Archives

Garden birds – why gardens need a pond

Date: May 19, 2013
Author: richard
Categories: birds, canada, Garden, Gardening, sparrows, Uncategorized

Had a busy twenty minutes today in the garden this morning with birds flapping all over the place including Yellow-rumped Warblers (about twenty) and a nice Blackburnian amongst the regulars.

Almost every bird was there because of the presence of the pond and waterfall – worth all the effort of installing because they certainly attract the migrators as well as the residents.

Pictures do the job better than words – click the thumbnails for decent sized images.

 

A good birding morning

Date: May 18, 2013
Author: richard
Categories: arboretum, birds, flowers, photography, Uncategorized

A gorgeous, sunny spring day today made better by a morning walk in the arboretum. Chris (the naturalist there) was leading it and I was along to wave the BPQ flag and carry the heavy spotting scope. Plenty of activity but the leaves are out and we had to spend lots of time listening and then pishing and then hoping to see many of the birds on today’s list. The morning started (for me) with Cliff Swallows around the weather radar dome on the road in and ended with close up views of an active Baltimore Oriole near the car park.

As a side topic and perhaps of interest to birders with scopes – a few years ago I purchased a “poor man’s” Wimberly type head made by Manfrotto for a tripod intending to use it to take photographs but never really made much use of it.  recently I have been mounting my spotting scope on it and it just the best thing since sliced bread for following birds in flight and you never need to lock it on a bird when the bird perches – just take your hands off it and stays where you pointed it. A bit bulkier than the usual tripod head but really good … using this rig to follow flying Bobolinks at 60x magnification was a revelation. Serendipity.

The only bird picture was a Phoebe captured through the scope via my iPhone … not a good picture but I will post it below anyway and accompany it with an image of the sun slanting through the blossom trees … also an iPhone image and surprisingly good (I think) considering.

Early sun beams at Blossom Corner

Early sun beams at Blossom Corner

The birds seen or heard (reported to eBird) were these … Greg (the man with the amazing birding ears) had a few more.

Canada Goose, Great Blue Heron, Turkey Vulture, Red-tailed Hawk,Ring-billed Gull, Mourning Dove, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Eastern Phoebe, Blue-headed Vireo, Red-eyed Vireo, Blue Jay, American Crow, Tree Swallow, Cliff Swallow, Black-capped, Chickadee, White-breasted Nuthatch, House Wren, American Robin, European Starling, Ovenbird, Tennessee Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Cape May Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Blackburnian Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler Black-throated Green Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, Song Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, Scarlet Tanager, Northern Cardinal, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Bobolink, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, Brown-headed Cowbird, Baltimore Oriole, Purple Finch, American Goldfinch

 

And now the “needs must” photo

Eastern Phoebe "captured" by iPhone through a spotting scope. Not a good or even adequate opicture but when you have no real camera with you then you make do with what's at hand.

Eastern Phoebe “captured” by iPhone through a spotting scope. Not a good or even adequate opicture but when you have no real camera with you then you make do with what’s at hand.

A cooler weekend

Date: May 11, 2013
Author: richard
Categories: arboretum, flowers, Garden, Gardening, photography, spring

After two weeks of abnormally hot and sunny weather (for the time of year) and a garden full of stressed out plants things returned to normal today and we got cooler temperatures, some decent rain and excellent diffuse light for photography. The hot weather and the blocking weather fronts etc have held back the migrating birds this year – the big warbler rush is a week or two slow in coming though those who know about these things suggest they may start arriving over the next couple of days as winds shift.

Herewith some images from a damp May weekend …

Magnolia time

Date: May 3, 2013
Author: richard
Categories: flowers, Garden, Gardening

We are having a spectacularly warm time at the moment with comfortable low to mid-20s temperatures and bright blue skies – in fcat spring, weather wise, lasted about ten days and this feels like summer already.

The Magnolias are magnificent this year – here are some pictures of the Magnolia soulangiana that we have at the front of the house.

Garden Rabbits

Date: April 25, 2013
Author: richard
Categories: Garden, mammals, wildlife

In the past week the brown grass that emerged from under the snow has started to green up as the soil warms a bit and that has brought our resident rabbit out for supper the past couple of evenings … actually it was one rabbit during the winter but now we seem to have three, two of which are chasing each other about, though whether or not that is territorial or an urge to make more rabbits remains to be seen.

Having these guys around is a good reason for growing daffodils (they don’t eat them) instead of tulips (they inhale those) but strangely our garden seems to be about the only one around here with daffodils.  i don’t know why, rabbit proof and widely available but there you go.  Either way, rabbits are nice and welcome to the garden.

