wet and muddy day today setting out survey points for people to
use over the rest of the season.

But we did get to see some good birds - see below:

SPECIES SEEN
From 4/29/2007 to 4/29/2007 ~ All Places ~ 29 seen
DUCKS, GEESE AND SWANS
Canada Goose
Mallard
NEW WORLD VULTURES
Turkey Vulture
GROUSE, PTARMIGAN, PRAIRIE-CHICKENS
Ruffed Grouse
PLOVERS AND LAPWINGS
Killdeer
GULLS
Ring-billed Gull
PIGEONS AND DOVES
Rock Dove
Mourning Dove
WOODPECKERS
Northern Flicker
Pileated Woodpecker
TYRANT FLYCATCHERS
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Eastern Phoebe
SWALLOWS
Tree Swallow
KINGLETS
Golden-crowned Kinglet
THRUSHES
Hermit Thrush
American Robin
CHICKADEES AND TITS
Black-capped Chickadee
NUTHATCHES
Red-breasted Nuthatch
CREEPERS
Brown Creeper
CROWS AND JAYS
Blue Jay
Common Raven
STARLINGS
European Starling
SPARROWS, TOWHEES, JUNCOS
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
SALTATORS, CARDINALS AND ALLIES
Northern Cardinal
BLACKBIRDS, ORIOLES, GRACKLES, ETC.
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
FINCHES, SISKINS, CROSSBILLS
American Goldfinch
-------- STATISTICS --------
Species seen - 29

Foxy Warberling time

2007-04-28T10:56:00.000-04:00

Rather a wet day today but made much better by the appearance at the bottom of the garden of a pair of Yellow-rumped warblers, the first of the year. This is very encouraging.

Mid-afternoon a Fox Sparrow spent some time rummaging in the leaf litter at the back of the garden behind the pond - a first for the garden altogether.

Some seventeen species had appeared in the garden before breakfast wa sover, including an unphotographable Ruby-crowned Kinglet whose red top-knot wasa real blaze of colour, as well as the Brown Creeper again (this one paler than the other, fairly sure there are at least a pair of the birds staying locally, and decently yellowed-up Goldfinch.

So the garden year list now stands at 37 species and the total garden list at a round 90 !!

#35

2007-04-27T18:29:00.000-04:00

The 35th species on the garden list for 2007 was this hungry Chipping Sparrow ...

Breakfast at around 6am this morning was disturbed by a small flock of eight White-throated Sparrows all Sam Peabodying and Oh Canada-ing away below the feeders while the Goldfinches are starting to colour up nicely even if they insist on hanging onto swaying feeders in low light so I can't get a sharp shot. Birds !!

Creeping along

2007-04-26T18:43:00.000-04:00

A little more activity today - the first White-throated Sparrow of the year was grubbing around near the edge of the pond and I finally got a photo of "our" Brown Creeper :

Gradual movement

2007-04-23T19:13:00.000-04:00

Pretty grainy shot snatched (as one has to snatch with this species) of a Golden-crowned Kinglet at the top pool ... these little guys do move zip-zip-zip as do their confrères, the Ruby-crowned Kinglets which also put in an appearance today.

Also seen were the usual residents, many many Robins, a Brown tree-creeper and our orange-variety House Finch put in a late appearance today also.

A week or so ago, J woke in the night to hear a Great-horned Owl - a couple of years ago one sheltered againsta s torm in one of our trees but they are hardly regular visitors.

The waterfall is starting, after almost no time, to do its stuff attracting birds - here are Mr and Mrs Northern Cardinal doing their suppertime ablutions ....

Keeping common birds common

2007-04-22T13:24:00.000-04:00

We have just discovered that a pair of American crows have built a nest in one of the pine trees on the southern edge of our property ... "keep common birds common" has always been our watchword, this is a good day.

Meanwhile, a pair of Mallards have taken a fancy to our neighbours swimming pool ...

Garden year-list to date....... 31 species so far

2007-04-22T12:09:00.001-04:00

For the record - the total number of species of birds seen in our garden (two or three are flyovers by the way, but not many and fly-arounds are not counted) equals the following 31 species:

SPECIES SEEN

From 1/1/2007 to 4/22/2007 ~ in Garden - B d'U ~ 31 seen

DUCKS, GEESE AND SWANS

Snow Goose

Canada Goose

Mallard

HAWKS, EAGLES AND KITES

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Cooper's Hawk

GULLS

Ring-billed Gull

PIGEONS AND DOVES

Mourning Dove

WOODPECKERS

Downy Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker

KINGLETS

Golden-crowned Kinglet

WRENS

Carolina Wren

THRUSHES

American Robin

CHICKADEES AND TITS

Black-capped Chickadee

NUTHATCHES

Red-breasted Nuthatch

White-breasted Nuthatch

CREEPERS

Brown Creeper

CROWS AND JAYS

Blue Jay

American Crow

Common Raven

STARLINGS

European Starling

SPARROWS, TOWHEES, JUNCOS

American Tree Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

SALTATORS, CARDINALS AND ALLIES

Northern Cardinal

BLACKBIRDS, ORIOLES, GRACKLES, ETC.

Red-winged Blackbird

Common Grackle

Brown-headed Cowbird

FINCHES, SISKINS, CROSSBILLS

Purple Finch

House Finch

American Goldfinch

OLD WORLD SPARROWS

House Sparrow

-------- STATISTICS --------

Species seen - 31

Gardening time at last

2007-04-21T16:27:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe that it snowed here less than a week ago, but today spring arrived with a rush and temperatures in the reasonable 20s ........ and the first daffodils opened to accompany the arrival of bird number 26 for this year's garden list - Golden-crowned Kinglets

by the way - note, in the picture above, the beautiful new 30-year roof that was installed one week ago today ... that should see us out, or at least well on the way.

Of course, with the nice weather comes the imperative to get down on hands and knees and start working - no rest for real gardeners:

A week later than last year we got the pump installed in the pond and the cascade doing its stuff - this is guaranteed to act as a magnet for migrating warblers etc over the next month or so

... and the patches of crocuses are spreading year by year

So - there is more to life than birds (sometimes). Such a shame I am back-up pathologist at the lab this weekend and have already been in twice today.

Pleasant birds at Plaisance

2007-04-17T14:01:00.000-04:00

Picking, with unerring skill, the days on which the region was blattered by a huge storm (the sort that stops planes flying) we took ourselves off for a couple of nights at the Chateau Montebello - the world's biggest log cabin - for a birthday celebration and to be handy for nearby Parc Plaisance. The weather forecast was not good and we wouldn't have gone if we hadn't had a reservation but we are glad we did - a window in the weather opened and we spent most of Monday in dry conditions if more than somewhat cold ones and certainly with the strongest of strong northerly winds. Fabulous birding - the weather kept a number of birds grounded and gave us chances to get up close-ish.

(Keep on to the end for a funny anecdote)

Chateau Montebello from the outside :

.... and inside - you get the scale of the thing? Terrific restaurant too - just what is needed when the winds are howling and slush and snow is falling.

Anyway - we visited Parc Plaisance. This is a small provincial park along the Ouatouais River which holds lots of interesting waterfowl. But first you have to get in - yesterday, the office was unmanned and there was just a sign to the "Perception" (literally, the tax collection office) which turned out to be a small green tin box on a pole with a hopper full of brown envelopes. In each envelope was a two-part lottery-style card which you were enjoined to scratch and reveal the month, date, size of group and a few other options. Keep one part to display in your car and the other to be placed with cash in the envelope in the green tin box. Why they couldn't have a simple parking machine type slot machine like the rest of the world uses, we have no idea but this is Quebec and the Byzantine option is usually the one they choose in circumstances such as this.

