So What’s Been Going On Since Last Time

or perhaps

Does it still count as a Blog if I only post every few months???

I have to get a better handle on this thing (he says to himself knowing full well nothing will happen).

In June last year we had a few nasty storms come through the area. My Lady and I were sitting in the parking lot of the town Visitor Centre and watched as the clouds worked their way across the river from the west. My Lady suggested I take a photo, so I happily obliged. The phone panorama worked quite well.

Also in June My Lady and I went to Niagara Falls to see the new Tunnel attraction. We did the evening tour that included an interactive light display that we found informative and entertaining. Then we took the elevator down to the Tunnel, and made our way out to the viewing area beside the Horseshoe Falls. Spent a little time here and had to protect the camera occasionally so it didn’t get too wet. This attraction might be really cool to see at night when the Falls freeze up and the lights are shining on it.

In September our town has a little event called The Uncommon Festival. It’s a great time for fans of Steampunk and Wizardry to dress up in their favourite cosplay outfits and hang out with like-minded friends. We have been a couple of times and some of the costumes are really fantastic. I went in the evening this year and watched as a bunch of “Pirates” and “Soldiers” entertained the crowd by firing cannons as well as muskets and blunderbuss toward the river. Got a couple of interesting photos.

In the fall we went out towards the Bracebridge area hoping to see the autumn colours, unfortunately we were a little bit early so we checked out some waterfalls instead. However we did get to see the partial Lunar Eclipse.

A few weeks after that we headed north along Lake Huron to visit Goderich and Bayfield. Pretty little towns and a couple of our favourite day trips.

Would you believe that Birding has still been going on? Yup, even after our amazing journey to Texas, we still get out to look for birds whenever we can. If you have been reading my past posts you would likely have seen most of the regulars that come by, however we did have a few new ones that deserve a mention.

Then of course along comes the time to spend on the Holiday Beach Hawk Tower, helping to count whatever happens to be flying by.
This year we had an amazing young gentleman who was able to pick up the calls of birds flying by, and was so fast with his camera it was like watching an old western gunslinger shoot a coin out of the sky. He was able to get some awesome photos of birds that I couldn’t even see.

Remember the Pelicans that came by in the early spring last year? Well it looked like they had a great time in the breeding grounds, and they made their way back to our little marsh, and took up residence for a month or so. Often there were over 1000 Pelicans on the marsh at a time.

So 2024 was an amazing year for people who enjoy looking at the sky. The sun has been very “dirty” with sunspots throughout the year, and I have really enjoyed getting some shots of it. Then of course we had the major event of the spring (perhaps a lifetime) with the Total Eclipse in April.
In May we had the Aurora that sadly we stayed in bed for, followed up with the August aurora that we fortunately had a chance to see.
Did you know that in October we had another aurora? This one I am calling a MAJOR EVENT, perhaps even going so far as calling it an AURORAGASM (surely better than sex?). I have never seen anything like it before, and one young lady in our group was in such awe that she said “It’s so beautiful I feel like crying!”
I’ve been asked if the actual views were as good as the photos, and all I can say is that once our eyes were adjusted to the dark, all the colours were easily visible. So even while the camera was taking 8 second long exposures, I was still able to observe and enjoy. At one point the sky was Red all the way over our heads.
Wait until you see the photos below.
And just a week after that we were able to see Comet A3 with our naked eyes (it was difficult, but once you knew where to look it became easier). The photos look better as I took a number of photos a few seconds long each, then stacked them to really show what the tail looked like.
And we can’t forget the previously mentioned Partial Lunar Eclipse

Winter came in with a vengeance this year. It was cold all across North America, and we had our few days of it as well. Not only that, but we actually got some snow! Nothing like in the traditional snow belts, or what was going on in Toronto, but more than we have seen since coming down here. And with the cold weather, the snow stayed longer. The marshes froze over and people were out skating and playing hockey on them, the Detroit River was on and off frozen and Lake Erie had large ice shelves reaching far out from the shore.

But winter did bring in some of the winter birds, like Horned Larks, Snow Buntings, Lapland Longspurs and Dark Eyed Juncos, while others tough it out throughout the year, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Nuthatch, Blackbirds and Starlings and a good number of ducks.

