I always enjoy seeing a chickadee. It was a windy August day and the bird seemed to have a tenuous grip on the edge of the rock. It appeared to be molting too.
There are still flowers about but on some recent walks, the gardens are looking more like this.As for the trees they have begun to show off their fall colours.
We tend to see more goldfinch in the late summer and early fall as flowers dry and form seed heads, their food of choice. This male looks like he’s beginning to moult.
On a recent drive heading to a new birding area, we stopped when we saw this pond close to a suburban development. The water was teeming with several egrets, cormorants and a lot of other water birds.We never did make it to our original destination.
I’m always surprised at how hefty groundhogs look as their diet consists mainly of grass and the contents of people’svegetable gardens😏. They hibernate from late fall through the winter so right now they’re working on their fat reserves.
People we met on the trail pointed us in the general direction of this barred owl. Unlike other owls who often keep close to the trunk or inside a tree cavity, barred owls often are quite easy to spot if you know where to look. This owl was my first of the year.
As we followed the path down to the beach we saw an egret standing in the long grass. After a while it turned towards the river and we left it to its wandering.
I heard the pileated woodpecker before I saw it. As we got closer, several people were gathered close to the tree the bird was excavating.If you look closely you can just see its tongue darting into the hole it had drilled to retrieve its meal.
It is still very much summer but the landscape is slowly showing signs of fall. There’s a bit more yellow in the fields and milkweed pods are opening to release their seeds. I like photographing these changes.
We recently visited a favourite nature reserve that had a variety of birds the day we were there. After taking a good number of photos, I slowed down to catch my breath and noticed this scene.I’m glad I saw it, there’s a lot we can overlook when our eye is on the “prize”.
Somehow I missed taking photos of poppies this summer until I came across this one in a wildlife garden. It’s approaching the end of their season so I was pretty pleased to get the photo.