Whatever - bracing ourselves against the wind we entered the park where we saw :

A group of 18 Wild Turkeys

A pair of Green-winged Teal

Several groups of Musk Rats out ice-fishing. Sadly, the wind was so strong that the monopod I had taken to support the camera was insufficiently stable to get a clearer shot than this.

A solitary pair of Ring-necked Duck

Several groups of Bufflehead

A magnificent flying display from a Northern Harrier

A beautiful American Kestrel who had a well-developed need to not allow me and my camera any closer than this - coupled with the low light levels, the record shot above was as good as I could get

But - he had a friend so there is hope for an increase in the Kestrel population this year.

A couple of Turkey Vultures came to check us out

"Who's a lovely boy then?"

Short anecdote ..... after dinner in the restaurant last night the waiter apologised for the fact that the bill was delayed "because they have to fix the squirrel". Eventually we worked out that what they had to fix was the computer screen but our very pleasant waiter was not quite as fluent in English as he would have us believe and écran = screen while écureuil = squirrel. Henceforth, our computers will all be equipped with squirrels on which to view our emails etc. A simple confusion of (almost) homophones and we are as likely to make such mistakes ourselves but, nevertheless, the day ended on a chuckle. He got an extra bit on the pourboire for that.

At the end of the day, the 35 species seen were as follows:

HERONS, EGRETS AND BITTERNS
Great Blue Heron
DUCKS, GEESE AND SWANS
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
Green-winged Teal
Mallard
American Black Duck
Blue-winged Teal
Ring-necked Duck
Common Goldeneye
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
Common Merganser
NEW WORLD VULTURES
Turkey Vulture
HAWKS, EAGLES AND KITES
Northern Harrier
Rough-legged Hawk
FALCONS AND CARACARAS
American Kestrel
TURKEYS
Wild Turkey
GULLS
Ring-billed Gull
PIGEONS AND DOVES
Rock Dove
Mourning Dove
SWALLOWS
Tree Swallow
THRUSHES
American Robin
CHICKADEES AND TITS
Black-capped Chickadee
NUTHATCHES
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
CROWS AND JAYS
American Crow
STARLINGS
European Starling
SPARROWS, TOWHEES, JUNCOS
American Tree Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
SALTATORS, CARDINALS AND ALLIES
Northern Cardinal
BLACKBIRDS, ORIOLES, GRACKLES, ETC.
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
FINCHES, SISKINS, CROSSBILLS
American Goldfinch
OLD WORLD SPARROWS
House Sparrow

Sparrows (and snow) and "brown ducks"

2007-04-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

It's the 12th April and daffodils are starting to push up shoots but today we are having several inches of very wet and heavy snow .......... which is good as birds need to come to the feeders. Here we have a Songsparrow and an American Tree Sparrow sheltering from the cold

A-T-Sparrow

Yesterday evening, driving home from work, there was a largish accumulation of ducks on the river near the MacDonald campus - no place to stop and no binoculars, so home for a cup of tea and then we walked down to see what was there. Most of the birds had gone by then (of course) but there were a couple of Common Mergansers cruising by and a Mallard as well as a brown "duck" that dived as we approached ........... after a while up it popped again and we tried to decide what it was - at a distance I hasten to add - sort of rounded and apparently viewed head on - and then it put outs paws and scratched its belly. It was actually a Muskrat sitting on a just submerged islet. Expert bird ID 101, eh?

And finally ........... Sparroworks Control Centre with 3 of 5 computers buzzing away (and, yes, we do need five if only I could remember the reason)

A "Vista" of Robins

2007-04-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

As "everyone" knows, Robins are the sign of spring finally arriving (even if some of them do hang about most of the winter these days) but this past week must be some sort of a record. Every morning the air is loud with their calls up and down the road and there have been three of them constantly quartering our lawn all of the Easter weekend hauling fat worms out of the ground …… now we know why the soil underlying what laughingly passes for lawn is so compacted, it's a serious lack of worms to aerate it. A group of friends who visited a nature park in east-end Montreal at the weekend reported having seen 75 Robins in a fairly small area - remarkable.

Migration seems in a temporary lull this week - the geese are moving through in considerable numbers and the Snowy Owls have departed for the north so we will have to wait for the big rush to start - shouldn't be long although the forecast is for colder than usual weather for the next couple of weeks which might delay matters a bit more. The Hawkwatchers are reporting a steady flow of raptors coming through but still not the big rush.

The other birdy event of the past week or so has taken place each evening just as the sun goes down - enormous numbers of Gulls rise into the air from the general direction of the MacDonald campus fields and wheel around for ten minutes or so calling loudly before dispersing. It would be interesting to know what is happening at just that time of day.

Finally - a note of caution. The rather unpleasant weekend weather was perfect for getting to grips with the new computer and moving files back and forth between that and the other four computers in the house …. the new one runs the Vista OS and while it is actually rather nifty and full of good things it cannot run the scanner and it most certainly cannot run the Dreamweaver software that is essential to building my websites. This is a major pain but some how I suspect Mr Gates will not be compensating us for the quite large costs of upgrading to versions that will work on it.

Afternoon sports

2007-04-07T17:34:00.000-04:00

The usual gang in a garden today - though we have at least three Song Sparrows, two of them being males who are not at all happy about the presence of the other, even came to temporary blows this morning.

This afternoon, a little bit of sun showing through, a pair of Euro-Starlings decided to get to work making more Starlings :

More garden birds

2007-04-06T15:31:00.000-04:00

Well, it might be Good Friday today, but in keeping with all the 58 Easters that I have enjoyed on this planet, on both sides of the Atlantic, the weather has turned grey, cold, windy and there is the threat of more snow so, apart from the fun of taking the car in for a spring service early this morning, the day has been spent indoors watching the activity in the garden.

The ground is still quite hard and very cold but a Robin has spent the entire day hopping back and forth across the lawn pulling out big, fat, juicy worms ..... quite how he manages without breaking them I'm not sure but you can watch him put on weight by the hour.

We also have a pair of Song Sparrows who seem to be thinking about moving in ... be nice if they decide to nest hereabouts.

Today we saw ...........

2007-03-31T16:33:00.000-04:00

Today was a gloriously sunny day with mild temperatures and lots of birds worth going out to see .... 31 species in all with very little effort and couple of them real stars.

We headed off for St-Thimothée where we were greeted by a chorus of loudly squabbling Red-winged Blackbirds interspersed with raucous cries of the Common Grackle.

More melodious calls came from a large number of Song Sparrows starting to set up territories and call in the ladies ... needless to say the one that was best positioned for a photo sat on a power line rather than a shrub.

These were all very fine birds, but the main reason for going to St-Tim was to seek out the famous Great-horned Owl that has set up home in an old heron nest and, right on cue, there she was merrily incubating her clutch quite unconcerned by the surrounding Great Blue Herons who seemed equally unruffled by the owl's presence. The heronry is way out in the marsh and even with over 1000mm of lens of my camera this was the closet image I could get so I have ringed the site of the nest for anyone wishing to follow in our footsteps and then blown up the owl for you to appreciate :

There was barely a moment in the four hours we were in the area that Canada Geese were not flying overhead ....

