Things with wings

This was a few days ago on the secluded beach called Sandy Cove that I visited while tooling around on the Burin Peninsula. At the time, I knew this was some sort of piper, but had no idea what sort. At home, I looked them up and decided it was a sandpiper. It and its friends spent the hour we were there chasing the waves back and forth, only startling into the air when I got too close.

A fly this afternoon tucking into a hawkweed flower.

The pigeons live wild in the city but they are more dependent than most birds on what they scrounge from us human beings. Through the summer months they are happy enough to stay away from our deck, but the colder months are different. Today, 5 October, was the first day this season one of them came by to strut back and forth and to eat from our platter.

I know. I know. You call them larches. But hereabouts everyone calls them junipers. And they are losing their needles a little early this fall, probably because of the slap-about Hurricane Larry gave them a month ago.

Whenever the weather gets blowy, gulls congregate in this series of sports fields, a couple of soccer pitches and a couple of baseball diamonds. The biggest crowd is always to be seen in this, the bigger diamond. Today and last night we've had very strong northerlies and the birds used it as an opportunity for a parliament. Sometimes a half-dozen geese stop by with them, but I saw none today.

According to what I hear, the flesh of a yew berry is the only part of the yew that is not poisonous to human beings. I don't know about avian beings, but this chickadee and its partner have been picking them off the bush for a while. There are so few left, they have to go well into the bush to find them. Today being a warm day, they were happily at it. This one took the berry over to our apple tree to eat. After a few bites she (or he: I can't tell) lost it in the leaf litter down below.

The chickadees (an older friend of the family used to call them pitchipees) have been residents of our yard summer and winter as long as we've been here. They have been very happy to see that I'd put up the black sunflower seed feeder yesterday. And this morning, the four of them have been coming and going from the feeder.

Just before sunset, a pair of flickers came by and, ignoring the fresh suet I have out, tucked into the holly berries at the bottom of the garden. This is the one less wary of being in the open.

The very dark, warm weather yesterday with a stiff southerly wind, changed into cold, clear weather today with a stiff westerly. At breakfast time it was snowing. This fellow was one of the visitors.

When the local pair of flickers come to visit the suet, one will wait on the side for the other to eat. Very charming.

Usually this time of year, mid-January, we have other finches too, notably the purple ones, But only the goldfinches have been around here yet. And we've seen no pine siskins nor evening grosbeaks yet. I hear their migration is making its way and may show up any day. We do have lots of juncos, crows and bluejays. But no other finches. But we may by then have stopped feeding the birds. A local outbreak of bird flu (H5N1) among wild birds at some ponds and at a couple of small poultry farms has got the city and the provincial veterinary officials alarmed. There's a great controversy locally about which birds to stop feeding. We bird feeders are told that the small birds are okay to continue feeding, but not the pigeons. (Pigeons tend to mix with the ducks and geese etc at the ponds around town.) To my knowledge, once the pigeons find your feeder (and they've found ours), there's no way to dissuade them. So I'll let the feed run out. Too bad. This American goldfinch was outside our kitchen door this morning.

We've started removing the bird feeders (there's an H5N1 outbreak near-by) but I'm still feeding some birds. Like the couple of flickers that live in the neighbourhood; this is the she. It is raining this afternoon and her feathers showed it when I took this picture a half-hour ago outside the kitchen window.

This is the first purple finch seen at our feeder this winter, here for breakfast this morning. But after a few bites, along with his goldie cousin, he was nearly stock still for five minutes as they slowly looked upwards around into the trees for a hawk I couldn't see. Apparently, they couldn't see it either. Eventually, an all-clear signal was given (and I couldn't hear that); the two flew off together.

It was raining pretty hard this afternoon but the goldfinches were out in big numbers getting a few bites where they could.

My neighbour's chimneys are well loved by local birds for the heat coming up on a cold day. It's around minus ten degrees (C -- uhh, that's about like sixteen F) today and the starlings are taking turns at the chimney tops. (And they aren't weighty enough to topple the loose bricks from this one.)

We're getting several species of small finches almost every day, but none of the bigger grosbeaks. Here are a pine siskin (left, rear), three goldfinches, and a purple finch.

I figure everyone is delighted by the arse-end of a male purple finch. Here you are.

Before starting supper, I stept outside the kitchen and saw this duckish day-moon through the trees, with gulls. It's about six hours less than three days from full.