Success

[hbruton]

See, I have what I call cursed birds. Birds that are relativly common but I never seem to see them. One of these is the Black Scoter which winters on the Great Lakes every year. Well today, I dragged Marg out of bed at 6am and we jetted down to Hamilton for a day of birding. Weather started off lovely crispy hard frost and by mid afternoon it

Comments

[lyosha]

We had a resident green heron family at the park for years, but this year the only thing I saw was a terminally injured juvie that I had to put down. :( I love greens!

[hbruton]

They are fabulous birds!

[lyosha]

We had a Wilson's Phalarope on the reservoir here! Where was this, LaSalle?

[hbruton]

Nope, LaSalle was pretty dead, though the Tundra Swans are starting to arrive. The raft of Scoters was just south along the shoreline from Confederation Park. We almost dropped in at Mountsberg on the way home to check out the resivoir but were too wiped by that point.

[silverwhistle]

Aw!
I was heartbroken t'other day to find a wee dead long-tailed tit who'd flown into a window of the students' union and bounced off... Poor wee darling! They are one of my favourite species.

[hbruton]

Always so sad to find birds dead by windown collision. Got me for a moment there though. I was thinking, "Hold it. Long Tailed Tits, we don't get those in North America". They're one of my cursed birds from the UK. I still need a bearded tit too. Got the rest of them from various trips.

[silverwhistle]

Long-tails aren't really members of the tit family, but they are adorable. They look like Disney birds: small, cute face with a short beak and boot-button eyes, feathers in pale pink, white and black, and a voice like a squeaky-toy. And they are ridiculously proportioned: a tiny fluff-ball of a body at the end of a looooong tail feather! We get a lot of them here: they tend to fly around in small, squeaky gangs.

[niall_]

"Northern Shoveler" - isn't that what we all become in winter? :)

[hbruton]

They certainly have the bill for it!