Leaving St-Tim we stopped by the bridge to St-Louis-de-Gonzagues to check out the bay where some nice Scaup and Common Mergansers as well as a small flight of Common Goldeneye and a pair of Green-winged Teal on an ice flow, were swimming amonst a group of geese and very close to a small flock of Homo stupidicus who were out ice-fishing. "Hello, guys, it's melting, those geese by your feet are on open water !"

At that moment a large ship trundled down the canal ......... happily its name was "The Puffin" so we were debating whether or not we could claim that as a tick too?

Our last port of call was at Hungry Bay where a large raft of Canada Geese not far from shore was keeping itself quite separate from an equally large raft of Snow Geese further out in the bay. Swimming amongst them were both sorts of Scaup as well as Common and Hooded Mergansers and just possibly a (far out in the bay) Canvasback is someone else would like to go and check.

So - a good day and we were all packed away, scope and binoculars stowed in the boot of the car and engine running when the sun went out, a huge shadow drifted over us and J squeaked "wozzat?". That was an immature Bald Eagle that settled on a tree along the canal path but not quite long enough to get the camera out again and leg it down the track close enough to take a sharp photograph ..........

.... before taking off and flying north over the canal towards the western end of Valleyfield. A very satisfying end to the best day's birding yet this year.

...... but lastly, we pathologists have to take our pleasures where we can find them, it's remarkable what you find when the snow finally departs :

We've earned some drinks tonight.

Yet more signs winter is leaving

2007-03-30T17:27:00.000-04:00

The Grackles are back in the garden ........ say what you will, this is an unusually handsome bird even if he isn't house trained and cute

The Geese are coming through daily now, sometimes pausing to rest on the ice which is gradually retreating from the shoreline

And, of course, the Gulls are once again with us. I could have posted an ornithologically stunning picture here but thought I'd be better employed illustrating their disgusting habits. There is a small prize for anyone who can suggest what this chap was busily eating - can't tell but it made a significant and probably painful bulge in the birds throat as it was eventually swallowed whole with a gulp and some crossing of the eyes .... what do you think it might be?

Back in the garden, the snow is now almost all gone and the stray snowdrops illustrated here a few days ago have been joined by this magnificent clump .... well, OK, from and English garden point of view or even from a Vancouver garden point of view it's pretty pathetic but it has taken us 9 springs here to get even this large a clump established. These were accidentally transplanted a season or two ago with a fern we moved to a back corner and they seem to really like their new environment - we shall experiment with moving more odd flowers to the same are in the hope that they form something approximating to a decent show while we are still alive to enjoy them (only 42 years to my royal telegram).

Another first

2007-03-25T17:13:00.000-04:00

Blessed with a foul cold this weekend I didn't get far but was greatly cheered by the first Song Sparrow of the year singing from the top of a high conifer in a garden two roads over ............. and the snow is disappearing fast leaving lovely mud and worse.

Spring for sure

2007-03-23T17:25:00.000-04:00

Warmer today and the snow is melting fast ...... as it goes, the first of the perces neiges (snowdrops) are busily piecing the snow to show that spring really has arrived with the passing of the equinox.

Returning home this evening across the MacDonald campus fields large meltwater pools had formed during the day and were already well populated by gulls, mallards and quite a few Canada Geese ...... but we need a photo of a spring bird too. This chap was in the garden a week or so ago but he's very seasonal so here he is:

Spring - of sorts

2007-03-22T17:18:00.000-04:00

Little activity recently but the arrival of the vernal equinox at 20h09 on Tuesday means it is now officially spring ......... and in fact it must be because in the last 24 hours we have added Common Grackle to the garden's year list for the first time and Red-winged Blackbirds are making a fuss down by the lakeshore.

Plus - the thaw has finally started.

Euro weather

2007-03-10T12:50:00.000-05:00

Apropos yesterday's forecast of freezing rain ahead what we actually got was a bit of wind temperature around zero and cold rain with grey skies ...... in fact pretty much like fenland winters back where we used to live.

This wasn't in the contract - nasty, nasty .... bring back minus 20 and snow please.

Thinking ahead

2007-03-09T17:49:00.000-05:00

The male Cardinals are making a right din up and down the road each morning as they vie for territory, slightly warmer weather is promised for the next few days (with freezing rain - ah the joys of impending spring) but today's illustration is taken form the archives and shows the Snow Geese overhead as we shall see them before too long. Winter os nice but March is not - they don't call it the mucky month for nothing.

Everybody's a birder around here .....

2007-03-03T14:30:00.001-05:00

Winter Borealising

2007-02-26T19:06:00.000-05:00

Saturday, some driving around local roads yet again failed to turn up a Short-eared Owl (apparently they were all on Amherst Island this weekend where some friends saw 11 of them .... but those would be Ontarian owls and thus barely worthy of note) we found a small flock of Horned Larks

.... and a fairly sizable flock of American Tree Sparrows

Sunday, being a glorious day and barely cold (no gloves needed) we went a couple of hours north to Parc Tremblant - quite apart from some splendid birds, we spent several hours on the raquette trails and worked up a fine appetite. A gorgeous winter's day - as J said over lunch "who needs to go south in winter when they have all this?" You have to wonder, for us sand in your sarnies on a Floridian beach somehow is no contest for the northern forests under a blue sky.

..... in search of photographable White-winged Crossbills like this fine fellow who was there in his glory with hundreds of his chums:

they don't just perch - sometimes they fly and stay in focus at the same time -

For real flying displays, what can beat a Raven ? This fellow buzzed us twice and came so low I could almost have touched him if I'd had that really long lens I lust after ($8000 - not going to get that any time soon) but actually was so close he was hard to get a fix on - terrific bird whatever.

Also seen were Pine Siskins which we had despaired of s they have not come south to Montreal this winter at all

The last weird thing was the spotting of a small group of American Robins, all ion fine fettle and all way north of where they should have been at this season. The odd straggler in Montreal is normal, but not up there where it gets seriously cold.

Bogey birds and Garden birds

2007-02-19T16:28:00.000-05:00

Thanks to our American friends south of the border where today is "Presidents' Day" and the fact that the company I work for is (now) a US company today was not a day on which I had to report to work while almost all of the rest of Canada did. This was good.

Yesterday we took a day off from birding and had great tramp round the snow-shoe trail in the arboretum ..... where, low and behold, we found a small flock-ette of White-winged Crossbills, a bird I had thought I might miss this year. One bogey-bird less and one not being targeted at the time so we take this as a gift from the birding gods.

Then today we went over to the south shore to visit the waste disposal facility at St-Basile-le-grand which is famous for its Short-eared Owls in winter. Bright, bright sunny day and numbingly cold and when we got there we found that because it was a working day the owls were all behind the wire and we were outside of it - however, bogey-bird number two put in a welcome appearance and as we got out of the car the air was filled with gorgeous little Horned Larks s you can see in the three pictures below:

Horned Lark (male)

Incoming flight

Sexual dimorphism - female to the left and male to the right

Well, that was a pretty good bird for the day but the garden has been filled with birds too and this time they almost all cooperated and let us get a full set of portraits. The following pictures are all but one of the species we have had in the garden today ...... Canadians will recognise old friends but our European readers will find this interesting .......

American Goldfinch

Downy Woodpecker (female)

American Crow

Hairy Woodpecker (female)

House Finches

European Starlings

Male and female House Finches and a Dark-eyed Junco

Purple Finch (male)

Northern cardinal (male)

Black-capped Chickadee

Dark-eyed Junco

Blue Jays - there were actually five of these in the garden at one time

Mourning Dove

The missing bird was a House Sparrow

Finally, a Gas Hawk to finish the set .........

