A danger to wildlife

For maybe a week, I have been having a problem getting my photos to be bright enough. So weird - I never had this happen before. They seem to look OK when I edit them the night before, then, when I post them on Flickr the following morning, they almost always look too dark.

Yesterday morning, 9 April 2016, friends Dorothy and Stephen led a group of us on a birding walk at Carburn Park. Most enjoyable, except for the very strong winds! Down by the river, especially, we were almost blown off our feet. Amazing that any bird can deal with that, but we still ended up seeing a good number of species, including a little House Sparrow busy preparing a tree cavity for a nest. The House Sparrow is an introduced species here.

Fairly near the start of our walk, past the lagoon, I spotted something orange in the low fork of a tree. My first thought was, ooh, a fungus of some kind. When I started walking towards it, I suddenly thought that maybe it was an Easter egg that had been hidden on a family outing, that hadn't been found. Closer to the tree, I realized it was an orange fishing float, along with this hooked fly, caught in the tree by a length of fishing line. My immediate thought was that this should never have been left in the tree, as a bird or maybe a Squirrel could easily get themselves caught by it. After I removed it, one of the birders said he would take the fly home for his Grandson to use. I always remember seeing a beautiful Northern Flickr a few years ago, hanging upside down high up in a tree. It had a lot of discarded fishing line wrapped around its body.

I will add our leaders' final list of species:

Birding for Beginners, Saturday 9 April, 2016. Carburn Park. 9:00 a.m.-11:15 a.m. Sunny, N.Wind 49 kph. 7-10 degrees C. 22 participants.

1. Canada Goose – 20
2. Common Goldeneye – 10
3. Mallard – 10
4. Common Merganser – 4
5. Hooded Merganser – 1
6. Ring-billed Gull – 34
7. Franklin Gull – 2
8. Bald Eagle – 1
9. Bohemian Waxwings – 12
10. Black-capped Chickadees – 11
11. American Crow – 6
12. Northern Flicker – 6
12. House Finch – 4
13. Magpie – 6
14. Merlin – 1
15. Red-breasted Nuthatch - 3
16. Raven – 10
17. American Robin – 15
18. Starling – 2
19. House Sparrow – 4
20. Tree Swallow – 9
21. Yellow-rumped Warbler - 1
22. Downy Woodpecker – 5

White-tailed Deer – 6
Black Squirrel – 6

Leaders: Bernie Diebolt, Dorothy & Stephen Spring

Many thanks, Dorothy and Stephen, for giving up a Saturday morning for us all. As always, the trip to Tim Hortons for coffee and lunch after the walk was great.