January started cold in Calgary this year. For the first two weeks, temperatures were near -20 degrees Celcius. I went down to Bowmont Park once to feed the Black-capped chickadees, but I didn’t hear a peep from a single one. Luckily, temperatures were balmy last weekend (a touch above 0) and the chickadees were singing […]
Gwyndolyn’s eggs hatched on May 4th. I didn’t see them hatch, but I’ve read that goslings are born precocial, with open eyes and little bodies fully covered with down. Within 24 hours of hatching, goslings leave their nest and are able to walk, swim, dive and feed. The following photos were taken between 6:55 and […]
I first noticed Gwyndolyn’s nest on April 11th (this year). She chose the little grassy island on the northeastern side of the Children’s Hospital Pond to incubate her eggs for about 4 weeks. The pond was on my way to work, so I would stop by at least twice a week to see what Gwyndolyn […]
I’ve been quite busy with school work since mid-September, so I haven’t spent much time birdwatching this fall. My last midterm was last Wednesday and the weather forecast for the weekend was warm and sunny, so I headed to Glenmore Park for some blissful wildlife stalking on Saturday afternoon. Along with a few other wild […]
I photographed a few different species of dragonflies this summer. While looking through some photos I took near my parents’ cabin north of Montreal, I came upon this green eyed beauty and decided to attempt to identify it. I think it is a male Midland Clubtail (Gomphus fraternus). This webpage has check boxes for identifying […]
Two young ospreys fledged from the Bowmont Park nest this year. The starkness of the bare branch against the open sky in this photo compelled me to convert it to black and white. But I wanted to keep the orange eye. Young ospreys have orange eyes whereas adults have light lime-greenish yellow eyes. Also, the […]
On August 25th, I met the “migratory alter ego” of a Northern Waterthrush hopping along the narrow, sandy bank of the small island where the Confederation Park creek bifurcates. I was crouching on the opposite bank, in tall grasses and scratchy thistles, watching a Solitary Sandpiper wading in shallow water and probing the water’s surface […]
The Sunday before last (July 24th), I felt a deep, unsatisfactory lack of vireo sightings in my life. I know this registers at a whopping 0.0001 on the life-threatening scale, but I was remembering other people’s photos of Calgary vireos and I really, really wanted to be one of those people too. Internet to the […]
From the Simmons Building, I walked halfway across the pedestrian bridge, then headed down the ramp to St. Patrick’s Island. Some bird commotion was coming from a nearby tree. A little above eye level and less than a metre from the ramp, a little hairy woodpecker poked its head out of a hole in a […]
The second sparrow species I noticed singing this spring was the Savannah Sparrow. Since moving to Northwest Calgary at the end of February 2016, I’ve been visiting the urban park and wetland near the Alberta Children’s Hospital at least twice a week. A large part of the park consists of knee-high brush and grasses, where […]
Yellow! This Tuesday (July 12th) I saw my first american goldfinches in breeding plumage in Calgary. Walking west from the osprey nest in Bowmont Park, on the small dirt path that follows the bank of the Bow River, I saw a bright yellow bird sitting on a low tree branch. I usually see a few […]
Frank Lake is a wetland 50 km southeast of Calgary which sustains a large variety of waterbirds. J and I went for the first time on July 2nd. I learned about the lake from the Birds Calgary blog, where, throughout the spring, a few birders posted awesome photos of birds I’d never seen before. Along […]
