Sunday, March 11, 2007

Blowing cold and hot

10-11 February 2007

Following a bitterly cold week, Sunday saw a thaw set in with temperatures up around 4 degrees, tropical! Year list options are diminishing until the return of our summer guests so I concentrated on Red Crossbill, again! Thanks to a tip off from Martin Bowman I made the short trip to one of the country back roads north of Hawksbury, Ontario. Sure enough, within 1km we came across a female gritting, two more females showed briefly later but ice rain set in so we didn’t hang around.

On Friday I chanced upon a covey of Grey Partridges near Ste-Marthe. They were species 99 for the year, the Red Crossbill was number 100, only 200 to go. Also in the area were up to 200 Lapland Longspurs, 600 Snow Buntings and 200 Horned Larks, excellent birding. I nipped back Saturday morning first thing to try for a picture but was out of luck, the regular female Snowy Owl was present on her perch though.

Sunday I spent a few hours in my favourite St-Clet fields seeing a new immature Snowy Owl and the regular male. A few Wild Turkeys were browsing seed heads on grasses protruding from the deep snow and a much reduced number of longspurs etc were still present but skittish from traffic flushing.

Apart from the owl, everything else was a bit hard to photograph, record shots below.





















A few garden shots from the weekend, White-breasted Nuthatch, American Goldfinch, Purple Finch (female), and Dark-eyed Junco.

















Female Red Crossbill in poor light.























Mme Snowy Owl
















Below a flight shot. Not a great image but it shows bits you only normally see briefly.


















One of six Wild Turkeys near Ste-Marthe.
















This Coyote had obviously found its way into someones outside larder, it was hurrying across the fields carrying this oven ready duck, plucked and headless. It knew I was there but, instead on gettings its head down and running, it could not resist a backwards glance.

















I spent about twenty minutes wating for the female Snowy Owl to leave her perch, hoping to get a flight shot. She fussed and preened for a while, even having a fluffing session which is often a prelude for flight. It was a bit cold so I had lowered the camera for a rest when she took off leaving me with a series of shots with the wings chopped off. Next time maybe.

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