Cold day, good birds

I was out today with Marcus Nygards from Sweden, sorry Marcus, I can’t do the å on your family name on this keyboard!. The our main target was Snowy Owl and anything else we happened upon, as it happened we did ok although the day list only numbered 33. The weather was challenging, -24 this morning but warming up to around -6, the wind chill made it even colder and it was hard to spend too long directly in it. We finally got a Snowy Owl after a lot of looking, a distant male unfortunately so no photo as such, we did get good, close views of Horned Larks though, a small group of birds were particularly tame. Nearby a Rough-legged Hawk was hunting a field but was a bit distant.

The next stop was Rue Higgins, Chateguay, where two Red-bellied Woodpeckers put on a show and a Carolina Wren popped in to join the rest of the feeder tenders. Ste-Catherines was next, not too  much on show and chilly, it would be really good if there was some sort of parking viewing there from the top of the hillside there, we had a quick look from the no parking sign  but it was not ideal. Our final stop was Nun’s Island where, after a bit of looking (for the stamped down snow!), one of the rufous form Eastern Screech-Owls sat imperiously at the entrance to its hole. Later Marcus picked up a Winter Wren picking its way under and along the snow covered boardwalk.

Below a few photos of the day, enjoy.

Varied Thrush on t’ list

Last week there had been a Varied Thrush near the Ontario town of Limoges, about 40 minutes a westwards drive away. I found out too late and it seemed that it had gone. Today a report noted that it was still present yesterday so we slipped over for a look, having only seen a few in California years ago and one in Quebec previously. The bird was in garden but the owners were happy with gawping birders, the feeders were offset from the house and it was a very quiet area. We quickly saw the bird a couple of times but too distant for photos. We dropped back by later for a second viewing and was surprised when people arrived and just marched into the garden and up to the feeders, seemed a bit off to me. The bird seemed pretty shy so, hopefully, it didn’t come back. Two of the people wore bright red anoraks.

We returned home via Casselman, seeing a dark Rough-legged Hawk, the absolutely obligatory Snowy Owl (so easy there) and a flock of several hundred Snow Buntings. Not bad for a few hours and we got a Tim’s coffee and lasagne for lunch.

Snaps below, the Snow Bunt photos just give you an idea of the flock, the fields are full of them. Feel free to click on the big group and count them if you have no sort of social life, it passes the time!

Finally some snow

After getting away with it for a while, the winter snow finally showed up on Thursday/Friday. Not too much, about six inches or so, enough to bring a UK highway to a 24 hour standstill obviously, but not too bad here.  On the down side it does stop you getting out, the roads are entertaining and its best not to get inthe way of the snow ploughs, some do annually and don’t the following year, cosy as they are then in their new residences below the frost line.

The change of landscape has seen the garden feeders working overtime, the Pileated Woodpeckers have been particularly busy, interestingly, when they are attending the smaller birds hang back. I counted that the Black-capped Chickadees visited the Sunflower seed bucket 27 times in four minutes but only twice in the same period when the Pileateds where around. My Sunflower seed bucket is actually a recycled hanging basket holder of the type you are now expected to dump after one season, they make a great bulk feeder.

After snow dumps, the white birds around the St-Clet lanes tend to be braver and so it turned out when we nipped out for an hour or so this afternoon. One of the female Snowy Owls sat on a house roof not too far from the road. Although the bird was well placed for viewing and digiscoping, the lack of snow on the roof was a clue as to why that spot was popular, the heat haze coming off the roof meant that the shots are only of record quality.

Nine foot hole

Just as I was departing the house yesterday on a birding tour of the lanes and perhaps woods, I heard a noise. This was bad news, it sounded like water leaving the pipes. I very quickly checked the basement which houses our precious library, precious to us that is, but I couldn’t find anywhere wet. I followed the noise and found that it continued even if  the water was turned off at the mains, it was outside, crap! I called the council and they arrived inside 30 minutes, the guy was really great, he located the hidden mains supply valve and told me that the leak was between there and the house. He then called a guy with a big machine and they both appeared at 15.00 as promised and fixed it, no big deal you might say. Well they had to dig a nine foot deep hole in the front ‘lawn’ to get to the problem but did and its fixed. As they got further and further down I kept thinking, now where can I get a big pond liner from at this time of day!

The excitement of the big hole and the men who looked into it (Bernard Cribbins, sadly missed and don’t worry if you don’t get it, few will) meant that I was restricted to waving my lens at the feeder birds. The temps are just about in the positive during the day at the moment and so the feeders are mainly attended by Black-capped Chickadees and both nuthatches.

