Gatineau and OFO trip #127-129

Saturday:
Nadia, Matt and I went to Gatineau Park for a hike. The highlight for me was when we went to the visitor centre where they have some huge feeders. There were tons of little birds--redpolls and finches and chickadees--so I set about seeing if I could find a siskin or something. They were all pretty fidgety, so when they all took off I thought it was because I moved. Then this bigger bird came swooping through, and I thought it was a dove. But it snatched one of the birds and perched right in front of me with its prey...it was a hawk! It all happened very fast and I'm not completely sure what it was--it was pretty much all grey, with a banded tail with white at the tip, and was between the size of a dove or a small pigeon, so I thought maybe a sharp-shinned. I went running into the visitor centre with my story to tell everyone what they missed!

We did Laurieault Trail. What type of woodpecker pecks exclamation marks? Clearly a very excited one....

Sunday:
I convinced Sandy to take me on the OFO trip with him. This is really not the birding I'm used to for two main reasons:
1) I never get up that early. (Meet at 7:30?!?!)
2) We were looking at birds that only superman could see with his naked eye. A lot of scoping. I'm still not sure how they find them in the first place...just stop and hope I guess. Normally I just drive along and stop when I see something.
Anyways, it was good to have all those eyes and expertise since I probably wouldn't have seen any of the stuff. Plus I didn't have to look anything up because they'd all named it before I even got my eyes on the thing. 

So we started out looking for sandhill cranes. I never actually saw the things but I wasn't too worried about it. I was more worried about how damn cold and windy it was. Some snow geese and Canada geese were on the other side of the road, but soon took off after the cars all pulled over. There were a few blue morphs.

To be honest I'm not sure exactly where we were because my sense of direction is so awesome, but we saw northern pintails at several points during the day. This was really exciting because a) they are GORGEOUS and b) they're a lifer for me! And not the first lifer of the day :)

#127: Northern Pintail; East of Ottawa; April 3, 2011. They were pretty well camouflaged!

Here are 2 with their tails up.

We made another stop at a pond with a bunch Canada Geese. I think everyone but Sandy and me saw a cackling goose and wood duck. The wind was getting stronger and the temperature seemed to be headed in the wrong direction. The scope was becoming useless with the puddles forming over my eyes and tears forming at the corners.

There was also a redhead that I got a look at through the leader's scope. As we were about to head out, in came a flock of Canada geese, and everyone noticed that there was a greater white-fronted goose among them! Finally, my chance! After many agonizing and frustrating minutes of searching for it, I found it in the scope and also managed to grab a shot before it went back out of sight. Not the photo I was expecting, but I'm very happy I finally saw one!

#128: Greater White-Fronted Goose; East of Ottawa; April 3, 201. Can you pick it out?

Next was a stop at Larose Forest where everyone listened for evening grosbeaks and did find one. Can you find it? It sat perched right in a nice little opening.

#129: Evening Grosbeak; Edge of Larose Forest,East of Ottawa; April 3, 2011

Finally, we stopped at St-Albert and picked up some yummy cheese but didn't find any birds there. Orange cheddar is dyed.

I'm waiting to take the jump and buy a birding app for my brand spankin' new awesome iPhone. This thing is going to be a great birding tool (ontbirds always updating at my fingertips, maps, birding guides....awesome!). But $30 for the big birding apps...ouch!

east-end re-try (#106-107)

First try in the east end last weekend was unsuccessful so I tried again this weekend since I was going to the German Christmas Market. There was a flock of Snow Geese on the cover of the Citizen on Friday so I thought I'd try to catch them too. They weren't anywhere near where it reported them to be so thank god for Blackberrys..was able to find another report of them near St. Isidore. They were in a huge flock of pure white making a lot of noise. More would keep landing, and we were like, where the heck are they coming from? So we look up and there are more huge flocks of them WAY up in the sky getting ready to land. I guess they fly a lot higher up than other birds do. It was really awesome to watch them, but it was crazy windy cold and my eyes were tearing up so badly that I couldn't even tell if the focus was accurate. So I think Matt took maybe all of these pictures since he decided he wasn't leaving until he got perfect shots. 

106: Snow Goose; St. Isidore, Ontario; November 20, 2010

Think these might be Blues?

Also went out to see the Sandhill Cranes...missed them by about 300 metres last week. They were pretty close to the side of the road and make the most wicked noises (listen to them at whatbird....link below). There were only about 10 but supppsedly there are more like 100 around...but we didn't look for the rest of them because I was stocked enough to see these. It was sort of weird to see them in this environment (farm fields) since they look a lot like herons, which are always in marshes. Matt and I had seen some in Algonquin flyin way over head so it was good to finally see them up close and personal. You can't see them too well in this pic, but they have wicked red caps!

107: Sandhill Crane; Carlsbad Springs; November 20, 2010