Mountain Chickadee

Yesterday was the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count in Nanton, an hour's drive S of Calgary. Two friends and I covered the SW quarter of the huge circle around this small town and a number of other people, including a few from that area, drove the backroads of the rest of the circle. I absolutely love the scenery that we cover between approximately 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.. In winter, these rolling hills have a special charm, though they are not the best roads for driving, especially the gravel roads. There were a few roads that we had to miss out because there was just too much snow on the ground. Also, the snow made it either difficult or impossible to walk round some of the farmyards that we call in at, so we were unable to search all the bushes and trees that we would have liked to. Not a whole lot of birds this year, though we enjoyed finding two extremely distant Golden Eagles and two Bald Eagles. Another bird that either we don't normally see or hadn't seen before in our quadrant was the Mountain Chickadee, seen in the really poor photo above, which was the "best" I managed to get of one of them, but at least you can see the black and white striped head, for those of you who are not familiar with this small bird. Will add the complete list of the birds we managed to find as soon as I receive it. On the drive S from Calgary, the coldest temperature we encountered was -34C (-29.2 F) - and that's without any windchill! Brutally cold temperatures, but thankfully no or little wind, which makes all the difference. The next few days are supposed to be warmer, thank goodness.