It's been a little difficult to find blog material lately. Or, I suppose, more truthfully, I simply haven't been out and about with my camera very much the past few weeks. It is the very end of the fall migration here. We've still got a lot of Canada Geese - but since half of Boundary Dam reservoir stays ice-free, thousands of Canadas, Mallards and a few other waterfowl species stay for the winter.
My attention has switched to birds in my yard. I lined up one configuration of winter feeder stations a couple days ago as we were forecast to get some snow (we had some a week or so ago; most of that has melted and we did not get any of this last front moving past - north of us).
To my delight, four Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata) spent a great deal of time at said feeders yesterday. Too bad I hadn't washed the windows - I had to photograph from inside the house.
I saw five Blue Jays flitting between the neighbourhood spruce trees 8-10 days ago. The way they were acting makes me think they are migrating birds rather than some locals expanding territory.
I'm in the prairies. No big stands of trees around here, only a few in old farm yards and here and there in the towns. No oaks to speak of.
Blue Jays are uncommon enough to be a bit of a big deal when they come around.
Over the last few days, at least one announces arrival around 8:30 a.m. with a last call around 4:35 p.m. Darkness rolls in by 5:30 p.m. (come to think of it, the shortened day light is probably behind a lot of my current ennui).
A few neighbours and I are trying to keep the jays coming to our places all winter so there's no lack of peanuts, nuts and fresh water around.
There has been a huge, I mean enormous, flock of Snow Geese gathering west of Estevan. The numbers are easily in the 150K+ range - and the flock was growing as smaller flocks dropped down to rest and graze. The parcel of land they were grazing had been seeded with a cover of what looked like a cereal grain and mustard. (I seriously don't know my crops any more). Anyway, it was fresh greens coming up. Very alluring for hungry, migrating geese.
I tried to get photos. This is maybe one-fifth of the flock, the ones closest to the road that rose up as I stopped my vehicle
Then I continued my drive to Torquay and north. I saw four moose skulking around an abandoned farm yard. They saw me as well. By the time I turned around, the moose were at full gallop across a summerfallow field.
They look slightly out of place on the flatlands, don't they?
There is still so much water around here, as evidenced by this old stand of trees that's been drowning since April.
Continuing on to the Mainprize Bridge over Rafferty Reservoir. A few fishermen were along the banks on one side. The choppier side had a few Northern Shovellers and two juvenile Western Grebes
The shovellers were really liking whatever greeny, grungy, algal stuff is in the water.
Onward to Midale. A Common Raven (they were as uncommon in this area as moose when I was growing up - now ravens are everywhere, especially in the winter).
A lingering Great Blue Heron at a farm dugout.
A huge Charolais bull
An oilwell - it's called Mixed Farming over here.
Sunday before last, I felt I needed to climb into my car and roam around the country to see what was going on.
Well, a cattle drive was going on a just a couple kilometers out of town.
A move from community pasture to home pasture a few kms. away.
Up and onto the road to cross the floodway between Boundary and Rafferty reservoirs.
Back in the ditch and running along
Black Angus
And, down a gravel road....a prairie slough in Autumn
Another stand of trees and shrubs around a wet place.
I have never seen Red Crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) here, in Estevan SK, before. Okay, I haven't lived in this house, or even this area all my life, but still....
There they were, way in the top of the tree
...opening the cones with their weird and efficient bills and gobbling the seeds
No white wing bars, so not the White-winged Crossbills I expected to see - and which are often around here at various times during the winter
Sorry, the photos aren't the clearest. I had just pulled into my driveway from an RV trip to Manitoba; was starting to unload the vehicle when I heard some unfamiliar twittering coming from the top of the spruce. After driving most of the day, I was a little wobbly & shaky aiming almost straight up. No time to set-up my tripod. Maybe they will come back today.
For more info & better photos of Red Crossbills, go here:
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red_Crossbill/id
This Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) was a little east of Beausejour, Manitoba
this morning. It was eating something in the ditch and was a tad ticked when I stopping to gawk. Sorry, Baldie.
But, thanks so much for the chance to see you.
As a cold front moved into the area, some straggly mammatus clouds were forming overhead. A cumulonimbus cloud looms in the background. The day (about a week ago) started out warm; we hadn't had rain in weeks; however, there's a lot of water in ponds and sloughs so the air was more humid than usual .
It all looked rather ominous, but other than the wind picking up and a slight drop in temperature, nothing much happened as this bit of weather moved through.
Wikipedia:
Mammatus are most often associated with the anvil cloud and also severe thunderstorms. They often extend from the base of a cumulonimbus, but may also be found under altocumulus, altostratus, stratocumulus, and cirrus clouds, as well as volcanic ash clouds. In the United States, sky gazers may be most familiar with the very distinct and more common cumulonimbus mammatus. When occurring in cumulonimbus, mammatus are often indicative of a particularly strong storm or maybe even a tornadic storm. Due to the intensely sheared environment in which mammatus form, aviators are strongly cautioned to avoid cumulonimbus with mammatus.
Mammatus may appear as smooth, ragged or lumpy lobes and may be opaque or semitransparent. Because mammatus occur as a grouping of lobes, the way they clump together can vary from an isolated cluster to a field of mamma that spread over hundreds of kilometers to being organized along a line, and may be composed of unequal or similarly-sized lobes. The individual mammatus lobe average diameters of 1–3 km and lengths on average of 0.5 km. A lobe can last an average of 10 minutes, but a whole cluster of mamma can range from 15 minutes to a few hours. They usually are composed of ice, but also can be a mixture of ice and liquid water or be composed of almost entirely liquid water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammatus_cloud
.....mostly Red-wing Blackbirds. This was a couple weeks ago now, out west, south of Bromhead.
There were many such flocks - most have gone south now.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm not talkative this morning, so I'll just post some photos from Sunday. It was such a pretty day.
Mountain Bluebirds frolicking about at an old corral
Aspen
Moose Mountain Creek
Gooseberry Lake
There's a juvenile Black-crowned Night-Heron standing in the water
Here's another one, intently hunting near Moose Mountain Dam
Profile
I went looking for Fall Colour yesterday and found some in the prairie pothole area north of Stoughton (~ 50 kms north of where I live)
This is prime waterfowl breeding region
Lots of small sloughs, ponds, marshes surrounded by grain fields or in some cases, especially in the Ocean Man Reserve, original prairie.
The cattails and reeds grew high this year
An abandoned farm along Moose Mountain Creek.
More photos to come
Thousands upon thousands of Killdeer have converged on this area, forming huge flocks. A small flock of 18 birds landed in this field - some shorebirds that were likely plovers but weren't Killdeer.
The prairie soil around here is Dark Brown Chernozemic without much organic matter. Decades of chemical-based farming has pretty much destroyed the soil and now many of the plowed fields are this clumpy grey. I digress....
These juvenile American Golden-Plovers (Pluvialis dominica) blend right in, don't they?
A slightly better view.
Frankly, these Am. Golden-Plovers look like the juveniles of the Black-belled Plovers, another common migrant - except the BBPLs have black axilliary (armpit) feathers in all plumage phases. This bunch had light coloured axillaries. Ergo, AGPL - the other similar plover species likely to be found here. (Qualifier, the Pacific Golden-Plover juveniles are almost identifical, but hey...)
For more info about American Golden-Plovers, go to All About Birds at
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Golden-Plover/id
