We're already in the
second month of 2015... time goes by fast.
Since my last post was over 4 months ago, I decided I should do a quick
update.
What happened in the
last 4 months? Winter happened. One thing you can count on here in Northern
Ontario is winter. It's a cold one (OK,
maybe not as cold as last winter, but close)
We've been seeing lots
of Redpolls at our feeders as well as some Pine Grosbeaks and a couple of
Evening Grosbeaks. We have flocks of 30
to 100 redpolls every day in the neighbourhood. For the first time since I've lived here, we have a Pileated Woodpecker visiting the suet feeder. But then again, I've only had a suet feeder
since last winter (I started putting it out last year to help our rare visitor,
the Red-bellied Woodpecker, survive winter.
He successfully survived our harsh climate. He stayed from November 22, 2013 to May 23,
2014). Now the Pileated shows up every day so I have to make a new batch of home-made suet every week!
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| Pileated Woodpecker / Grand Pic South Porcupine (February 2015) |
Timmins Christmas Bird Count 2014
On December 20th, Gary
and I participated in the 21st Timmins Christmas Bird Count. It was a beautiful day. It was sunny and -20 Celsius so it was a
perfect day to be out there looking for birds. We did some fields
around Timmins. We also did some of the
beautiful trails at Hersey Lake Conservation Area, where we saw this
Black-backed Woodpecker.
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| Black-backed Woodpecker / Pic à dos noir Hersey Lake Conservation Area, Timmins (Dec 2014) |
Dominican Republic
We went to the
Dominicans from December 27 to January 3rd
to attend my cousin's wedding. It was our first time in the Dominicans. We were a group of 39 and I didn't have time to do any
birding side trips like I had hoped... but our resort was still pretty good for
birds because it had some naturals ponds and streams right on its grounds. One pond was blocked off by trees but we
still found a way to get to it almost every day. I got to see 32 species, 19 of which were
life birds for me. I got to observe this Black-crowned Night-Heron on my birthday… they can be seen in Southern Ontario sometimes but I had to go to Punta Cana to see my first one.
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| Black-crowned Night-Heron/ Bihoreau gris Punta Cana, Dominican Republic (Jan 2015) |
I didn't take a lot of photos (there was sand in my camera so it wasn't working so good) You can view a few more photos I took in the Dominicans here: Some of my Dominican Republic Birds on Flickr
January
I finally saw my first
snowy owl. For some reason, they never seem to come to the Timmins area. We've been scanning fields for years and we
never saw one here. On January 23, we
went to Kapuskasing for my sister's birthday dinner and we saw one just before
arriving in town (I didn't have my camera)
It was pure white, perched on a telephone pole. There are no words to describe how beautiful
these owls are.
On the 27th of
January, I had to go back to Moonbeam for a meeting and I saw another one. It was a different bird. I had my camera that time but I was 300
meters away from it so it's not very clear. So far, Snowy Owls have been spotted in the Kapuskasing, Moonbeam and Cochrane
area but none have been seen near Timmins yet.
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| Snowy Owl / Harfang des neiges Moonbeam, Ontario (27 Jan 2015) |