Snow-Birds

2007-02-11T15:12:00.001-05:00

**Note : if you click on the small pictures below you will be able to see them enlarged

We had other plans today than to return to west of St-Clet but a reliable sighting of two Short-eared Owls yesterday had us (and several other car-fulls by the look of things) out there again. Inevitably, the owls did not show themselves but the Snow Bunting "roost" that had been mentioned alongside the SEOWs was just stunning.

Some kind person seems to have dumped a load of grain in a field (maybe scrapings from an old silo?) and the birds were going mad over it.

Also there were Lapland Longspurs and a group of about 20 or so American Tree Sparrows ..... but still not Horned Larks. After seeing huge numbers on December 30th they have avoided me all year so far - clearly the bogey bird of 2007. The Snow Buntings were skittish as usual, flying down to the food source and then up into the surrounding trees where they hung out like so many Christmas ornaments.

Anyway - no Short-ears but driving back we found another Snowy Owl perched on a barn roof. While trying to take pictures from the road the bird decided to chase some pigeons and flew right overhead .......... eat your heart out everyone :

A very good day indeed.

A good start to February

2007-02-04T17:36:00.000-05:00

Well, with January behind me (37 species - after a recount) it's time to start on February .... but before getting down to todays trouvailles, just have a look at this European Starling that came to the feeders this weekend. Who needs tropical birds for spectacular colour - this has to be one of the most gorgeous birds on the planet.

So - off to the flatlands again for winter open-country birds. A nice flock of Snow Buntings were browsing the fields ...

..... before flying off a few yards twittering to each other. Perhaps one of the stars of winter birding.

What we were really after however, were Lapland Longspurs which we eventually found in a couple of small flocks - in this first flock they has some Snow Bunting along for the ride.

Then a well placed group of Longspurs had the decency to pose nicely for the camera - no doubt about the ID at all.

Finally - the Snowy Owl again - not new for the year but new for the month.

Off to a good start.

Got him ...... !

2007-02-03T13:05:00.000-05:00

The Carolina Wren reappeared this morning in the garden, this time for a Feederwatch Day so we can report him to BSC. I managed to get some photos of his rump waving merrily in the feeder but he refused to face me once I had broken my neck rushing downstairs for the camera so I am posting a picture of him taken last year in the same feeder .....

For the record, the January personal list this year was a splendid (though not earth shattering) 36 species while the garden list attained a healthy 20. Now it's February and we can start all over again.

Opportunities

2007-02-01T20:10:00.000-05:00

Had an excited phone calls from England tonight urging me to get on a plane and head off to Farnham reservoir in N. Yorkshire to tick off the first Pacific Loon (Diver) to be seen in western Europe. Yeh, right ......... though I do know someone who just might !!

Meanwhile, I had a very enjoyable half hour at work this afternoon watching a Red-tailed Hawk from my office window moving from the top of one lamp-standard beside the TransCanada Highway to another and finally swooping down to take a fat black rodent (vole?) which it carried to the top of a wooden Hydro pole to gulp down. Very nice.

Morning

2007-01-29T17:46:00.000-05:00

Nothing about birds this time - just a picture of the lakeshore as seen from my morning drive into work every day ........... just after 7.30am with the dawn shining across the ice and the temperature getting down towards minus 20degC. Sets you up for the day.

Nuthatches Nattering

2007-01-28T17:26:00.000-05:00

Today we took a turn around the arboretum as we hadn't been there for several weeks (only to find later that Lapland Longspurs were seen in profusion out St-Clet way today) and a gorgeous day for a walk it was .......... there had been a slight snow fall overnight and the Hemlocks were looking especially striking with a thin covering on their branches .....

This was primarily a picture of sparkly snow but having a Dark-eyed (slate-coloured) Junco in the frame never hurts -

Of particular note were the huge numbers of White-breasted Nuthatches that seemed to be everywhere. They are not an uncommon bird but usually solitary, whereas today flocking was the only way to describe their activity .... all squeaking and nattering away to each other in that plastic trumpet noise they make

We found some bracket fungi holding the fresh snow

On the BPQ blackboard at the conservation centre someone had recorded seeing a Great-horned Owl nearby so we headed off to try to find it. No luck, but we did find in a tall stand of pine trees (perfect GHOW holding-up-for-the-day habitat) a positive "quarrel" of Blue Jays. Maybe a dozen or more calling and jabbering just like Crows do when mobbing an owl so maybe he/she was in there but too well hidden/camouflaged for us to make out despite determined efforts.

The Jay below was one of the ones homing in on something ....... "faster than a speeding bullet, it's SuperJay"

Still cold

2007-01-27T17:42:00.000-05:00

Another January day in Montreal with bright sunshine and bone-breaking cold was relieved by some nice, if "ordinary" birds of which this fine male Northern Cardinal in his glowing winter (pre-breeding) plumage was the star ......

Welcome back

2007-01-25T18:01:00.000-05:00

J (not me of course, I was at work) was visited three times in the garden today by the famous, yet elusive, Carolina Wren who was using our feeders. It has certainly been very cold lately and it must have driven to visit by shortage of food - providing it has found good shelter (one year it was almost certainly under our deck) it will hopefully make it through the winter. That gets our garden list for the year up to 19 species already.

Compensation for the worker was a long (yes David, it qualified as a SSV) office window view of a soaring Red-tailed Hawk shining in the winter sunlight.

Good bird and strange bird

2007-01-21T13:56:00.002-05:00

Well, it has taken more than enough visits to the St-Clet/Ste-Marthe area to finally pin down a Snowy Owl for the year list but now it's in the bag. Today, while beautifully sunny, was viciously cold out there with most creatures keeping their heads well down and we had almost decided to give up and go find hot coffee when just before my fingers gave up the ghost a "lump of dirt" turned its head to look at us ...........

It was quite some way from the road and, while clear and crisp in the spotting scope even my maximum camera lens "stack" (theoretically 1280mm of lens) could only pull in the above view but some PS manipulation below produced some images worth posting as proof of its existence:

Should be sharper but even the tripod was waving in the wind.

Then back at base we saw this chap on one of our feeders. Downy Woodpeckers are perhaps our most faithful feeder birds but we have never seen a brown one before. While brown colouration of worn feathers exists (for example see the images at http://www.migrationresearch.org/mbo/id/dowo.html) such a uniform atypical colour does seem to be unique.

..... and a Red Squirrel just because he's cute. This guy expends way too much energy chasing the greys but as you can see appears to be fat and in fine fettle.

Cold

2007-01-17T10:06:00.001-05:00

These last couple of days have been very cold - and very bright and sunny - with effective temperatures, factoring in wind-chill, of -32degC at the moment.

Yesterday, driving a minor road across flat fields on Montreal island the car was surrounded by a "blizzard" of Snow Buntings glinting in the sunshine ….. just a delight. Then coming to work this morning there was a small pool of not-quite-yet frozen water on the river with a huddle of dormant ducks all back-lit by the low, red rising sun, and of course the camera was at home.

Days like this can kill you with the cold but I wouldn't be anywhere else on earth at the moment.