We also have a few Raptors that are comfortable with the winter weather. Red Tail Hawks, Coopers Hawks, Northern Harriers, and of course Bald Eagles. I submitted the photo below of the Adult Bald Eagle to our local CTV news channel, and it appeared as the Photo Of The Day on the following day. Unfortunately we missed seeing it, but one of our friends sent me a text letting me know that they saw it.

Slowly the months turn over and March makes itself known by bringing in the warmer weather, and the promise of a new birding season.

My Lady and I went to a nearby Provincial Park in early March and as we were walking along the road a dark streak flew in front of us and landed in a tree. I got my binoculars on it and we were thrilled to see a Pileated Woodpecker! We hadn’t seen one since before we left Toronto, and although we hear of one visiting the area once in a while, we were never in the right place at the right time.

All winter we had an impossible time finding any owls, and after lamenting our woes to one of our friends, he advised us of a place that we should be able to see some. Fortunately he was right, and we had a couple of wonderful days observing a number of Short Eared Owls hunting.

A couple of weeks later another friend pointed out a Screech Owl sitting in a box.

It took a little while longer this year for the Pelicans to return to Holiday Beach, but it’s nice to be able to say that they are making their way through with a bit of a stopover here. Sadly the marsh is at its lowest water since before we moved down, and all of the birds are having a harder time finding food. This includes the Pelicans. There have been a few days where they weren’t seen at all after their earlier arrival.

So how many of you got to see the Blood Moon in March? I actually stayed up all night and had my camera taking photos every 20 seconds from pretty well start to finish. I have this little compilation here, instead of putting in too many photos.

Well, after March comes what I like to call “Birding Season”. April and May are some of the best months for the inbound migration and Holiday Beach and Point Pelee are going to see a lot of us again this year. Of course this means I will likely have a couple of thousand photos to go through before I can put together another posting. Hopefully you will all be patient.

Does that get us all caught up? Maybe, but I am sure I am missing a lot. Maybe I will remember it in time for my next posting (whenever that turns out to be).

Thanks again for reading, hope you are still enjoying what you see.

Till next time.

Almost Mid February and I am Finally Getting January Finished.

So here we are in another year of this stupid PanDAMNic, with all it’s variants. Let’s hope we can finally get this thing outta here.

January started off pretty nicely with a couple of firsts. I was out on Jan 2^nd looking for Snow Buntings when an alert came through about a Yellow Headed Blackbird at Jack Miners, as well as Snow Geese and a Blue Morph Snow Goose. I raced over to Jack Miners and was shown where everything was by one of our friends. The Yellow Headed is easy to see in the photo, but you need to look carefully to see the Snow Geese and the Blue Morph Snow Goose.

One evening where we were driving home and the sunset was ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS! Can you tell we were impressed? I have no idea what caused this beautiful sight, but we are very thankful to have seen it, and taken a photo of it.

Another evening as we were on our way home we took a different route and had a very pleasant surprise. We noticed what we had thought was another Harrier, but it flew differently. As it turned into the light we saw that it was a Short Eared Owl. I can’t tell you where it was because we have been asked not to report Owl sightings, but hopefully I don’t get in trouble reporting it here, long after it seems to have moved out of the area. We haven’t seen it since that time.

As My Lady and I wandered back into the Onion Fields near Point Pelee we saw one of the Snowy Owls land on a pole just down the road. It allowed me to take some photos, even as it cleaned itself. It looked like it was laughing at me as it said “get a good look now because we are out of here”. We haven’t seen any since then.

Starlings are still hanging around in large flocks. We happened upon one flock in a field and as we were sitting there they took off right at us as they flew over the car and into the field across the road. We needed to wash the car afterwards.

Sure enough winter actually decided to make itself known in January. We ended up getting a bit of snow, and then it got cold. We went for a walk through Ojibway Park and happily found an Eastern Towhee feeding with some Cardinals. Not many Towhee around so we were fortunate to see one.

With the colder weather the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie have started to freeze over. This is good for birders because we can hang out at the marina across from Peche Island and watch all the Waterfowl, Gulls and Eagles feeding in the small area of open water. As the few ships that go through stir up the fish, the frenzy begins with everyone enjoying the chance to snag a meal. Surprisingly the Blue Herons which normally like to remain lonely old men, have also had to hang out together like a bunch of mall groupies sitting in a food court drinking coffee.