One interesting bird news item locally is the presence of a Harris’s Sparrow out near where the invisible goose was (posts passim) in the Richeleu Valley. I’ve only seen one once before, in a back garden out near Trois Rivieres and so will go and look for this one but.. ATTENTION, PROPRIÉTÉ PRIVÉE! says the bird news web site, so perhaps this one will be a hard find. Incidentally congratulations must go to Louise Simard for her rare birds in Quebec site, she has just passed the five million hits mark, if you have never visited here is the link http://www.quebecoiseaux.org/index.php?option=com_oiseauxrares&Itemid=133 to todays page, its in French, naturally, it really is the main supplier of rare bird information in Quebec.

New Book

Excitement today arrived in the shape of the new ‘field guide’ to Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East by Dennis Paulson.

At first glance it looks to be a welcome addition to the available literature on odonata in North America although I suspect the Quebec data is out of date, simply because there appears to be little accessible information regarding the status of odes in Quebec since the 90s. The guide is illustrated by photographs, in the same manner of the companion western version, which has been available for some time. I have a backlog of dragonfly images that I have been waiting to work on and will be putting the new guide to work over the next few weeks. The next step in popularising odonata in North America, and providing a true field guide is to produce an illustrated guide on a par with the excellent European publication, in the meantime, this will do nicely.

Parc Omega

By way of a change we took a trip out to Parc Omega near Montebello on the north shore of the Ottawa River, this is a place we have taken several visitors to and they have all greatly enjoyed it. For those not in the know, Parc Omega is a safari park containing only Canadian animals, it also attracts birds to its grounds and feeders and I had seen flocks of Evening Grosbeaks there in previous years, so we took a look. It is not cheap to get in, the price is now $17.00CAN per adult, I can’t remember how much it was for kids but you can always stuff small ones under the seat, they don’t check too carefully and if any wander into the wolf pen there is a fair chance that you won’t take as many back as you arrived with..

The feeders were quiet, not a grosbeak year, but the driving loop was quite good value and the animals in their winter furs looked very smart. A new addition since our last visit was a group of Arctic Foxes and a young male Moose. We were quite surprised to see the Black Bears up and about, the weather was around -4 but they were waddling around having piled on fat for the winter. I presume when they wake up like this they are only active for short periods, I don’t know whether they eject their anal plugs created at the onset of hibernation or whether that happens once in spring, either way, when they do eject them you do not want to be stood behind one.

Whether you like places like Parc Omega or not and they are contentious places for the purist, there is a big benefit in showing people, especially kids, what animals that are out there look like. A general interest in wildlife can develop into a passion in later life and if seeing a few captive Arctic Foxes skitter around their pens plants a seed, good. Anyone thinking of going over to Parc Omega, Highway 50 is now open and takes you all the way there, no more slowing down for all those little towns.

Below a couple of shots of Common Raven and a winter male Wild Turkey followed by a few of the captive animals.

First up is an Arctic Fox, not quite in its full white ‘plumage’. The Arctic Foxes were very vocal and active and knew very well that they were being gawped at.

Next are a couple of Timber Wolf shots.  We once saw and Eastern Grey Wolf at Tremblant, it crossed the road right in front of us. We later heard that one had actually been in he camp ground and had woken some kid by licking his ear, neat.

The Black Bears were very lardy, more ass than anything else, this gets them through the Quebec winter, this year they have not had it so bad, I hope the relatively mild winter continues, even at the expense of no skiing which I can live without, I have done so far.

Below are a couple of Coyote shots. They can be easily found around the St-Clet fields in winter, hunters go after them with skidoos. I once saw one legging it across the fields with an oven-ready Chicken in its mouth, no lunch for Granny.

Last but not least, Arctic Wolf, these lads are very impressive, they have a calculating stare. You really would not want one of these hanging by it’s jaws off your tender bits.

Lucky shots

In the absence of much bird activity, apart from there being a couple of Snowy Owls out around St-Clet again and a sub-adult Bald Eagle around the pits, I thought I’d put a couple of what I consider to be lucky one shot shots.

The first is a slightly out of focus action shot. The Northern Flicker was busy doing what they do, exploring a utility pole for a snack, nearby a box held a pair of American Kestrels with young. I was focusing on the pole, waiting for the flicker to emerge from the back of the pole (how do they always know which is the back of any given pole or tree?) when suddenly the Amercian Kestrel launched itself at the flicker, which naturally took evasive action. Even though the shot is out of pin sharp focus, the lighting and the poses accentuate the action.

The second shot shows a couple of Red Fox cubs, seemingly playing copycat (or fox) while having a good scratch. These were part of six or so that were messing about in a field out in the boondocks near Huntingdon, Quebec. A parent stood at the back of the field watching and the cubs were just bouncing around the field until I showed up. The road was gravel and I was at about 50kph when I rounded a bend and saw the action. Braking, opening the window, steering with my good knee, grabbing the camera, turning it on and getting it to focus took seconds, the foxes seemed surprised and lingered for perhaps 15 seconds more before scampering back to the den. One shot, no great depth of field but a pleasing view, pity I didn’t have it on rapid fire.

