The woods were alive with the sounds of nuthatches, chickadees and kinglets. Flickers and hairy woodpeckers were drumming (the former, on the metal junction box of a telegraph pole) and robins were gathering nest material. A winter-soon-to-be-Pacific wren was singing and juncos were chasing each other around the shrubbery.
On the marshy pool, the trumpeter swans had gone, and just a few birds were present including hooded and common merganser, ring-necked duck, bufflehead and mallard.
We came across our first butterfly of the year, a comma of some sort... (green comma?) I don't yet have a butterfly guide for this part of the world, that's another thing I need to buy! If anyone reading this can identify it from the above pic, I'd be very grateful.
On Hemer Lake, a pair each of trumpeter and mute swans were present, as were good number of common mergansers and ring-necked ducks plus smaller numbers of lesser scaup, bufflehead and a pair of Barrow's goldeneye.
We left Hemer via the Morden Colliery trail back into Cedar. En route, we noticed a couple of dozen very excited ravens, and a couple of eagles, feasting on the corpse of some unfortunate, sizeable creature, by a small farm. Benevolent farmer helping out his local corvids? Poisoned bait? Who knows...
A red-tailed hawk was perched up by the path as we neared the town.
The best bird of the day, however, was feeding on the front lawn when we got home - a slate-coloured, dark-eyed junco. Very nice!
You haven't put Grumpy Grouse in your list of choices.
ReplyDeleteSays Ray