After a seven week hiatus, I return to the world of
blogging. Here in Alberta, May really
marks the beginning of spring and the return of the migratory birds. As always, we try to urge the birds northward
before they are ready and then, in the blink of an eye, migration is over.
The month began with a visit from my friends, Alistair and
Sveta. Alistair is a photographer who is
becoming a birder and I had hoped to show him many new birds. They had seen the movie “The Big Year” and
their only target bird was a Great Gray Owl and I’m happy to report that we saw
two of them.
We birded in the Calgary region for a few days and it seemed
like I was forever saying “normally there the birds should be back” or “there
will be lots of birds here in a couple of weeks”. We did find a few interesting birds such as
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, American Three-toed Woodpecker, and Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch and had a Moose wander across the road.
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| Yellow-bellied Sapsucker |
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| American Three-toed Woodpecker |
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| Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch |
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| Moose |
The weekend of May 4th & 5th, my
wife and I drove our guests up to Jasper National Park. I didn’t expect to see many birds (and we
didn’t) but had high expectations of seeing many interesting mammals. “Normally there should be …” but mammals were
few and far between. We did see a
distant Mountain Goat but no bears – there bears were just coming out of
hibernation and there were only scattered reports of sightings.
However, the wonderful scenery kept us captivated and no one was too disappointed
with the lack of wildlife. At the roadside viewpoints, we also enjoyed close views of inquisitive Common Ravens and Clark's Nutcrackers.
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| Mountain Goat |
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| Atop Whistlers Mountain near Jasper |
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| Typical scenery along the Banff-Jasper Highway |
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| Common Raven |
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| Clark's Nutcracker |
The second week in May usually marks the beginning of the
shorebird migration and I had ideas of doing a blog just on shorebirds. A Purple Sandpiper was found – an Alberta
first record - by Eddie Matoud and it stayed around long enough for most local
birders to see it.
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| Purple Sandpiper in early morning light |
There was lots of suitable habitat for the shorebirds and we
had a brief but decent migration. Of
course, for an acceptable photo, the birds need to be close enough and in the right
light. The rarer species such as
White-rumped Sandpiper weren’t so cooperative but some of the common species
such as Stilt Sandpiper and Marbled Godwit were more obliging.
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| Stilt Sandpiper |
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| Marbled Godwit |
About a week ago, the weather turned nasty – cold, wet and
windy – but that’s not enough to keep one at home. While searching unsuccessfully for a vagrant
Tri-colored Heron that had been seen a couple of days earlier, I came across
these Cliff Swallows huddled together.
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| Cliff Swallows trying to stay warm |
The last weekend in May is the date for Alberta’s annual May
Species Count. Ray Woods and I were
assigned an area in the far northwest of the Calgary area region (a 50 mile
radius circle centered in central Calgary), an area we had done a few times
before. On Saturday, the weather was
still pretty bad as evidenced by this soggy Great Horned Owl.
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| Great Horned Owl |
Over the two day count period, we had 102 species which is a
little below normal. The only real
highlight was an Arctic Tern (a new Alberta bird for me) but it was so distant
that we only confirmed identification afterwards by studying our photos. Of course, it is always nice to see a breeding
plumaged Sandhill Crane.
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| Sandhill Crane |
With May coming to a close, Phil Cram and I tried to re-find
the Arctic Tern last Tuesday. No luck
but we did enjoy nice views of some returning summer residents such as Le Conte’s
Sparrow and Western Tanager.
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| Le Conte's Sparrow |
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| Western Tanager |
June will be a busy month with trips to the Cold Lake area
for birding and to B.C. to visit friends and family.
With all of the inclement weather in recent weeks, I made
good progress compiling my world mammal list.
My total is 300 mammals which, combined with 3826 birds, puts me at 4126
fur & feathers … only 874 to go!
Good birding,
Brian