Magic day

2007-01-14T16:02:00.000-05:00

We betook ourselves into furrin territory today and crossed over to the south shore (where the drivers try to kill you with even more enthusiasm than over here on Montreal island - scary place south of the river) to visit Parc de la Frayere between Boucherville and Varennes. This is a reliable spot for owls in winter and we were lucky enough to add a Northern Saw-whet Owl and three Long-eared Owls (all in the same tree) to the year list - now at 33 species. The LEOW was also a lifer for J - double the pleasure.

Northern Saw-whet Owl

Long-eared Owl

An adult Snowie Owl was photographed today near St-Clet and I need it for the collection - should still be around next weekend if I can't get there sooner. Meanwhile, a dump of snow is forecast for tomorrow and then some very cold temperatures to follow - time to hunker down.

Year list = 31

2007-01-13T16:08:00.000-05:00

Bright, sunny and cold - a proper winter's day at last but still no snow. The plants are going to suffer without that blanket over them.

Garden birds have been a little more numerous today (RBNU, WBNU, MODO, BCCH, AMCR, DEJU) .....that is until this Sharp-shinned Hawk, albeit a youngster, came looking for a packed lunch. The first House Sparrow appeared in the garden this year too.

Later in the day walking down a nearby road we had the pleasure of a Cooper's Hawk similarly cruising the neighbourhood. no wonder small birds are looking twitchy these days.

13 days into the year, the list stands at 31 species of which 18 have also appeared on the garden list. Not a winning position but respectable. What I need are some owls ......... anyway, the list so far comprises :

Canada Goose
Cackling Goose
Mallard
American Black Duck
Greater Scaup
Lesser Scaup
Common Goldeneye
Common Merganser
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Northern Goshawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Ring-billed Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Rock Dove
Mourning Dove
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Black-capped Chickadee
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Blue Jay
American Crow
European Starling
Dark-eyed Junco
Snow Bunting
Northern Cardinal
Purple Finch
House Finch
House Sparrow

New garden birds

2007-01-11T17:23:00.000-05:00

Today something more like seasonal weather suddenly arrived with temperatures around -8degC this morning and a night-time temperature of -25degC promised for next week. If that is accompanied by some decent snow - so far it is not - then we might get the winter garden birds we have thus far been missing. However, today there were House Finches and (J thinks - though it was a non-convincing view) at least one Purple Finch.

Ducks out of season

2007-01-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

I was "on-call" for the lab this weekend and supposed to stay within easy reach of the telephone but by mid-afternoon today I was getting cabin-fever so we took a tour of the shores of nearby Ile Perrot to see what was about. What should be about at this time of year would be drunken ice-fishermen but instead the water was clear and the sun quite warm. A large raft of Canada Geese (and were there maybe one or two Cackling Geese amongst them - difficult to be sure?) were off the northern shore as the above picture shows ..... it also demonstrates the immense foreshortening effect of a telephoto lens because the dome of the Basilica in the background is a good 20 km further down river from these birds.

Other birds included Mallard, Black Duck, Common Mergansers, a pair of Common Goldeneye, Ring-billed Gulls and several pairs of Greater and Lesser Scaup who obligingly allowed me to take their photographs.

The 'Big Year' is getting off to a slow start for me ( a friend is up to 58 species already, but he is more dedicated than I) so I will claim a modest 26 species in 7 days since the start of the year.

Day 3

2007-01-03T19:21:00.000-05:00

Well, I have to earn my crust so days in the field are limited to weekends .... usually wet ones this year. Nevertheless, life has its little compensations and driving in to work yesterday past the wooded entrance to the arboretum I spooked a Northern Goshawk that was snacking on something in the roadside verge and once I had regained control of the car I almost immediately spotted a Red-tailed Hawk on a lighting pole by the roadside. Two excellent ticks.

This morning there were around 100 Canada Geese on the river - weird for this time of year when the river should be a frozen sheet and the only things on it the mini-vans and trucks of ice-fishermen - while later in the morning J managed to add a Brown Creeper to the garden list for the year.

Looking up.

Off to a flying start .........

2007-01-01T17:36:00.000-05:00

The first of January and the first day of the Big Year of Birding in Quebec ....... our first bird of the year was an American Crow and this was by far the commonest bird we saw all day .... but before getting down to birding lists, please admire the rosehip-breakfasting squirrels in our garden earlier today. the upper one ("Stumpy") has almost no tail and by rights should be unable to leap through the tree tops but he has been around for months and gets fatter by the day. Anyway - the birding ....

We had decided that a Snowy Owl would have been a good first day bird but despite spending a long time in prime habitat where we know they had been seen only a couple of days prior, nary a one was to be seen. No matter, we shall catch up later and we presume that the melting snow and freezing rain overnight may have moved them on for a spell. We did see lots of Euro-Starlings of course - these guys were in the garden (yes, J is competing in th garden list category so nothing is wasted) but there were plenty elsewhere .....

Without a doubt, the bird of the day was the Snow Bunting, a number of which we caught up with on the western side of Ste-Marthe while looking for snowies. A really gorgeous bird and one that moves aorund a lot so you do have to take your chances with them.

Including the the above, our day list comprised a modest 11 species - the others being House Sparrow, Rock Pigeon, Cooper's hawk, Morning Doves, Black-capped Chickadees, Blue Jays, Ring-billed Gulls and Black-backed Gulls. Frankly, we spent so long looking for owls we didn't have time for other species.

And why didn't we go after the sad and lost Black-throated Gray Warbler of Ile-Ste-Helene? Because (a) it was "downtown" and (b) it is by no means classifiable as a Quebec native bird and we'd like to confine ourselves to birds that are supposed to be here ..... later in the year our standards will slip but for now that's the intention, to keep ourselves "pure".

One day down, 364 days left to go.

Christmas Bird Count

2006-12-30T19:12:00.000-05:00

Today was spent - all of it - taking part in the annual CBC for the Hudson area. The route we are assigned to can be seen at http://www.pqspb.org/cbc_hudson.htm - the maps for sector 2 are the ones you want. Supposedly the day was to have been sunny and indded, by the end, it was but the morning was cold driven snow .... not all good for seeing birds which, being sensible creatures, were well hidden and sheltered.

Anyway - the CBCs for those not familiar with them take place all over North America at this time of the year and have done so for the past 106 years, enabling a lot of very useful information about population changes to be amassed.

So - very near the start of the day we managed to tick off a pair of Wild Turkeys on the outskirts of Hudson where they ain't supposed to be (nice) and they were almost "bird of the day" until we got down to the flat lands around St-Clet where there were several mixed flocks of Snow Buntings and of Horned Larks. These birds qualify for the top ten list of favourites - a real soul satisfying bit of birding. What else? The usual common species of course but also some Tree Sparrows, a nice flock of Junco and successive flights of Canada Geese heading north, about 1200 in total. Don't they know it's winter!!

On the way back we detoured into Snowy owl territory hoping to pin down a bird for the start of the Big Year on Monday and failed hopelessly, although we did get a Kestrel which was major compensation ....... on returning home I learned from a friend who had been along the same stretch of road earlier in the day that there were at least two snowies to be seen, and he had photos to prove it. That's birding - it wouldn't be fun if it was easy.

A quiet day of no birding tomorrow and then it's the first of January and 365 days of continuous birding begins - I'm pretty sure who is going to win the contest but I'll try to keep snapping at his heels. I don't have a strategy and, believe it or not have other things that detract me, but we shall at least start by seeking out the winter visitors so that they are under my belt in the next few weeks and the regulars can look after themselves. Should be fun.

A good day out being rounded off at the moment with a large glass of good malt whisky.

