It really is very springlike at the moment but although some of the seasonal arrivals have started to arrive we are still awaiting the big rush of exotica. Meanwhile, we have consoled ourselves with the fact that the garden list now stands at a quite respectable 38 species for the year (a Hermit Thrush appeared today) and that the myriad white and purple violets in the garden have produced this delightful hybrid ….


Of the birds that I have manged to get “snaps” of here is a Goldfinch in its grown-up summer plumage – and, note, not sitting on a feeder –

… while here is a Ruby-crowned kinglet. perhaps one of the most frustrating birds on the planet to photograph. They are small and twitchy and never stop zipping – hard, hard to get a good focus on.

One of the reasons we have not got out much in the last couple of weeks is that we had the roof re-shingled and immediately followed that by having the siding replaced as the following pictures show (now, of course, this needs to be paid for). The work had to be done for very practical reasons but we were very pleasantly surprised at how much nicer it has made the house look …


The old metal siding just before its demise

When the old stuff came off we found even older real wood siding beneath
– peeling brown paint and all

And the finished result – altogether an improvement.

On Sunday we took ourselves off north to check out a small bird sanctuary that BPQ owns near to Piedmont and which nobody has visited for a good 5 or 6 years – just forgotten about it. Very interesting and while we need to go back in a couple of weeks to see which migratory birds have moved in for the summer we were delighted by carpets of flowers – Sanguinaria, Red Trilliums, Yelleow Toad lilies and many others. The site is a section of Laurentian forest on a rising slope with a massive stone cliff face to one side – well worth watching.