Evening Grosbeak, Varied Thrush, Elk (20140615) Tim. Jamie and I head out early for a cruise.

4:50 a.m. comes early on a weekend, but with a crew we headed out. It was a brutal light day as it rained off and on all day so we never really had any light. The one exception was this cow Elk waiting to welome us into the park.

All was quiet until we got to then very end of the rabbit road when Tim spotted a pair of Evening Grosbeaks. This created a little excitement as he had never seen one previously and this would be the first Alberta sighting for Jamie and I. I have always liked lie female bird of this specie.

Finding an acceptable image of the make proved to be tougher but I believe I found a reasonable representation.

On the way out the road we found a group of brids flitting about and they turned out to be Junco's. My mother would kill me if I passed up an opportunity to shoot one of these sweeties.

We also manage to locate a family of Whiskey Jacks. The young are quite different then there well defined parents. These birds have a bluish/sooty colouration.

Our nextr surprise was a "lifer" for me and Tim, and Jamie thinks he has seen one of these beauties before. It ws great to finally grab an image of a Varied Thrush.

So the rabbit road paid off big time for us as nearing the end of the trail we were able to find a Wilson's Warbler.

We had to take Tim back to his car, so it was just Jamie and I for the balance of the day. We started of the afternoon with this nice looking Bull Moose. His antlers are coming along nicely.

We also managed to find several Townsend's Solitraires but they were tough to get a good image of, this will have to do for now.

Our last treat of the day was a very wet, but semi cooperative female Pine Grosbeak. She was very preoccupied with getting her grit, in spite of the rain.

It was a very slow day. The Thrush and Grosbeak's help ease the pain of the poor numbers. It was a super day. With a couple of great guys. Hope you too had a great wildlife weekend!
Turbo