Kerri had been away to Ontario and Point Pelee shooting all kinds of great birds and others. She wantedto get out and see a Ruffed Grouse drumming, first hand so she was at my place at 5:10 a.m. to start our little adventure. We headed out to the Ranch, with the hopes of finding a drumming grouse and maybe a carnivore with some serious fur:)
We didn't run into any serious carnivores but Jackson Junior was home and doing a fine job of entertaining us. The conditions wre pretty brutal so I won't post any images here. This is a shot of a hen ruffed that we were able to find just up the road from Junior.
On the Chicken road we found this Vesper sparrow singing its heart out.
Up the road we interupted what appeared to be a Sharptail get together. There appeared to be at least 3 males and 9-12 females. We went up to the end of the road and sat for a half hour hoping that they might re-group. As we hit the top of the raod we spotted this fell with his 5 "girls" he was working very hard to keep their minds on him.
With all our findings today I will be doing a Grouse supplemental post just to share more images with all of you. In a diferent area we found a large group of yellowrumped warblers, I let Kerri get her shots as I am not expecting to improve much on the images I took last week. I grabbed this image of a Savannah sparrow.
There was an orangecrowned sparrow in the group, but I didn't get any images.
Well maybe I will post one YRW shot.
There were birds everywhere and this is a decent shot of a tree sparrow.
On our way home I found our third Ruffed of the day sitting under a spruce tree. Kerri was able to get out and walk around to my side of the truck and probably has better shots than mine. Oh, well here goes.
Then we spotted Sonny. He was out on his log in the wide open, not too far from the road. He will now be my go to bird as if he is home the view is unobstructed. Here is the link to my youtube channel so you can take a look:
Sonny, the little drummer grouse
I will throw another shot or two in the supplemental that I do. We found a couple of Townsend's Solitaires, but they were pretty skittish.
We found this injured raven by the side of the road a couple of times. It looks like its wing is done in. We don't usually get a chance to get a good image of these birds so I put this shot in.
And the hits just kept on coming! We wre inundated with 4 sapsuckers all at once, three Yellowbellied and one rednaped. Here are two of the yellowbellieds.
Our greatest surprise of the trip was, after allowing for a couple of closed roads, we found this Snow Bunting. It should be up in the arctic with the rest of his kin and kind at this time of the year.
We wrapped up the day on a high note, just as we started! This was one of the best grouse days I have ever had. I'm glad that we can still be surprised from time to time. Come on out to Calgary and let me show you how Alberta can surprise you!
Turbo
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