Despite a foot or more of snow being on the ground and still some flurries around noon today, it is gradually thinning and even revealed a solitary snowdrop yesterday? We could still have a late March dump but it won't usually stay for long. Today was our penultimate visit this year to the [...]
Not as cold this morning as anticipated, maybe -5C with a bit if wind but by tomorrow morning we are looking at -25C and with windchill an effect -35C to -40C which will give even hardy souls like us pause for thought before going out. Even with good snowshoes this was a hefty [...]
Winter in Quebec can be rather cold and tough but it has its compensations given a warm coat and boots. Sitting here this morning as the snow falls and the temperature falls faster we have been warmly enjoying the glorious flowers of three Amaryllis bulbs* while watching the indomitable Dark-eyed Juncos outside [...]
Thursday morning at this time of the year means we put on the snowshoes and go tramping ... looking for birds along the way, of course. Here are some of the regulars. Especially amused by the Cardinal looking longingly at the squirrel's snack. Rather less amused by the hanging squirrel that somehow [...]
This post is really about interesting atmospheric conditions but birds do creep in, inevitably. Every year we do “our” route in the annual Christmas Bird Count centred on Hudson in Quebec, just west of Montreal. We have been censusing birds on this same route for at least 20 years now - it isn’t [...]
2022 - Another Year of Birding As a new year starts I like to make a note of the birding “ticks” from the year just coming to an end. Here goes for 2022 … a couple of days early but I don't expect anything new between now and the weekend. First, it's important [...]
A good 39 years ago we were in Shetland with light in the sky at mid-summer midnight, noisy Oystercatchers and a very territorial ram This is going back a few years, 39 in fact to June 1983. We were going to Shetland for a couple of weeks isolated self-catering with wildlife, [...]
My first Canadian lifer was the Red Bird, the "Devil's Bird", the Northern Cardinal. Here is a short tale of our first encounter as the kettle boiled for morning tea. (Drawings and photographs are my own) In an earlier post I wrote about the first bird, a European Dipper, that [...]
It took a lot of organisation to ensure that the first snowfall of the winter came yesterday, just one day before our first weekly duty session at the MBO (bird banding station). Along with a couple of friends who do the same on another day of the week, we will be regularly visiting [...]
Earlier this year, just in time for spring, I completed an early version of my book 1001 Species: A Natural History of a Small Town and offered it to the public as free PDF download. It enjoyed moderate success in the very small and rather niche market it was offered to and [...]