Late departing geese

2006-12-29T15:54:00.000-05:00

It got down to -17 last night and finally we are starting to see some ice formation along the banks of the St-Lawrence river. Yesterday and today gatherings of Canada Geese started to arrive and build into rafts on the open water and it will only be a day or two at most before they have finally left us and the river freezes over completely.

Tomorrow is the annual CBC in the Hudson area - we are hoping for Snow Buntings and Snowy owls on our sector.

That's more like it

2006-12-26T11:07:00.000-05:00

Well, it was a very green, mild and un-Quebec-like Christmas yesterday but a very pleasant one for all that, including some nice water birds on the St-Lawrence at the bottom of our road ....... Common and Hooded Mergansers and a small raft of Scaup as well as a flight of about 70 Canada Geese heading north. In the garden we were visited by a House Finch and had a very entertaining 15 minute war of nerves between three American Crows and a most determined red squirrel, each determined to lay sole claim to the bread we had put out in a tree. The squirrel is barely as big as a crow's head but he rushed up and down branches chasing them away with great determination.

This Boxing Day though things are much more seasonal with several inches of (wet) snow having fallen already and the promise of more before the day is over. Compare the picture above to the one posted on Christmas Eve ..... it's the same corner of the garden.

A bit of a cliché perhaps but the Northern Cardinal below is always a beautiful sight in the snow while the Morning Dove above just proves that these birds don't have the sense to get in the shelter .... just look that snow on its back! Their common name amongst birders is "Dopes" - you can see why.

Lastly, the Hooded Mergansers were still around at the end of the road this lunchtime:

Christmas flowers

2006-12-24T14:35:00.000-05:00

It really is truly bizarre. When we gardened in England the "what flowers are in the garden at Christmas" count was a regular feature but this year, with no snow and temperatures above freezing during the day we have been able to resurrect the tradition ..... today, Christmas Eve we have this little Dandelion (hate, hate) and a Hellebore that's in bud if not actually in flower. A friend has flowering Snowdrops. What is wrong with the world?

Dandelion on Christmas Eve in Montreal !!!!!!

Hellebore buds

Most definitely not anything at all like a Montreal white Christmas should be

..... so we look for compensations and, as the title of this blog implies, that often involves food and wine. Last night it was a smoked salmon pasta with a fresh salad, a bottle of Pouilly Fumé and the traditional seasonal trifle (well traditional in this family at least) while tonight it will be roasted poussin with a selection of green vegetables and a potato galette. As for Christmas dinner - wait for tomorrow's posting.

Birds ...... just the regular guys, nothing special. Even down by the river the ducks have dispersed though they may be in close to shore again this evening. January 1st looms and the start of the "Big Year" - you'll be tired of that subject before too long.

Not winter at all

2006-12-22T16:33:00.000-05:00

Weird, weird, weird ......... after the flurry of snow a few weeks ago we have seen no more other than the odd flake and it seems that we shall be having a green Christmas, though not a grey one as the forecast is for sun (after lots of rain tomorrow).

When we lived in England a regular feature of the holiday was counting the number of flowers in the garden on Christmas Day - it seems that this year we shall be able to continue the tradition here after a hiatus of 9 years. At the moment it looks like we could have a Hellebore, in bud at least if not in bloom.

Weird.

First Snowy Owl of the season

2006-12-14T21:34:00.000-05:00

I pushed back from my microscope to look out of the office window and wish I was elsewhere than in Senneville (as one does) when instead of the usual pigeons and sparrows, a whopping great big white Snowy Owl flew past so close I could almost have touched it if there wasn't glass
between us, albeit it would have had to have been with a fairly long pole.

From the way it dropped then lifted and banked away I am surmising that it had probably been perched on the quite extensive flat roof of the building more or less above my head. Quite some addition to my office window life list. Usually I get just regular birds here with brief appearances by hawks over the Domtar woods and the arbo in migration but this was a real heart
stopper - still got palpitations.

It flew off east in the direction of the MacDonald campus/farm fields if anyone is in the vicinity.

Lottsa Geese

2006-12-09T17:26:00.000-05:00

We are used to seeing large flights of Geese at this time of the year but just before dark, at about 4.15 this afternoon, we watched I don't know how many thousands and thousands (gave up estimating in the end - over 5000 anyway, probably twice that) flying NE to SW over Baie d'Urfé for about fifteen minutes non-stop.

Quite something - must have emptied out the St-Lawrence valley for the year. Think of all those Christmas dinners.

Winter at last

2006-12-03T17:10:00.001-05:00

The weather gods are forgiven for their ice storm on Friday - today the snow came and it's beautiful out there.

--

Verglace

2006-12-01T17:55:00.001-05:00

Well, the winter started with a bang today ......... still no snow but we are in the middle of an ice storm (verglace). They don't have these in Europe, or at least we never experienced them in 50 years of bad weather, but basically they involve supercooled rain falling as a liquid and then instantly turning to solid ice the moment they touch down. This results in the world acquiring a thick and very slippery coating of ice which, in the sunlight we often get after these storms, does look extraordinarily pretty and glittery but which in reality is damnably dangerous - especially if you are driving. It is also very cold and very hard to chip off your car when you leave work to drive home - ice is rather hard stuff.

Fifteen minutes ago a neighbour asked to park her car in our driveway as the next door's tree had fallen across the road and brought down power and telephone wires ... for some reason though the electricity is till flowing for now. The weight of all this ice is the trouble - trees just snap under it.

Such fun ..... and nobody has seen a bird all day. Bring on the snow.

A paucity of birds

2006-11-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

We are not alone in the area in noticing that the birds are finding more than enough "wild" food due to the unseasonably mild weather we are enjoying with the result that our 'Feederwatch' counts are way down on previous years.

So - as there are no birds worth the trouble of describing in the garden this weekend here is a picture taken at sunset last night beside the St. Lawrence river at the end of our road. Note the crescent moon rising over Ile Perrot

In the Arboretum

2006-11-25T13:42:00.001-05:00

It's a glorious day today so we took the chance for a long walk along the back trails in the Morgan Arboretum (www.morganarboretum.org) ....... it has certainly been a good year for the White-breasted Nuthatches. We generally see one or two on a walk in the arbo but today there were at least 8 we saw and several others calling in the background - even taking food off the ground in a couple of instances which is quite unusual for this clambering species.

A large flock of Am. Crows were giving a Coopers Hawk a hard time but later settled down to whittling at each other in the tree tops. How many Crows do you have to have before you have a "parliament" of them?

The usual flocks of BCChickadees were wandering through the trees and there were Downy Woodpeckers and a single RBNuthatch as well. Nothing exciting, but enough to make the walk interesting as well as invigorating.

Two Hawks - not much else ....

2006-11-16T18:20:00.001-05:00

On the weekend past we recorded that fact that we had been visited by a Sharp-shinned Hawk which, inevitably had kept the small birds far away for a long time.

Today we had an early morning visit from another accipiter, a Coopers Hawk (similar features but bigger, square head and slightly rounded tail) who posed long enough for some more low-light photos to be taken. They are clearly conducting their own "Feederwatch" .

..... notice the head profile below:

On the recurring theme of rain we are told by the local press that Montreal has already had 70% more rain than average for the current quarter and it's still only mid November. Thought it was wet.

Soggy days without birds

2006-11-14T17:07:00.001-05:00

Beginning to wonder if it's ever going to stop raining. November is usually a fairly dull and a grey sort of a period but this year it is plain soggy. Every day, and especially weekend days, at the moment it seems that it pours and this birder is beginning to worry that the next lifer will be an
Albatross in the garden pond.

