Survived!

Despite all the warnings I managed to survive five minutes outside today although, to be fair, it was nippy. I had a quick look around St-Clet and coming up with one Snowy Owl which was likely a female but, since the ageing of them is still a mystery, I’ll stick with calling it a female type. I managed a rough digishot – below two examples of nearly the same photo, I included both to show how photoshop does things differently. The overcooked one is using the auto settings, I adjusted the other one slightly, perhaps it needs more.

I think tonight is to be the coldest for some time. The birds certainly know it, there has been a rapid empty of the nyger feeders by the redpolls today. I’m hoping to get a chance at photographing one of the Greenland Redpolls which have been around the area but not at our feeders so far. From memory they are loath to use hanging feeders, preferring to grovel about on the floor or on a table if it is big enough.

 

Time for the big coat

It is a bit of a big freeze here in Canada at the moment with -25°C predicted and pretty cold days with lows near -20°C, cold enough that your nose hair freezes in seconds and even well wrapped extremities start to feel detached after a short while out in it but we still go out to do what we have to do and life continues unhindered. Now let us share a thought for parts of Great Britain, currently languishing under nearly 5cm of snow which has closed most schools and stranded motorists, poor buggers. Those living in the north of the country are not so fussed and deal with it but get into the soft underbelly, say south of Rotherham, and it all goes pear-shaped.

Not so long ago that island nation were not daunted by anything. Far flung places ruled by head-hunters and fierce natives, no problem, give them trousers and teach them to make toast. Towering peaks or barren landscapes there for the conquering, put me down for some of that although I may be gone for a while. Bullies and aggressors picking on our friends, well, you pick on them and you pick on us to and you won’t like us when we are angry, that was always the way. So when did they become a nation that allows a bit of snow to become news? I’ll tell you, when a bored clerk somewhere invented the phrase ‘Health & Safety’ allowing the Mice amongst Men and Women to pass the buck without shame.

It is easy to look at them over there and laugh at their headless Chicken reaction but the truth of it is that they are not used to it. Canada has a winter, every year, just like clockwork. The original settlers knew it and prepared for it which is why no Canadian born of generations of Canadians can walk past a pile of cut firewood without feeling the urge to stack it. The people who plough the roads here do it every year and we even have people who we contract to clear our drives with tractors, we call them snow contractors! In southern Britain they are simply not ready and it if you don’t believe me here are two true stories.

In a past life I was a truck mechanic and I worked for Nottingham City Council at the depot where we kept the gritters. One morning in 1981 it started to snow and kept snowing. By tea time the entire city was gridlocked and nothing could get in or out of the depot because of the traffic, including the gritters. I worked 24 hours solid and it took two full days before the roads were anything like gritted and all because the guys who drove the gritters (as overtime) were out doing their normal jobs when the snow started and the management didn’t have the sense to call them in.

On another occasion the snow came down, the call to go out came and the gritters stood idle, the guy whose job is was to order the rock salt hadn’t and we couldn’t get some from neighbouring councils because of the roads and no, he wasn’t fired. I would bet that a similar scenario has happened up and down the country because, in parts of the UK, winter is always a surprise.

Anyway, back to the birds. I’ve not been too active with the camera of late, tied up with other things, but I thought I’d post a set of photos of mixed quality (and quite probably in random order) which have a snow related theme. I’ll put the relationship in at the end after the photos, see if you get it.

The obvious are Snowy Owl and Snow Bunting, Snow Goose and Snowy Egret. Snowcap and Snowy-bellied Hummingbird just about qualify and Iceland Gull is not unreasonable at a stretch. How about Jack Frost though, in the shape of Jack Snipe and Jackdaw. Finally, what we all are in this weather, Northern Shovelers!

Still around

After a fruitless drive around looking for Great Grey Owls in the area yesterday, well not entirely fruitless as two Ruffed Grouse in the crown of a tree nipping buds were most welcome, today I went back to old faithful, the Great Grey Owl we found at St-Lazare on the 29th-December CBC. I had been past the chosen spot a few times recently and had an idle scan from the car without seeing it but a couple of birders saw it yesterday so I had another go and there it was. The light was kaka as the sun had gone down the residue was right behind it but I ramped up the camera to ISO-800 and rattled off a few, the best of which is below.

Brassic

The thermometer outside the kitchen window reads -18°C, not sure what the windchill will be but brrrr! It is this time in winter when you start to pine for warmer fjords which you know are still a good eight weeks away. The birds know its cold, they blanket the feeders in this weather and it is a fair bet that all of the local birds will be at my and my neighbour’s feeders and that a walk in the local woods would not produce a single bird, such is Canada in winter.

