I Need Spring Pretty Soon

I need to go for a drive in the country and see a moose standing in an abandoned farm yard.

I need to see a White-tailed Deer doe burst out of a grassy ditch and race across a field - and when I drive slowly by the place she had been, catch a glimpse of her new-born fawn.

I need to see a beaver grooming itself on a creek bank.

I need to look out my window and see a little Eastern Cottontail eating up bird seed.

I need to see a Painted Turtle crossing a walking path.

Winter is sapping my soul.

Wildflowers

I am fighting the Winter Blahs a bit this morning.  Here  are some photos I took of prairie flowers sometime in the Fall.  This is along the south shore of Rafferty reservoir, out among the lichen-covered boulders

 grass and buckbrush

some fall asters

yellow coneflowers and wild rose hips

and a Northern Leopard Frog in the grass

I will fill in the species names when I find my wild flower book, which has mysteriously gone missing.  Hmmmm??? 

White-tailed Deer

I went for a short drive along River Road.  Very few birds, however, I did get a quick photo of a group of White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus). 

There were four in this group and another three a short way down the road. 

Pretty things.

Coyote!

There's one big open patch of water behind the ice-front down at Boundary.  It is filled with several thousand Canada Geese, some Cacklings and one American Coot.  Try to find that!  Ha!  (The coot is at the other end of the water, not included in this photo)

Coyote!

Actually, there were six other coyotes on the ice the day I took these photos.  Here's three of them.

Ring-necked Pheasants

This is the next installment of stalking the Ring-necked Pheasants (Phasianus colchicus).  As I've mentioned before, I have vowed to get some good photos of this wary, crafty bird this winter.

These were taken just north of Torquay, SK (near Halvorson's old farm).   A couple of Euro Starlings got in the picture as well (at bottom)

I would like some clear photos of their landings, with the tail feathers spread.  Such elegant birds.

This next lot were right along side the road down here in the valley below Estevan. 

A female that decided she was more hungry and interested in feeding than she was afraid of me.

 And a male in flight.

Getting better....but still not good enough



(As always, click on photos to enlarge, if you want to)

Two-tailed Swallowtail

Sigh, it's still winter in my back yard.  I want the attitude of my old cat Otis, who figured that if the weather outside the front door was wet and rainy, then the weather outside the back door should be happily different.  So, I'm thinking out the front door and across the street to butterflies on my neighbour's spruce tree, mid-summer.  (Has anyone managed to follow that at all?)

This is a Two-tailed Swallowtail (Papilio multicaudata).  My butterfly identification skills are at Basic Beginners level, so do please correct me if I have this wrong.

(Click to enlarge, if you want to)

The Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America says this is the largest western butterfly with the range map indicating maybe I'm a little east of the usual range.  Probably not.  I've seen these around; we have their larval diet of ash and chokecherry leaves.  

What else does the guide tell us?  Well, apparently the "males sail up and down streamside canyons searching for females."  Boy butterflies are just like boys of any other species. 

American Badger

This is a badger I saw waddling along a road a couple days ago.  The American Badger (Taxidea taxus) is wide, flat and low to the ground. 

Badgers are shy and wary creatures, as they should be, so it started running across the field when it realized I was interested.  I, thereafter, only got shots of its tail end. 

Badgers are large members of the Weasel Family 

  

They dig to get to their food supply of ground squirrels, pocket gophers, mice, voles and snakes.  And boyhowdy, can they dig!  I've watched a badger dig itself a burrow in a summerfallow field;  within a minute it was out of sight. 

The Burrowing Owl is also on the badger's grocery list, but the Burrowing Owl population mostly benefits by using abandoned holes for nesting. 

Some recently excavated holes at the side of the road:

Apparently, badgers and coyotes sometimes hunt together, as it were.  The coyotes nab some prey as it tries to escape the badger digging.  The badger gains when prey dives into tunnels to escape from the coyote. 

Once common across the prairies, they are increasingly uncommon nowadays. Humans with guns and/or farm equipment, like to kill badgers so they can then complain about all the gophers around. 

Information from  nature.ca, at North American Badger Facts and  the Kaufman Field Guide to Mammals of North America

The Hairy and The Downy

The suet plug feeder hanging on my apple tree will go for days without any one showing any interest at all so it was nice to see a Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus) pecking at the suet one afternoon. 

Shortly after the Hairy got settled in for a good feed, a little female Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) showed up.  You can really notice the size difference in these two otherwise very similar birds.

She seemed quite ticked to find the Hairy around and kept edging closer on the branches

until she finally caused her bigger relative to fly off to a hanging seed feeder.  Then, she followed it over there and flushed it out too.  Little brat.

Northern Flicker Hybrid

We have had a lack, a dearth, a severe shortage of Northern Flickers (Colaptes auratus) this Fall.  Really, we usually have scads of these colourful, interesting woodpeckers around.  One finally showed up at my feeders a couple days ago.  Turns out it isn't the average Northern Flicker. 

There are two subspecies of Northern Flickers designated by the colour of the shafts of their primaries (flight-feathers).  