For those who like to know about these things, these are Eastern Cottontail Rabbits … click the link for information

Pictures – that what we need …

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Rabbit number one

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Rabbit number two

Two rabbits on the lawn - totally unconcerned with our presence

Both rabbits on the lawn – totally unconcerned with our presence

 

A new platform for Sparroworks

Date: April 15, 2013
Author: richard
Categories: commentary, flowers, photography, spring

Having had great success with using Joomla CMS to build the Sparroworks website for the past few years I have been converted to the alternative WordPress platform as a result of moving the Bird Protection Quebec site over to it recently. WP does not have all the bells and whistles of Joomla but it has all I need and is a lot simpler to work with and has many advantages … so I have moved this site across as well.  I hope you like it – the journal is inside the site and accessed from the above link, though you know that already if you are reading this.

As you can see, the design is simpler and cleaner.  I found a really good template for the BPQ site and decided to use it, with some modifications, here as well.  It has also allowed me fully to integrate the journal (= blog) within the site at last instead of having it hanging off the end as an appendage.

And for those who just like to see pictures but are not facebookians maybe this will persuade you to become one … most of my galleries of photos that are worth sharing are now accessible through this site (see link at the top of the page).  Really they are themed collections but I have found that ocacsionally I just have one photo to share and so have have made a new gallery by the name of “An Occasional Sparroworks” and new entries for that also get posted on Facebook.  Recent “Occasional Sparroworks” have included these pictures …

29 March - the snowdrops were waiting under the snow and appeared as it finally started to melt away

29 March – the snowdrops were waiting under the snow ready to show as it finally started to melt away

2 April - gradually the ice on the river begins to melt though it was still two eeks before it all vanished

2 April – gradually the ice on the river begins to melt though it was still two weeks before it all vanished

10 April - Two days after the first crocuses the ever-flkashy Iris reticulata bloomed

10 April – Two days after the first crocuses the ever-flashy Iris reticulata bloomed

 

13 April - Our old Adirondack chairs on the deck have come through another winter and are ready for the lazy days of summer

13 April – Our old Adirondack chairs on the deck have come through another winter and are ready for the lazy days of summer

 

 

Still not spring

Date: February 24, 2013
Author: richard
Categories: arboretum, birds, flowers, spring, winter
Comments: Leave a reply

First two bits of good news -

  1. The new photo gallery is now live and you can visit it at www.sparroworks.zenfolio.com
  2. The Red-bellied Woodpecker visited the garden again this morning as well as the Carolina Wrens, plenty of Redpolls, both varieties of Nuthatch and the rest of the gang.  The RBWO checked the feeders but then spent more productive time hacking the unhealthy Catalpa tree.

Last night was the annual volunteers “do” in Chalet Pruche at the Arboretum.  This necessitates a walk in the dark through the forest to reach it.  Snow was falling and all was nice … except that our friends in the UK are reporting the start of spring, newspapers over there are starting to publish spring gardening articles and we won’t see a tree leaf until the end of April.  Winter is good until mid February – then it’s time for a change I think.

Anyway – picture time:

Red-bellied Woodpecker hacks splinters off the Catalpa tree

Red-bellied Woodpecker hacks splinters off the Catalpa tree

"Flowers at work" - Hah!

“Flowers at work” – Hah!

Chalet Pruche as the day ends

Chalet Pruche as the day ends

Volunteers drinking wine

Volunteers drinking wine

 

 

 

Late April in the garden

Date: April 29, 2012
Author: richard
Categories: flowers, Gardening, orchids
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A bright and a sunny day with warm sunshine but a very cold northerly wind restricted gardening activity – other than the ritual first murdering of the dreaded dandelions.  Assorted tulips, Marsh Marigold and the first of the white Trilliums.

Indoor another of the tiny, discrete orchids was blooming.  Pleurothallis casapensis no less.

Orchid - Pleurothallis casapensis

Some flowers in bloom today – click on the thumbnails for larger images:

Herons and Magnolias

Date: April 23, 2012
Author: richard
Categories: birds, flowers, Gardening, spring
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The Magnolia stellata and Magnolia grandiflora are putting on good shows this year (such a shame there was actually snow mixed with last night’s heavy rain).

Mid-morning today a Great Blue Heron decided to visit us – he stood on the arch for several minutes looking at the pond before deciding that as it contains no fish he had better fly off up the road to our friend’s garden where there are lots of fish.  An uncommon visitor.

Other (unphotographed) birds in the garden today included Brown Creeper, Ruby-crowned Kinglets in droves, at least one Fox Sparrow seen several times, plus the common guys such as multitudes of Robins, Red-winged Blackbirds, Euro-Starlings, Common Grackles, Chickadees etc.  All welcome.

(click on the photos to see enlarged versions)