Winter walk in the park

UPDATE about our friend, Mike Kelly, who amazingly survived an horrific vehicle accident (broken jaw, broken ankle and two broken legs), east of the city, in brutal, -30C weather. One of the two wonderful good Samaritans who saved his life turned up at Mike's hospital room! This will be so good for Mike, as he really, really wanted to meet his two life-savers and thank them in person. Hopefully, he will still get the chance to meet his other hero. We are all so grateful!

Three rather uninspiring photos posted this morning, mainly just as a record that I actually got out on a birding walk with a group of friends yesterday morning. Quite a photographic leap from the hot rainforest of Trinidad (posted yesterday) to the cold, winter sights of Calgary. One look at the weather forecast for this week and I decided that, if I was going to head over to Carburn Park, I had better do it yesterday. We are supposed to get snow this evening, overnight and the next two days. Temperature this overcast morning is -7C (windchill -15C), so not too bad. Yesterday, on our walk, the temperature was a balmy 1C-3C!

The light was not good for photos yesterday morning and most of the birds were very distant, as usual, at this location. Funny how it always works - if one is walking along the edge of the river, the birds are mainly on the far side. We did see 29 bird species, though. This Christmas bauble was hanging, with others, on a tiny tree in the park, and I can never resist taking a quick shot or two if I come across things like this. (OK, it just had to be done - I've just 'removed' the ugly piece of green tubing that was threaded through the loop for hanging.) My main reason for pushing myself out the front door was to catch up with friends.

Later in the day, a friend very kindly picked me up and we went to the meeting about the recent Christmas Bird Counts. What an enormous amount of detail and facts are collected each year - most impressive!