There are those who feel this is good as while it rains the snow don't fall but I would welcome some of the white stuff right now - at least we'd be able to get outside, look at some birds, take a little exercise etc. If we wanted weather like this we could have stayed in Europe …. or gone to live in Vancouver.

So ...... some recent bird pictures from the garden as part of our ornitho-education outreach project. First are a couple of pictures of "small" woodpeckers taken within minutes of each other on the same feeder so that you will be able to compare their features and their relative sizes. Lots of friends have problems with these guys and so the first picture is female Downy Woodpecker :

..... and, for comparison, this is a larger male Hairy Woodpecker :

The third picture is not a work of art ..... it was early morning, gray, wet and low light plus the shot was hand-held but it is one of four Purple Finches that visited Sunday - we haven't had these in the garden for at least a couple of years and then only rarely. The definitive ID was made on the females (the differential species being a House Finch) as they are very distinctive, but that photo was even worse.

Bobtail the squirrel

2006-11-13T17:06:00.001-05:00

Stumpy was the one-legged chaffinch living near the cabin at Tomich, in Scotland - the short-tailed squirrel currently visiting our garden is called Bobtail.

Feederwatching

2006-11-12T16:06:00.000-05:00

Next year is the 90th anniversary of Bird Protection Quebec …. one of the ways in which it is to be commemorated is the running of a major year-long birding competition, and guess who one of the organisers is? Rather than explain it all here, I suggest that you check out the details at the BPQ website ….. click here.

Close by on Ile-St-Helene this week a Black-throated gray warbler and a Worm-eating Warbler have been showing to the great delight of those able to take time off from work to go looking for them. real wanderers and far from home ….. we got the BTGW as a lifer in Arizona which is where this one ought to be right now. Took a wrong turning somewhere! However, from reports we have heard, Saturday morning saw large crowds of jostling birders descend on the place trying for these birds - glad we didn't bother, can't abide crowds.

The annual “Feederwatch” season starts this weekend …… every week from mid November to next spring we shall be counting the birds in our garden as part of one of our contributions to Citizen Science. Find out more at http://www.bsc-eoc.org/national/pfw.html and then sign up as a feederwatcher yourself.

“Feederwatch” got off to a good start with the early morning appearance yesterday of a Sharp-shinned Hawk - always a nice bird to have visiting were it not for the fact that since it put in an appearance we have seen little else in the garden. The photo had to be snatched at a distance, cropped and tweaked for publication ….. but it’s easy enough to ID the bird from this even if I wouldn’t hang it on the gallery wall.

Today we had two pairs of Purple Finches which were a surprise - we had three visits in winter 2002 and one in thew spring of 2004 but other than that they have tended to avoid us. Other feeder eaters we managed to capture images of have been a pair of Blue Jays …..

……. and the inevitable Squirrel and gang of MODOs.

Temporary hiatus ......

2006-11-12T13:58:00.001-05:00

For a period in the late summer and autumn of 2006 we moved our web diary to the following address where you can read about what happened if you wish to catch up:

http://sparroworking.wordpress.com

Howver, Blogger have spiffed up their facilities recently so we have returned to where we started. We would welcome your comments.

Acadia

2006-08-22T18:33:00.000-04:00

Bar Harbor - Maine

Back to birds again - well birds do feature in this tale, but so do good meals and some fine wines and some excellent scenery and a grudging acknowledgement that once you take politics out of the equation there are one or two things the southern cousins do tolerably well. So - we took ourselves off for a long weekend in Maine and paid a visit to ßar Harbor which is tucked into the Acadia national park. A very long drive from Montreal - about 8 hours, but easy driving until the last 15 miles when it seemed the entire population of the Usa was trying to get over the access causeway at the same moment.

Cracking good resto this first evening - called Havana : "modern American with a Latin twist" which meant some really inventive things with fresh fish, ginger, coriander and chillies. Not cheap but who cares when the cooking is that good ?

Saturday - plenty of local walking with camera and bins interspersed with rock pools and paddling for J who was suffering from salt water deprivation.

ßirds - a Loon, Guillemot, Waxwing, Herring Gulls, ßß-Gulls, Lesser Yellowlegs, Least Sandpiper, Cormorants, Black Duck, Cedar Waxwing,Song Sparrow, Guillemot, ßlack Duck and many other very nice basic birds to start the Maine list.

Dinner was very nearby in Maggie's Resto - wonderful fresh ingredients, mostly fish as you would expect but no absence of flavor - sadly they missed getting all the stars as they could not provide espresso coffee .... In fact.the coffee was regular USA-watered down in a thick walled mug. Ah well, its not Quebec.

Sunday we awoke to tremendous rain, a right blatter. ßy noon it had eased off a lot and we visited the rather splendid Acadia National Park. An altogether excellent mixture of sea, sand, rocks and forested mountains. Looking through the scope at a colony of Cormorants J overheard someone musing about the large number of "OTTERS" and could not resist helping their education - luckily they took it well.

Later, while scoping a rather muddy lake while everybody else was facing exactly the opposite direction going gosh at the views (which were fabulous ) we enjoyed a small group of either Laughing or else Bonaparte's Gulls (we wondered long and hard about Black-headed Gulls as did another border we met there but statistically they were probably BGs or LGs) and a splendid hover-and-dive display from a ßelted Kingfisher.

Final dinner in a pub with local beers and “elevated” pub-grubwas well up to standard.

When Americans learn to make coffee they can join the civilized world - but the final opinion is that Maine and Acadia merits repeat visiting.

Squirrel pathology

2006-08-16T10:21:00.000-04:00

The Sparroworks (the garden is full of sparrows making new sparrows) shares its turf with the Squirrelworks (the garden is full of squirrels making new squirrels) and interesting creatures these squirrels are. We have been quite impressed in recent weeks by two - a grey and a black-grey - in particular because of their seeming ability to survive difficulties we expected to see them off.

Stumpy somehow lost most of his tail, whether to owl-attack or a close encounter with a car we don't know but he has merely a short and angrily waved stump in place of what should be a fine bush. Now, in theory squirrels need their tails to steer and balance as they leap and jump through the trees so we rather anticipated that sooner or later he would get it wrong and fall from great height but it hardly seems to hinder him at all as he dashes about and apart from this impediment he appears in fine fettle. Interesting.

Scabby on the other hand appeared with a really nasty suppurating wound in his back with raised edges and clearly evident necrosis. Not long for this world we surmised as we studied him through binoculars - opportunistic infection heading your way, sunshine was the prognosis. squirrel life is fairly germ ridden after all. However, this pathologist was confounded because over the period we have been watching him his would has gradually healed and he has put on weight. This should not happen but all we can think is that he has a cracking immune system - wish our cats had wound healing capacities so efficient, we'd save a fortune at the vets.

The Birds (have to get something about birds in here, after all) have gorged themselves on the bumper crop of berries from the Pagoda Dogwood tree we planted about three years ago and which has been growing remarkably fast. Dogwoods are nice subjects for the garden, not just because they are native and thus hardy and have colourful wood in the winter garden but also because after the birds have stuffed their stomachs the berry-bearing stalks stand upright and glow in the low morning sunlight as you can see here.

This is the "rock border", named after that huge boulder that some earlier owner of the land found and dumped - probably when having the septic tank installed. We have filled it with a dense planting of shrubs and perenniels which are loved by the smaller birds who can find food and shelter in the cover they provide. A good place too to find various stages of Toad development - move a leaf and they often hop away into the shade again.

