Sunday, February 3, 2013

February 3, 2013 More Great Gray Owls in the Ottawa disrict!

The Great Gray Owl invasion continues in the Ottawa area. Today I did a quick run in the west end and found 5 Great Gray Owls. These birds were in areas that were concentration points or hots spots during previous Great Gray irruptions. Two of the locations had Great Gray Owls during past  invasions in 1983-84, 1995-96, 2004-05 and this winter 2012-13. There is obviously an attraction to these areas. The most interesting was one individual only 2 kms from our home in Carp. It was along Munro Drive sitting on a land for sale sign hunting! There must be more birds moving into the area in search of food.. Below a series of Great Gray Owl photos. 

  





February 2,2013 Common and Hoary Redpolls at our feeder in Carp. .

Today we had a large concentration of redpolls at our niger feeders. There were approximately 300+ Common Redpoll and 4 Hoary all of the southern variety. These birds must be feeding at various feeders in the area because we don't see them for a number of days and suddenly they appear. Occasionally there timing is similar to the American Goldfinch and we have an interesting mixture of birds.
 
 


Hoary Redpoll


Hoary Redpoll

January 25-27, 2013 Florida birding

Did a quick trip to Florida to visit my parents on the gulf coast. The weather was beautiful with highs in the mid 20c compared to what I left -25c. Over the few days did a lot of beach walking and observed an interesting variety of water birds including Sandwich Tern, Royal Tern, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, American Oyster Catcher, and lots of Brown Pelican. Since this was family visit my birding was limited but there were lots of birds in the neighborhood and we observed White Ibis, Wood Stork, lots of Eurasian Collared dove, a small flock of Nanday Parakeets and the usual Northern Mockingbirds. Each night at dusk a large variety of water birds would fly along the inter coastal waterway behind my parents condo to roost which included Tricolored Heron, Little Blue Heron, White Ibis, Snowy Egret and Great Egrets.



 
A group of adult Royal Terns.

 
Great Blue Heron


A winter plumage Forster's Tern .

 
An adult Forster's Tern.
 
 

The Black Skimmer is easy to recognize but it bill.


The Sandwich Tern is uncommon during the winter months.