On Monday I took advantage of the newly opened highway 30 to get to St-Etienne near Beauharnois. The trip took just over 20 minutes, it would have been an hour plus via the old Valleyfield route, the new road now makes sites on the south shore so much easier to get to and any trips east no longer have to plough through Montreal on highway 40. The run out was to look for a Yellow-headed Blackbird recently found out there. Once the mass of Starlings and Brown-headed Cowbirds around the busy farm settled the bird, an immature male, was easy enough to pick if it faced you. I couldn’t get close enough for a photo but here is one I took in Nevada last year. This one is an adult but at least lives up to the name and you get some of the picture I think, just reduce the yellow by 95%.

One of my winter jobs this year, apart from the eBird records entry marathon, I’m up to 2600 checklists so far, is to sort out all of my photos. It has taken a while just to sort out the ‘edited for blog’ set but it was fun to browse images that I’d forgotten I’d taken or just to relive a good day once again. One such good day was at Baie du Febvre a few years ago when a Red-necked Phalarope and Wilson’s Phalarope spent the day picking tasty insects off the surface of one of the tanks at the site. So here, to cheer me up as much as anything, are a few of those images to enjoy once again.

Redpolls

Today has been like a Manchester summer Sunday, wet, wet, wet. The temps have soared to 9°C and the snow on the roof is getting heavier as I write but no doubt the freeze will come along soon and make it all nice and glassy, watch those hips as you hit the deck.

The yucky weather has limited birding somewhat and it has been a bit frustrating, especially as a Yellow-headed Blackbird is out there at St-Etienne and I’ve not seen one in QC for a few years. A break in the weather yesterday let me out to look for any Great Grey Owls in the area with nil success but at least I didn’t find any more corpses. I did see a Snowy Owl out near St-Clet though plus a couple of Lapland Longspurs and a Merlin for the year. I’ve also been watching the redpoll flock in the garden, now about 200 strong and containing a minimum of three Hoary (Arctic) Redpolls plus everything in between. No obvious Greenland Redpolls yet but a few marginal candidates. I took a few photos and I’m posting my Hoary Redpoll ID page from a few years ago. I’m not going to caption any of the shots, think of it as a mental execise, the three Hoary Redpolls are in there somewhere. I think we are still some way from truly sorting these winter wasps out but I suppose they will have to wait behind the Red Crossbills, Thayer’s Gull, western-vs-eastern ‘species’ splits etc. before they get sorted.

As a rough guide, the first batch are Common Redpolls, the second lot Hoary. Quite a few are shot I’ve taken in previous years, I thought it would be good to look at as many images as possible.

Northern Shrike success

After yesterday’s shrike photo debacle I had a bit more luck today. At the pits one of the regular birds suddenly became tolerant of me, perhaps because it was hungry and the area it was hanging out was where I feed the Snow Buntings although they seem to be a large prey item to me. I took a lot of photos, most were digiscoped, hand held. The bird is in first-winter plumage, as you can tell by the light barring on the breast and the minimal mask.

Below is the link for Lister’s Corner mentioned yesterday.

http://www.neilyworld.com/neilyworld/listerscorner/listers-corner.htm

Sad end

During a spin around today I came across one of the local Great Grey Owls flat on the road, Ch St-Emmanuel. No suggestion of foul play, just busy roads and an owl doing what owls do. I suspect it to be either ours from St-Lazare or one from Les Cedres found on the same day. Bird wise it was a mixed day. I dropped in to Hungry Bay but didn’t find any Tufted Titmice for the year but a fly-over male Northern Harrier was nice and 40 Red-winged Blackbirds were more what I expect from spring.

Later in the day I went back out looking for owls, no joy but Grey Partridges were showy and a flock of 70 Bohemian Waxwings at the pits were good for the year there.

Below a couple of photos, a Northern Grey Shrike which was digiscoped at 130m in drizzle and that is as good an excuse as I can give. The owl was easier to photograph although the pose is a bit dramatic to say the least.