Pies

2006-08-14T13:47:00.000-04:00

Time for a foodie posting ………… a colleague who's family home is just over the border in very upstate New York was telling me her plans for the weekend just past which included dropping south from civilization to take part in the family annual pie bake jamboree and of all the gallons and pails of bluets, blackberries etc etc that were waiting her attention. I mentioned the ultimate fruit combination, one of the British things I still miss (and the list is growing smaller) of blackberry and apple. "What", she said "you mean together - in a pie?". Hard as it is to believe, the great nation of innovators and growers of copious quantities of those two fruits, side by side, for centuries seem not to have thought of combining them.

Suffice it to note that she has returned from the great bake-in, that the combination was tried and that seemingly it better than passed muster, it is to become a standard feature of family pies for Thanksgiving from henceforth. Slowly, slowly, civilization comes to the United States.

On the bird front, a long ramble thorough the thiker and leafier parts of the arboretum yesterday found many, many interesting seasonal birds (a local birder had 57 spp here a few days ago - but he has better ears than mine) and virtually no mosquitoes. Warblers are starting to reappear as migration gets slowly under way.

Quiet Neighbours

2006-08-10T13:56:00.000-04:00

The (rather nice) house next door has been empty and on the market for over a year due to the ambitious price being sought by the ex-pat owners. The agents have had someone keeping the grass more or less mown but the garden is well surrounded by mature trees and hedges so the lack of people has made it a haven for wildlife. Plenty of birds have nested there, making forays over the boundary to snack at our feeders and the raccoon family (see earlier posts) thinks it is wonderful. Sadly, a "Vendu" sign went up yesterday and we must look forward to human rather than wildlife neighbours moving in - we can only hope that they are not the common sort of Canadian neatnicks with a passion for slash and cut in the undergrowth that we see so much of. It has been very nice this last few months and Raccoons and Cardinals and Song Sparrows and Hummingbirds make way better neighbours than do people with their kids and dogs. We shall see.

Merlin the Wizard

2006-08-07T16:23:00.000-04:00

We paid one of our regular trips to Ile Bizard today, after hearing good birds had been seen over the weekend ............ met a birding friend in the car park who told us things were slow (the wind was up) but nothing ventured etc. we went into the park anyway.

As it turned out, there were not a lot of birds, but those that were there were in the excellent category as these pictures will show I hope :

This Merlin was making great sport, harrssing a pair of Belted Kingfishers down in the reed beds beside the passarrelle ..... presumably the nest was of interest. Remarkable just how much noise an angry Kingfisher can make

..... and this was the Kingfisher making all the fuss

Hard to tell which was the best bird of the day ...... but a beautiful Least Bittern flitted across the passarelle and perched on the lower railing just long enough to to be photographed - it then disappeared into the reeds chortling to itself in a Bitternish sort of a way.

We consoled ourselves for the failure to get a picture of the Bittern by spending several minutes admiring this fine Virginia Rail who was preening itself and cared not a jot about our presence.

There's a Great-blue Heron perched in that tree - and there were several Green Herons down below with the turtles.

Other good birds seen included many, many Common Moorhens with tiny balls of fluff masquerading as chicks, a very noisy Catbird near the entry to the park who saw us enter and leave, a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers who gave a spectacular aerial displey amongst the trees (but always managed to settle just where a branch between me and them would fool the autofucus on my lenses, so while I have a record shot it isn't good enough to post here), Eastern Kingbirds, and an American Redstart with youngsters as well as a lovely female Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Phew, what a scorcher!

2006-08-01T18:30:00.000-04:00

Today it's a steamy 35degC outside in this garden we have been talking about all this time ..... according to Environment Canada the humidex is around 48degC and despite the fact that it's evening, should be getting cooler and the martinis are calling there is nothing on earth that will get me away from the air-conditioned comfort in which this computer sits. Meanwhile, here's a picture of the garden so you know what we are both missing. There might be birds out there, there might not. Phew, what a scorcher!

Gardening matters

2006-07-30T14:44:00.000-04:00

Having checked back in our records, it seems that the tomatoes we picked and ate this week were several days earlier ripening than the same variety last summer. The Quebec apples are just arriving in the market too and we have been enjoying the blackcurrents from our bushes for some time now. Despite the fact that the nights are noticeably drawing in and we are spending less time on the deck in the evenings (though it's still damned hot during the daytime) we are enetring the nicest time of the year as the late sumnmer flowers start to bloom and the fruit ripens.

Mum.... !!

2006-07-25T18:09:00.000-04:00

After a(nother) torrential monsoon and lightning show this afternoon the birds were catching up on missed feeding opportunities under th dripping branches. We were briefly visited by a gorgeous Baltimore Oriole but were amused by a parent BCChickadee who had collected a large seed and was busily hammering away to break into it with junior bouncing up and down flapping its wings on the branch beside and "demanding with menaces". Clearly the parent was getting frustrated - as soon as the kernel of the seed was free he/she rammed it onto the youngster's beak who was left looking puzzled and agitated and wondering what to do next with its beak firmly wedged shut. No doubt it was an accident but you can wonder? Certainly it quieted the little varmint down for a moment.

First Peeps

2006-07-23T16:48:00.000-04:00

We took the canoe out from Anse a l'Orme today and toured the perimeter of the park at Cap St-Jacques. This time last year the water levels were very low indeed with a lot of exposed mud and sand which was gradually being colonised by southerly moving peeps ....... we took a visiting birder from Scotland there the fist week of August and he was in heaven. This year, despite the high water levels there are actually quite a number of shorebirds along the rocky edges, all very shy and hard to get close to but this might be a spot worth checking over the next few weeks as it is very accessible by foot or, best of all, by water.

There were a small number of Yellow Warblers on one of the islands off Anse a 'Orme which reminded us that we had a brief visit by one in the garden about a week ago, something that never usually happens at this time of the year, and leaving work last Friday evening a hedge by the roadside was literally heaving with them. This seems unusually early for such activity, but maybe my memory is not what it was.

Crab-cakes ..... nothing to do with birding but my in-house chef created the ultimate crab-cakes last night. Gosh - were they good !!

Branching out

2006-07-22T18:09:00.000-04:00

When I started this 'blog', it was my intention to stick solely to the birds in the garden but of late it seems that I am more and more tempted to add other matters of interest (to me) and have even succumbed to showing a garden plant a few days ago. I shall no longer fight it ..... gardening is as important as birding (heresy) and doubtless other stuff will inveigle itself onto the pages in the future.

So, mostly birds, plenty of gardening and other stuff as appropriate.

The editor's decision is final.

Extending the "Forest"

2006-07-16T15:10:00.000-04:00

Two or three weeks ago we installed a sun-shelter strucure (sort of gazebo) on our deck. Since then we have been amazed each day by the eway the resident birds treat it ..... previously they always flew round the deck to get from one side of the garden to the other but they seem to see this shelter as some sort of extended forest canopy and happily zip back and forth underneath it, often within inches of our faces as we sit there in the shade. Most strange - it's easy to fool a bird.

Meanwhile, the garden is full these days of growing families of harrassed parents eagerly pursued by adult sized offspring eager for a free meal and demanding it at full volume.

Now ...... ever wanted to find out about some wildlife ideas, find a birding club, check out some good places to see wildlife etc? Have a look at www.sparroworks.ca which is developing a directory of this information.