Gathering food for his babies

Back to local birds, but also back to the archives. It was a case of either post no photos this morning or quickly grab three from my archives. Still taking no new photos and still missing all the new bird arrivals back to the city and surroundings, which is so frustrating and disappointing. Soon, that will change, and I will be so thankful.

Late afternoon on 20 July 2017, the smoke haze from the B.C. and Alberta wildfires seemed to have lifted somewhat. So, I took a drive along some of my favourite roads SW of the city, seeing a few of the 'usual' things. These included this handsome American Robin, who was busy collecting insects for his babies. He flew in just when I was looking for Mountain Bluebirds, landed on a fence post and then off he flew. Such beautiful, but often overlooked, birds.

In between photographing Mountain Bluebirds, I drove part way along a road that I had only ever been on once before, and that was quite recently. Usually, I am home earlier than I was on this particular day. This later time meant that I was lucky enough to see two families of deer - White-tailed and Mule Deer. The first was a Mule Deer doe with her fawn standing at the edge of the road. I pulled over way down the road and waited till they had safely crossed. Managed to get a couple of distant shot through the windscreen, with the usual poor quality results. I knew that there would be a barbed-wire fence the far side of the road and I didn't want to spook them and risk them getting tangled in the sharp barbs. Several years ago, I had seen a huge Moose get spooked and then get briefly tangled in barbed wire - it spooked when it suddenly realized that some farm cows had quietly come up behind it!