Birds in my Backyard and Beyond: February 2012

Monday, February 6, 2012

This Week in Birding....

I managed to get out to Point Pelee twice this week and bird from by dirty windows in between. On Wednesday I went to Point Pelee after picking up my new binoculars at Pelee Wings. My daughter came with me. We didn't see much...a Turkey Vulture, a bunch of racoons and some big gull-like birds way out in the lake. We toured the onion fields and didn't turn up a Snowy Owl, but we did see a couple of Northern Harriers cruising over the fields. Then, on Saturday, birding through my dirty bedroom windows (I really need to clean them), I saw a new visitor (and a lifebird) to our backyard! A Red-bellied Woodpecker! It was also nice to see a White-throated Sparrow visiting the feeders (only the 3rd time I have seen one in the back yard...here is a post about the first one I saw). Then I got a message through facebook from Denyse, our bestman's mother, and she asked if I would take her to see the Snowy Owl in Leamington, so we headed out today. I picked her up at about 8am and headed out to the onion fields. After a bit of searching, we came across what I think is a Northern Mockingbird, and eventually found the Snowy Owl. We then headed into PPNP to see what else we could find. We saw some ducks out in the lake at the tip that we couldn't quite make out for sure, crawled through the sand to get up from the beach, saw some turkey tracks and couldn't find a bird making quite a bit of noise in the woods. We then went out for lunch at a great place Denyse found out about by "asking the locals". We had a great day! Here are some pictures from this week...