Saturday, March 9, 2013

Spring

Spring is definitely in the air here in Guelph - the first blackbirds are arriving and the resident winter birds are all out singing on this warm sunny day! Reuven, Josh and I cruised around for a few hours today with our only real highlight (other than the early migrant blackbirds) being a singing Carolina Wren at Mountsberg.

This Red-winged Blackbird showed up at my feeder yesterday and was singing off and on all day - today there are at least three. By tomorrow they should be all over the place!


Sunday, March 3, 2013

The rest of it

Some other happenings over the last month in my life:

A late January trip with the Wildlife Club to Algonquin Provincial Park, a place I had never been before. It was a great weekend in the outdoors of hiking, birding and general shenaniganizing in the snow!

Great Gray Owl at dusk

 Hand feeding a Gray Jay (Josh V's hand)

Most of the group

A solid week and a half of being cooped up in my house or at school, trying desperately to finish a (large) stack of work before my leave of absence...

A few days in Kingston visiting my brother and finishing up said stack of work.

A 12-day field course based at Queen's University Biological Station, with field trips to Amherst Island and Algonquin Park + Kanata. An awesome way to earn a credit, meeting some cool people and getting to experience a bit more of Ontario.

Amherst on a blustery day

 An American Pipit braving an eastern Ontario winter


Cool ice formations abounded


 "Greenland" Common Redpoll

 Great Gray Owl take 2 - second time in Algonquin this year!

 Up close and personal with a Boreal Chickadee - this guy was hopping around at our feet

 Snow Buntings were kind of odd to see in the middle of the boreal

Specimen prep, I'll leave out all the gory details

A nice Harris's Sparrow south of Guelph that decided to stay until I returned from Kingston. New for a multitude of lists, the most important of which being Ontario (#335) and Canada (#407), while also being the first adult I have seen.


That brings us up to the present...job applications, school work and scheming about the future, while eagerly anticipating spring migration and all the potential that comes with it.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Catching up...

 It's been a while since my last post, but I haven't been slacking off, I promise! Over the weekend I'll post a few catch-up posts to get me back on track for spring migration, which has apparently already started with the first waterfowl and Killdeer arriving (today is the first official day of spring if you're a birder!). Anyway, to kick things off here are two drawings I did back in January when I should have been studying or something.