Winter teases; birds continue

 It is that time of year when the weather flip-flops. Just a few days ago we had a bit of snow, clinging to trees and putting a nice layer on the ground.

It only lasted a few hours, and then a few days later, one could still see a few plants continuing to flower in spite of the recent snow and frost.

Wild Gaura

Common Evening Primrose

Short's Aster

Bird abundance is getting less and less, unless one considers some species of waterfowl. Things like Tundra Swans are actually building in numbers.

When I was out the other day looking for Snowy Owls somewhere in the former Dover Twp., I saw upwards of at least 10,000 Tundra Swans.

Crows have also become quite numerous, which has been the topic of several other posts. This one, in particular, provides lots of information on that phenomenon.

I also came across this Peregrine Falcon picking away at a carcass of some sort well out in a field of corn stubble. It flew in and I lost a bit of focus on this first shot.

It would land a few metres away, and then hop over to the carcass, which you can see as a dark spot on the left.

It was quite wary, picking away a bit, and then looking around to see if anything of concern was approaching.

At one point another raptor, this one being a young Northern Harrier, came by and almost literally dropped in on the Peregrine. The Peregrine didn't react too much, but the harrier perhaps decided it was safer to keep going.

On another day, but in the same general area, I noticed this young Golden Eagle fly in and land on a mound of some sort. It is identifiable due to its tawny coloured head and the white band on the feathers near the base of the tail. A few minutes later another eagle flew into the picture, this time a young Bald Eagle. Even though it appeared from my vantage point, roughly half a kilometre away, to be flying directly to where the Golden Eagle was, the Bald Eagle veered off and landed about 20 metres away. The Tundra Swans that were in the general vicinity did not seem to be too alarmed, but did move off a bit.

A few minutes later, the Golden Eagle flew off to the west, and the Bald Eagle promptly occupied that spot. These eagle shots were photographed, and cropped, to the equivalent of about 120X, so not the sharpest and clearest I would have liked, but one uses the opportunity when it presents itself.

A few Sandhill Cranes are still around, and likely will continue for a bit longer if there are some exposed fields. This group of about 21 was well back from the road, tucked against a stand of  Phragmites, presumably to gain some protection from the windy conditions of the time.

Birds on a smaller scale have also been of interest. On one occasion when I was driving along the highway on my way to Rondeau, I got a glimpse of something white at the far end of a small pasture I was going by. I first thought it must be a bit of white plastic. When looking for Snowy Owls out in the countryside, one gets used to being distracted by a bit of white only to find that it is a bit of plastic or other type of debris. I decided to check this white thing out, so turned around and got binoculars on it, and discovered that it was now standing more erect. It clearly was a Cattle Egret! There were two horses and a donkey in the pasture, and presumably this egret was passing through and dropped in to a somewhat familiar setting.

I put the word out and within a short time, other birders arrived. While I was there the egret never got all that close to the road, so both of these photos are highly cropped.

Later in the day when Steve C was passing by again, the egret was very close to the road, and quite unconcerned with vehicles parked close by. Steve got some quite good photos of it feeding on large earthworms.

I continued on my way to Rondeau, and on a couple of visits which were spent mainly in the campground area, had some good looks at birds and even a few nice photo opportunities. Many of the Red Cedar trees scattered around the campground have an abundance of berries.....

....much to the delight of American Robins. There were other birds making good use of this berry abundance, such as Yellow-rumped Warblers and Cedar Waxwings, but I didn't get photos of them this time.

A resident pair or two of Red-bellied Woodpeckers can often be found somewhere in the campground stashing some bits of food for the winter.

A lingering Eastern Phoebe was noted near the campground, but must have been somewhat camera shy as I only got this one, heavily-cropped photo from the roadside before it turned and disappeared back in the shrubbery.

Certainly one of the highlights of this campground foray was to see and photograph this Blue-grey Gnatcatcher. It was constantly on the move amongst branches and vines in its search for some spider or other invertebrate, so most of my photos were deleted.

Will either of these latter two species be around for the upcoming Christmas Bird Count on December 19? Stay tuned!

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