Saturday, July 21, 2012

July 2012 Trip – Tunkwa Lake P.P. – Part two

As mentioned in Part one, the over whelming theme of this trip was feeding baby birds…

Savannah Sparrow with a mouthful

Savannah Sparrows everywhere were running around with mouthfuls of food!

Feed me!

most fledgling Savannah’s seemed to still be in hidden nests, but this little guy was advanced enough to have left his carefully concealed nest.

feeding the kids

Dark Eyed Junco were doing feeding duty as well…

Fledgling Cowbird in Ruby-Crowned Kinglet nest

Remember in a past blog, the little Ruby-crowned Kinglet nest and the female Brown Headed Cowbird sneaking into it?  Well guess what!  Here is the Kinglet nest and that is one fat fledgling cowbird hanging out of it!

Ruby Crowned Kinglet showing the 'ruby'

and here is the poor little Ruby-crowned Kinglet that has been run ragged keeping it fed.  The day after I took these pictures, the nest was no more.  It seems the cowbird had reached the stage where it’s size just blew the nest apart – not to worry though (if you worry about cowbirds), the fledgling was perched on a branch….still being fed.

Aspen Grove from a distance

over at the aspen grove…

slightly different

the Tree Swallows were busy feeding young.

Chipping Sparrow with a mouthful

Chipping Sparrows too were running around with mouthfuls of food.

Raven family

out and about, but still being very noisy and demanding was this rather large family of young Common Raven.

Robin with a mouthful

Mustn’t forget the Robins!  They were busy too!

Red-naped Sapsucker

There was a Red-naped Sapsucker nest in the same Aspen tree where the Northern Flicker nest had been – I tried and tried to get a picture of one of the parents going to the nest, but this was the only picture I managed the entire 5 days we were there, of one of the parents.

Geese

what wasn’t hard to get pictures of were the Canada Geese goslings!  My goodness!  Remember in my posts of the May trip I’d said how the people running the park had commented on how few Canada Geese there were?  Well no one would say that now.  There were so many goslings, from newly hatched size to some, like in the picture above, that were already molting into adult plumage….and we’ll have more on Canada Geese and others…in part three.

Friday, July 20, 2012

July 2012 Trip – Tunkwa Lake P.P. – Part one

For the July 1st, Canada Day long weekend, we did as we had done for the May long weekend, taking an extra 5 days off to extend the mini vacation.  This time we started at Tunkwa.

lush, green and windy

The month of June had been as wet and cool here as elsewhere in the province, resulting in a very green, lush landscape with high water levels for the lake.

The first campsite

With our favorite site taken, we settled for this one, the same spot we had stayed in last Thanksgiving…

Husky television

Shantz was very happy to have ‘husky television’ as not only were there various water fowl, but also many…

Marmot in the grass

Yellow-bellied Marmots, running here, there and everywhere!

Pair of Lesser Scaup

I was happy to be able to sit at the water’s edge were there were Lesser Scaup – the males already out of breeding plumage, but still paired up and no ducklings to be seen…

Pair of Red-neck Grebes

was also kind of confused by this pair of Red-necked Grebe that were constantly together, seemed to be loosing their breeding plumage but with no young.

Mallard family

these Mallard ducklings were well on their way to maturity…

Coot with young

and there were lots of young American Coot.  In fact youngsters and very busy parents feeding them, was definitely the theme and we’ll continue on in part two.