Here we go again

2011 quietly disappeared last night and was instantly replaced with the new and shiny 2012. New year, new note book, all birds are now new and have to be seen. Sandra is used to this, I even walked away from West Brom vs Everton to get out there. We did a tour of the lanes around St-Clet, faling to see a Snowy Owl, perhaps later today. We went as far as Hungry Bay the other side of Valleyfield and picked our way back via Beauharnois. The highlight was five Grey Partridge off St-Marie, not seen any for a couple of years despite getting out there a lot. They were skittish but I managed a few record shots. Unexpected were Common Grackle and Rusty Blackbird. We finally saw a Tufted Titmouse in Hungry Bay at the feeders down the private road.

The full list in order of observation was: Dark-eyed Junco, American Goldfinch, Blue Jay, Hairy Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Black-capped Chickadee, American Crow, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Mourning Dove, American Robin, Starling, Common Raven, Northern Grey Shrike, Northern Cardinal, Rough-legged Hawk, Rock Dove, House Sparrow, Grey Partridge, Horned Lark, Lapland Longspur, Snow Bunting, Common Grackle, Red-tailed Hawk, Mallard, Common Goldeneye, White-breasted Nuthatch, American Tree Sparrow, Common Merganser, Red-breasted Merganser, Long-tailed Duck, American Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Ring-billed Gull, Common Loon, Tufted Titmouse, Rusty Blackbird.

Below is a map to orientate you as to where we went today and where I regularly go birding and report from, courtesy of GoggleEarth.

End of year report

First a nice picture of a Snow Bunting, then the stats for the year so if you only come here for the photos, bye bye.

At the end of each year I write up the statistics for the year relating to how much or how little I actually got out birding. This year I made a concious effort to get out more.

Birding days out – i.e going out specifically to look for birds & wildlife = 293 making a life total of 7366.

Visits to St-Lazare sand pits birding etc. = 228 making a life total of 1090.

Life lists: World –  2614, ABA area list  – 550, Quebec list  – 316, Pits list  – 208.

2011 year list 467, 2011 Quebec year list 227. 2011 pits year list 163.

Quebec continued to frustrate where rarities are concerned and I missed a few things and resolved not to travel far unless I can make a proper trip of it.

The North American list was bolstered by the Arizona trip with hopefully more to follow, yes you can see 740 North American species in a year with luck, effort and resources, I suspect I can only claim one of those criterea, the middle one. The same Arizona trip added to the World list, for that to increase significantly in the future a few trips are needed, trips currently outside of our scope but who knows?

Next year could be interesting. I intend to consolodate the dragonflies, work on the butterflies and keep on with those birds. I might need to think about my local patch but I say that every year and still end up down there and still get pleasantly surprised sometimes.

I hope you have enjoyed my blog, all 185 posts (I’m sort of presuming some of you did get past the Snow Bunting) and I will strive to entertain and inform next year when I may carry on with my memoirs, click on 1981 at the begining of the post if you don’t know what I mean. I’ll also be constructing my bird guiding pages in January so we will see where that goes.

Good birding.

Mark (and Sandra)

Penultimate post?

It stayed cold today so the roads stayed interesting, I even though twice about going out, briefly. Along the busiest road just north of St-Clet an almost white male Snowy Owl watched imperviously from the top of a tall tree. I managed to get a 45 second break in the traffic for a quick record shot, they help to ID them as individuals, this one looked new.

Prior to that I was scanning plates from The Birds of Panama to see whether they would work on the tablet, they do so here are some details. The Chinese are not great at understanding western humour, if they were they would not have called it the Ainol, may as well done it properly and gone for puckered! The tablet, an Ainol Nova7 Advanced is neat and cheap, $129US at some places. It has 8Gb storage and takes micro SD cards for extra storage. It runs the Android system which seems fairly intuitive with practice. Out of the box it fired up in Chinese and I had to do a web search for an English version of the manual (pdf). Once I’d changed the settings to English and rebooted it, I only had to do a bit more tweaking, such as getting Sandra to download a thing so that the PC could find the tablet via the USB and we were off and running. There appear to be endless apps for it, many free and I have photos, music and books loaded already. The screen is nice and bright and at 8.5cm by 15cm is big enough to view things well. In theory it would fit in a jacket/birders vest pocket and you could have field guides for every country in one source had the publishers of such things kept pace with the development of the e-book. The battery life is about 7.5 hours, less if you do gaming or play videos. It has wifi, naturally.

Below a couple of photos showing the tablet and, of course, the obligatory Snowy Owl photo from today.