teacher! #149

Ok, I'll admit I'm getting fully distracted and have been consistently adding non-bird photos. I guess that's what happens when you are curious about pretty much everything.

learning my dragonflies - dot-tailed whiteface

Ok, Sunday, I decided I was goin' a lookin' for a coot. I still don't have one, and I thought if I hunkered down in a swamp long enough I would inevitably get one. 

not a coot. juvenile grebe. first I've seen in the west end!

I checked my Ontbirds for the first time in a long time, but there wasn't really anything at all of note. Where to go? Jack Pine was the place on Sunday. After a relatively quiet walk through, I spotted a bird poking its head up and hopping around on the ground. I'm so glad I didn't just pass it off as another LBJ (*everything* is worth investigating). It was an ovenbird! Not making a spot of noise, so it's a wonder I spotted it. These birds are often easy to hear but so hard to get a clear view of.
#149: Ovenbird; Jack Pine Trail, Ottawa, Ontario; June 26, 2011.

Ovenbird! The lighting was tricky.



Lifting its crest...cute

Ovenbirds are called such because they build nests that resemble ovens (domed with a door).

South American ovenbirds build really crazy nests---really, google it!

Photo by Bill Leaman Photography: http://www.leamanphoto.com/11/lg/Ovenbird_at_Nest_-_Ohio__BOV0001_.htm

We all know the Road Not Taken. Do you know this one?

The Oven Bird by Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

I'm one off 150! The search for the coot continues....maybe that will be it?