Of course the snow brings Snow Buntings! We love our little baby Buntings. Can’t get enough of them and we go out looking quite often.

I can honestly say there has been a major influx of Northern Harriers this year. Almost every time we go out we see at least one flying low over the fields. Sometimes we get to see them close up and when we are really lucky they are enjoying a good meal.

Now I have to say that I know almost nothing about Gulls. Notice that I am not calling them Sea Gulls, learned that one soon after coming down here… No Sea here. But we have had a couple of rarities. An Iceland Gull and a Glaucous Gull. I didn’t rush to see them, but one day when I went to the marina I found out from other friends that they were both there, and they even gave us a show.

Near the end of the month My Lady and I went for a walk in Holiday Beach. It was very cold that day, but the wind stayed comfortable enough not to keep us away. You know it’s cold when the snow makes that irritating sound like you are walking on Styrofoam. Yup, it was that cold. Snowrofoam?

The last day of the month brought us freezing fog in the morning. Before the sun rose the air was thick and the light was very diffused and grey. Once the sun was able to break through and the fog broke we were left with a beautiful coating of Hoar Frost on all of the trees. I had to run out and grab some photos before it all disappeared.

Well, that pretty well wraps up January. Hope everyone is staying warm.

Thanks for reading. Stay Safe

Till next time

What’s with this SNOW?

Welcome to my new readers. Always nice to see you here. Hope you continue to enjoy.

Well, originally we didn’t expect February to be anything interesting, but I guess in a way, it turned out to be alright.

The past few months have been pretty grey with a lot of cloud cover, but for some reason we actually got to see the sun a number of times in February. With this though came the colder weather. The ice on the river built up quickly so Lake Erie and Lake St Clair both froze over as far as the eye could see. A lot of the waterfowl moved in a bit closer so we visited the Lakeview Marina a few times to see what we could get photos of. Sadly we missed a couple of the different visitors, but we were always entertained by the good old regulars.

Early in the month we heard about a Mockingbird being seen in Ojibway Park in Windsor. So my Lady and I packed up our lunch and set off to see if we could find it. Thankfully it wasn’t too hard to find as it was just along the trail leading to the popular bird feeding bridge, and it was willing to give us a show. At one point it was chasing some Eastern Bluebirds out of the area while we were trying to photograph them as well.

And SNOW, geez did we get snow this year. Some of the residents in our area said they hadn’t seen this much in almost 10 years. We actually had to go out and shovel a few times, and when the plows came along we had to work hard to clear the end of the driveway. Thankfully, we have a great group of neighbours who are all willing to work together to help everyone out.

Sure, some people living in more traditional Snow Belts would laugh at us complaining of a “little bit of snow”, but we live in a Banana Belt down here at the bottom of Canada. I guess if Texas can get slammed by old man Winter, then it’s fitting that we get a bit here too in the Great White North, even if we don’t like it so much. Kids on the other hand were having a blast. With the marshes frozen over we saw a good number of skating and hockey rinks popping up, and even had a few parents out scooting over the fields in their snowmobiles.

One really nice thing about the snow was the arrival of thousands of Snow Buntings being seen all over the county. A few concessions over from us had the largest flock of Buntings that I have ever seen. Sure, I really haven’t seen a lot, but this one was really big. They hung around a couple of silos that must have had enough food scattered about to keep them satisfied, but they would be so far away from the road where I couldn’t really photograph them. I did manage to find other flocks that would kinda let me be close enough and have added a few photos below. A large number of Horned Larks and a very, very small number of Lapland Longspur would join in with the Snow Bunting feasts.

Just down the road is Big Creek which also was almost completely frozen over, except for a small area close to the road, about 50 feet across, where the ducks, geese, swans, a couple of herons, and the local Eagle family would all congregate and feed. One day we stopped to watch an eagle harass the other visitors, and eventually it caught a small fish and then flew off to a tree to enjoy it. It was snowing a fair bit at the time, as you can see in the photos.