The year list that I am not doing again is going reasonably well, 55 so far which might not sound many but is ok for Quebec in winter. Here in Canada, to break the monotony of stories about rich hockey players locked out of work poor things, we do winter listing. The season is December 1st to February 28th and the idea is to see as many species as you can within that period. I’ve never bothered much about winter lists but this year I did some sorting and came up with my winter life list, 131 species. I mention this because we also have an organised listing publication which is expertly created by Larry Neily each year. The report is not publised in PDF format and makes interesting reading. If you are Canadian you can just send them to Larry and he’ll put them in Lister’s Corner. Just Google Neilyworld and follow the links, it’s fun.

2012 in pictures

As promised, or was that threatened, here are my personal favourite photos taken by me in 2012. I present them in no particular order, mainly because I find that the new WordPress template for inserting photos doesn’t let me see the obvious place to put text associated with the photo. You, being clever people, will be able to read the text first then figure out which photo I’m talking about.

Immature Black-crowned Night-Herons – digiscoped. My digiscoping skills are low to awful and so I was quite pleased with this one. Most of the problem revolves around the fact that I bounced the camera off a hard floor so the zoom is temperamental. I also hand hold only so shake creeps in. I could probably think of other excuses but…

Great and Double-crested Cormorant side by side – Canon 100-400mm zoom lens (big camera). I just like the way I accidentally got this view. It was from a moving boat and the birds perched all around were in the process of having a panic attack as seabirds are often wont to do. This close with this comparison they are easy to tell apart but try that with lone birds at 600+m and you are tested somewhat and anyone who says otherwise is deluding themselves.

Greater Sheawater  – big camera. I took a million shots of these on two trips out to sea off the east coast but I would say I like less than ten of them. This one has some action in it and for that I just find it appealing.

Buff-breasted Sandpiper – digiscoped. Not a perfect image but certainly a perfect bird even with a limp. After taking this photo the bird flushed to an adjacent open area and I sat and waited with the big camera while it pottered closer. All the while it approached it was very active and nervous. I had a mind’s eye of getting one of those great buff-breast photos that you see from time to time, perfect focus and lighting but, alas, the flock flushed when perhaps 30m away and closing and it was not to be. The fact that this digishot is my favourite over all of the shots taken with the big camera is  what keeps me trying with the digiscoping.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak – big camera. I just like the chunkiness of this shot.

Eastern Bluebird – big camera. I finally got my local bluebirds to relax by parking and waiting. A pair fed along a fence line and gradually worked their way along, this male coming closest. Not perfect but what a bird. Sad to think that their area, Chemin Fief, is to be developed with however many hundred new dwellings and the bacon slicer of humanity steals another bit of the World from the rest of the animals, bit by bit one sliver at a time.

Sandhill Crane – big camera. I love these big birds, their voices warm your bones every time and this beauty, on a rather grey day but when I was out with a couple form the UK (and Wales) performed so well. Yes, the lighting could be better but I was happy with it.

Ovenbird – big camera. Our friends Peter and Andrea have a Love Shack out in New York State where they can escape for the odd weekend. We dropped in (invited) and Andrea and I took a walk, she wanting to try to take photos of birds. The woods were quiet around the site but I played a snatch of Ovenbird song and whoomph, this bird came in and spent a couple of minutes walking around, doing a bit of singing and just generally strutting his stuff. These boys usually take a bit of picking out when they are singing from the depths but this one was a show off. After a couple of minutes it became clear why. We had inadvertently chanced on the boundary of a territory and a second bird came along, both then told each other where the line was. The use of playback had set them off doing something they would do regularly anyway and the long days and plenty of local insects meant that we had not intruded into their lives too much. It was worth it and Andrea got a photo too.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird – big camera. Even though we have lived in North America since 2003 I still marvel at the presence of these tiny birds. This year we went overboard with nectar feeders and the autumn saw several birds present most days. Late afternoon was most active and the lazy option of sitting on the deck with a cool drink and snapping the birds as they buzzed in. I just like the movement in this one.

Rusty Blackbird – big camera. I just like the colour tones on this one and the fact that it is the best shot I’ve managed of one so far. I actually like the ‘black’ birds, even though they empty the feeders in minutes. The rusties are the more elusive ones here until autumn when they can be everywhere. Sometimes in spring I find a local choir of males and one day I’ll get a crisp shot of one.

White-throated Sparrow – big camera. I whistled this one in and it sang away at me thinking I was looking at his bird.

Eastern Screech-Owl – big camera. I just love the setting for this. The owl and its location became something of an open secret, largely to the generosity of its finder in sharing. I have no doubt many visitors to its stump enjoyed it as much as I did and, really, that is what it is all about.

