No gifts from Irene

So Irene swept through, brushing Montreal with her soggy arms but not delivering a hoped for pelagic rarity anywhere local. On the haunch of the store a few shorebirds dropped into the pits, distant as usual, a Short-billed Dowitcher stayed five dyas, two Pectoral Sandpipers joined the melange of Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs and a few Semipalmated Sandpipers joined the Leasts but that was it.

In the garden the rain forced down three Magnolia, one Tennessee and a Chestnut-sided Warbler which stayed a short while. The real legacy of Irene for us was the sixth power outage of the year and, yes, we had stocked the freezer the day before, poot!

Odes are relatively few although a fresh Black Saddlebags at the pits was hopefully a locally bred insect, hard to tell. In the garden the Autumn Meadowhawks are abundant and happy to pose for digishots, good practice and pretty good results. This is the only meadowhawk with yellow legs and the females have that sticky down bit at the tip of the tail. The last photo is a Monarch’s head but you knew that anyway.

First Autumn Meadowhawk

There were a couple of Caspian Terns at the pits today, an adult and an immature making it 144 species for the year there. I had a go with the camera at about 180m range, interesting blue wash overall, the sky was clear blue so presumably that is the reason. Here are a couple of shots, one without zoom on the scope eyepiece and one with about 50x, the image gets softer the higher the mag.

I checked out Bordelais Bog too, barely any bird activity but Slender Spreadwing was new for the site. Close examination of several small odes revealed Band winged, White-faced and Cherry Faced Meadowhawks. Also present the first Autumn Meadowhawk for the year…. Photo below.