Oddly, we had a few Virginia Rails that were trying to overwinter at the Point Pelee Marsh this year. We were fortunate to be able to get out to see them on a good day when at least one was feeding along the boardwalk. With the cold weather there was a lot of concern about whether or not they would survive and we aren’t sure if they made it, as we went back a few days after the heavy snowfalls and we couldn’t find any new tracks and nobody has seen them since. They nest in the marsh so we can always hope that they were able to find a new area to hunker down in and stay safe. It’s a big marsh after all.

While at Pelee, I climbed the tower at the tip to see how much ice had been building on the lake.

And here we have a few more of the Pelee residents

We went to the marina a couple days ago when it was getting warmer, and all the eagles were gone from Peche Island. Often there are over a dozen or more hanging out in the trees, but with the ice breaking up, and the lakes and rivers running again, they have either moved on, or found somewhere else to find food for now.

There were still a small number of the regulars close by, and I was really lucky to find a Hooded Merganser in the mix. At one point it was cleaning itself up, and I just sat there waiting for the inevitable rise up and flap wings motion. Finally, up it goes and my finger hits the button and click click click, and then it’s over in about 1 second. Fortunately, I got the shot I was waiting for.

So that’s about it for the February roundup. Hopefully March will begin to bring some of the early birds in. On the 28th we had some Killdeer flying around our heads as my Lady and I went for a walk in the neighbourhood. Maybe some of the other shore birds will start showing up too.

Remember, if you like the stories or photos, enter your email and click the Follow button to get notifications of any updates. Looks like I may have actually settled into a routine of doing a monthly roundup, so I think I will try to keep it that way, unless something really special happens.

Thanks for reading.

Till next time.

Once Every 4 Years

Hey guess what! Winter is almost over!

Overall, it has been a fairly gentle one down here, other than the constant cloud cover, and the occasional snowfall that we have to sweep away. But hey, the sun has actually been making an appearance a little more often nowadays. We have even had the front and back doors open a few days, and the freshness of the air is exhilarating.

Just had a silly thought, if 1 year in human time, is equal to 7 years in dog time, how old is the dog if it celebrates its birthday on February 29. Since it only comes around every 4 years, that dog could live forever!

And what about cats? If they have 9 lives, and are born on Leap Day, do they automatically get 4 times as many?

My brain hurts.

And now for something completely different ,,, Birds. You knew it was coming.

We had a Snow Goose hanging out with all of the Canada Geese in a field across the road. Then one day we were driving alongside the river into town, and my Lady says to stop, there’s something different on someone’s riverfront yard. Sure enough, there’s our little Snow Goose, up nice and close.

Snow Goose hanging out with a flock of Canada Geese

Then we got word of some Snow Buntings out near Point Pelee. Into the car we go and eventually find them out distant in the field where we first saw the Black Bellied Whistling Duck in the summer. It was beautiful to see a few hundred of these little birds dancing from spot to spot.

We also got word of 6 Meadowlark sticking around a field about 20 minutes away, so we packed up a cup of tea and headed over to see if we could find them. As we approached the area, they flew out of the trees on the left and into the field on the right. Of course, they flew a good way out into the field, but a bit of patience allowed us to get a couple of good photos. Not only that, we had some Snow Buntings playing around nice and close. Not close enough to get single birds, but a wonderful display of them flying.

Meadowlarks in flight. Vibrant yellow in a grey season

Part of the large flock of Snow Buntings

We wandered over to Wheatley harbor a week or so ago, and we were graced with a beautiful display from some Bald Eagles. They mostly paired off and did their aerial gymnastics, but at one point we counted 7 spread out across the lakefront.

I almost forgot, we were out for a walk at Holiday Beach last week, and as we were passing an area where we had seen deer before, my Lady stops me and looks through her binoculars. I look through my camera, and get off a couple of shots of a little Fox out sunning itself. It didn’t like the fact that we had stopped, so it quickly got up and moved further into the trees.

As for everything else, we are going through photos of the birds from last year’s migration, and are trying to be able to identify them quickly, just in case we get put on a spot, or maybe even tested.

Sorry for the long time between posts, but it’s been a bit hard to sit down and put my mind into writing, when there has been so much wildlife outside to keep us busy.

Thanks for reading.

Till Next Time.