Feathery visitors

These are just a few of the feathery visitors to our backyard feeders. Blue Jays were going nuts over the peanuts I put out for them. The Dark Eyed Junkoes were having a blast hopping through the leaf litter. Chickadees, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers and White Breasted and Red Breasted Nuthatches paid regular visits to the feeders and later in the day a pair of House Finches made off with a bunch of black oil sunflower seeds. Even a pair of Northern Flickers stopped by.

On such a sunny day you'd have to be crazy to be inside.

The sky is white with Snows!

After a weekend of hard studying I thought that I'd take a break and head out into the country. I stopped the vehicle on the top of a hill and quickly glassed over the landscape. I was looking for anything interesting to check out and today was my lucky day. From one kilometer away I could see a large, white patch in the field ahead. It was a large flock of Snow Geese. As I got closer the flock lifted off and flew about a km to the north east. I drove as close as dared, stopped, and slowly slipped out of the vehicle. I wanted to see how close I could get to them, so I slowly crawled on my stomach along the wet ground. I was only able to move a couple of meters before I was spotted and they took off once again. This time I decided to observe from a distance and I watched as flock after flock of geese joined the others in a feast of peas. I don't know what spooked them but the whole flock took off in a mass of white beating wings. It was truly an amazing site. The fall migration is obviously in full swing, there were hundreds of thousands of Snows, Canadas, White Fronted geese and a bunch of Sandhill Cranes. I even saw a lone coyote cross the road allowance.

All in all it was a productive morning.