The Yellow-shafted is the eastern type; the one we have where I live.  Both males and females have yellow shafts, yellow undersides to the tail feathers and underwing plus a red crescent on the nape of the neck.  The males have a black malar (moustache).  The Red-shafted is the western version.  Red shafts and undersides of tail feathers and underwing, no red on nape.  The male has a red malar.  Hybrids are common where the regions overlap. 

My visitor is a hybrid.  It is Yellow-shafted, but there's black AND red in the malar.

 I'm a fair distance from regular Red-shafted territory (which is, say, Alberta and west), so this fella is a bit unusual for this area.  He's out of range. 

This sort of explains his sudden arrival - possibly flying ahead of the recent cold front, or got lost dodging a previous storm.  Who knows.  Some birds wander.  He's here now and eating ravinously at my feeders.  I hope he stays.

Short-Eared Owl

Short-eared Owl  Asio flammeus

From The Owl Pages

A Danish bishop and amateur naturalist, Erich Ludvigsen Pontoppidan, published the first description of this Owl in 1763. In Latin, the word "flammeus" means fiery, flaming, or the colour of fire. Local names for the Short-eared Owl include the Evening Owl, Marsh Owl Bog or Swamp Owl, Grass Owl, Meadow Owl, Mouse-hawk, and Flat-faced Owl.

  

Does anyone else's eyes go crossed looking at this bird? 

Anyway, this is an owl of the open country.  It hunts mostly by night, but also frequently by day, flying low over grassy fields looking for mice and voles.   See the very deep wing-stroke, and the flight identification marks: the dark spot on the 'wrist'.

Check out these great photos of SEOWs at Nick's website

Ms. Merlin Strikes Again

Remember when I blogged about this?  Well, she stopped in for lunch today.  I just saw her flying away when the dogs next door were let out.   I found this in the back yard.

A closer look at the feathers and debris revealed a bunch of sunflower seeds.  The dove, for yes, it was an EC Dove, had been feeding and had a full crop.

Mulies

My part of the country is loaded with Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus).  These deer are common out here in the western part of the continent.

They get their name from their big, mule-like ears.

It's only the males, or bucks, that have antlers.  The size and number of tines indicate the animal's age and apparently it's nutritional state as well.  Their antlers branch to form two equal forks.  White-tailed Deer have forward curving antlers with a number of points or tines branching from the main beam.   The antlers may reach a span of 1.5 meters and are shed about December every year.

Mulies don't run with leaping bounds and gallops as do White-Tails.  
They "stot", which is the term for that peculiar stiff-legged, all four feet hitting the ground together, thing they do.  One of these bounces covers almost 3 meters and they can reach speeds of 70 kmh/45 mph for short periods

I hoped this doe would get into the stotting gait, but she didn't so here's a shot of her north end as she was heading south.

The tracks will vary from a rough "V-shape" while running to a straight line with slower speeds.  The hoof print may be described as two paisley shapes facing one another with smaller "dots" of the dew claws at the wider end of these paisleys.

Mule deer tracks are virtually the same as White-tail tracks in shape.  The White-tails tend to drag a hoof, leaving a little furrow.   Tracks info from bcadventure.com

Encounter with a Snow Bunting

Snow Bunting  Plectrophenax nivalis

All right, a little closer up view, maybe

This bird is in non-breeding plumage and I'm not sure if it is male or female, could also be a juvenile.  It was solo and flushed from some grass when I drove into a parking area at Rafferty dam.

It was surprisingly calm and unafraid; it wasn't all that close to me.  Usually these little birds are in fairly large groups, often mixed flocks with Horned Larks.  This one wasn't in any great hurry to be somewhere else - maybe resting from a long flight down from the Arctic.  Or not.

Getting tired of the cold, barren rock look, bird flew down to sit on a post for a while.

And finally, it turned back as to say, "well, I'll be off then" and flew away into some thick, frosty grass.

Thanks, little Snow Bunting.  It was a pleasant meeting.  Look how the colours of the plumage lets it blend perfectly into the surroundings. 

Here's some Cool Facts from All About Birds

• The male Snow Bunting returns to its high Arctic breeding grounds in early April, when temperatures can still dip as low as -30° C (-22° F) and snow still covers most of the ground. The female does not return until four to six weeks later.
• Early arriving Snow Bunting males set up and defend territories that include good nesting sites. They will still come together in flocks to forage, and usually roost in loose groups of from 30 to 80 birds.
• The Snow Bunting places its nest deep in cracks or other cavities in rocks. Although such nest sites are relatively secure from predators, rocks are cold. The thick nest lining of fur and feathers helps keep the eggs and nestlings warm, but the female must remain on the nest for most of the incubation period. The male feeds her while she is incubating so that she does not need to leave the nest very often.
• Although breeding and nonbreeding males look quite different, the Snow Bunting has only one molt each year and no true "Alternate Plumage." After the molt in the late summer the male looks brownish with a brown and black striped back. Underneath the colored feather tips, the back feathers are pure black and the body feathers all are white. The male wears off all of the feather tips by actively rubbing them on snow, and he is immaculate white and jet black by the time breeding begins.

Dark-Morph Rough-legged Hawk

Rough-legged Hawk   Buteo lagopus

Back in September....