Rough-legged Hawk – big camera. We see these all winter around us but they rarely come close. Usually, when you pass one on a utility pole they don’t give you a second chance but this one did and I was grateful.

Alder Flycatcher – big camera. Not a remarkable photo but not terrible either. This bird had been in skirmishes with another around some phragmites. I waited, it landed and I got it, simple. I just like the detail.

So there are the bird photos. In truth I could probably come up with any number of photos but these will do. I’ll do something similar on the dragonfly blog when I get a moment but for now I hope you enjoy these.

Common Pochard – wire jumper or tick?

Saturday Sandra and I went off to a site on Lake Champlain on the New York – Vermont border, Chimney Point to be exact, in search of a Common Pochard. The site was full of ducks, perhaps 600 Common Mergansers and Common Goldeneyes plus hundreds of Greater Scaup, a few lessers and the duck of unknown origin. We didn’t see it on the first look, the birds were distant and active and we had the added distraction of 12 Bald Eagles out on the frozen part of the lake. In the afternoon the light and conditions improved and we had acceptable views of the drake Common Pochard. In between searches we had lunch locally and I later got food poisoning which meant that have just I spent the best part of two days at Hawkesbury Hospital, isn’t Dilaudid, which is a morphine derivative, excellent when you been having stomach spasms for the past 10 hours. I can’t be sure the source of the malady was the lunch but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the Weetabix I had for breakfast nor the compulsory KitKat enjoyed en-route.

The Common Pochard was very popular and produced quite a twitch with crews from as far away as Ohio and Idaho. Unfortunately there is now discussion regarding the bird’s provenance, it is said to have a ring of some description about its person. If it is a metal ring that does not necessarily damn the record, obviously something saying ‘if found, please return’ is a bit of a give-away. I suppose I’ll have to wait until North American Birds reports it as good or bad, still it was interesting to see and, if it is deemed acceptable, tinged with irony as I found it’s congener, the Redhead, in the UK – the first record of the species for Britain and Ireland. There was also a Tufted Duck around but we didn’t see it, didn’t need it for New York State anyway.

I didn’t manage to photograph anything on the trip but below is a photo of a drake Common Pochard that I took earlier, as they say. Squint at it for the full effect of viewing a distant bird on a choppy lake at 350m or so.

Back to the Barred

Today was a morning visit to the Chiropractor day and, after my bone cracking session, I nipped around the corner for another look at the Barred Owl from the last post. The light was much better and the bird less obscured so I got slightly better shots. On the down side it was -20°C but really only felt like -19°C, this hoary weather is why the owl has frosting on its face. I also lucked in on a very white Hoary Redpoll that I reckon was hornemanni instead of the regular exlipes I’m seeing at home. If you are not sure what I mean, Hoary (Arctic) Redpoll has two races, Carduelis hornemanni hornemanni is the Greenland race and big! Carduelis hornemanni exilipes is the southern form and smaller, less ‘in your face’ white and the one we expect to see here in winter.

Encouraged by the owl success I headed of to look for gulls at a dump, bliss! The dump in question is over the Ottawa River and far enough away to only get inspected occasionally. As I approached it it looked like a bust with no birds moving. I then located a loafing flock of big gulls and settled in to upset passing traffic while I scanned. In Quebec you can be sure that if you stop and look at something at the side of the road EVERY passing car will slow down to try to see what you are looking at, you get used to it, I’ve stopped yelling expletives now but it took nearly ten years to get out of the habit.

The gulls were around 150m away or so, easy scope work and I could even pick out some of the hulking Glaucous Gulls with the bins. I scanned carefully, counting as I went from right to left. I’d reached 12 Glaucous and four Iceland when I got to the last bird which rather made me sit up. It was in first-winter plumage and stood alongside Glaucous and Iceland and American Herring Gulls so it was good to compare structure. I knew what it was when I saw it but I pulled my Sibley out anyway and checked the details as it walked around, stretched a bit and crapped (although to be fair to Sibley, he makes no mention of crapping as a diagnostic feature of any gulls), it was a Thayer’s Gull, only my second ever in Quebec. I tried to photograph it but only ended up with a string of distant gulls looking like smudges on the snow. I hope it sticks and a few people get to enjoy it although here there is not quite the same energy devoted here to twitching, especially twitching gulls.

Below a couple of owl shots. A Common Pochard is still being seen in Vermont and so it might be a weekend twitch for it and a Lapwing, perhaps my next post will have photos of both or neither, either way, I’ve got to try – please don’t call me sad!