Cold and damp - but so beautiful

I overslept this morning till 12:15 pm and so am posting my photos really late today!

Three days ago, on 16 December 2014, it was the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count for the town of High River. This town is SE of Calgary, roughly half an hour's drive from the southern edge of Calgary. My small group travelled in two cars, 8 people in total, and we covered the SE quadrant of the Count circle.

I will add the report compiled by our leader, Gus Yaki. As usual, there were several of these sightings that I, myself, did not see. I ended up with poor photos of most of the things that I did see - the day was absolutely beautiful, but the light was even worse than I had realized. If your computer monitor is smaller than mine, my images might look a little better : ) The amazing hoar frost, that covered everything, surprisingly lasted pretty well the whole day - usually, it lasts only a very short time. So, even though the light wasn't good for photos, the hoar frost beauty stayed with us all day long - breathtaking. For our drive down to High River, we had fog which, in patches, was quite thick. Wondered if we would see anything at all when we reached our area, ha. It was cold and damp, as well as foggy. In addition to that, some of the birds, such as the three Snowy Owls (I only saw two of them) were SO far away, there was no chance for photos except just for the record. Only 35 species were seen in the total for the complete Count circle.

Of course, as always happens, I just had to take photos of anything else that caught my eye, including several barns, cloud formations, farm cats, and so on. This photo shows how the hoar frost covered everything - the trees, grass, fence posts, barbed-wire .... It almost seemed a shame to walk on it.

At another stop, we were looking in the bushes/shrubs at the edge of a different farm, where a Northern Saw-whet Owl had been sighted last Christmas Count. No luck with an owl, but one of the birders spotted a male Merlin very high up on a power pole with a "cover", which made it look as if the bird was sitting under a hair dryer at a hair salon, lol. A short while later, it was spotted just down the road, perched on a fence post. Such a beautiful bird - and such lousy light!

We had finished our count by 5:00 pm, by which time it was, of course, completely dark. A few of us stayed for the delicious pot luck supper, mainly provided by the generous birding people down in High River. Lorrie and John gave a slide show of their recent trip to Africa. So many great shots of beautiful bird species that I have never seen. Thanks, Lorrie and John, for spending time going through all your slides at home and choosing a lovely selection for us. Many thanks, too, for driving Shirley and myself all day long!

"HIGH RIVER CBC, SE quadrant, Frank Lk; E of #2, S of #23. 0830-1700, 16Dec2014. Overcast, heavy fog, created great hoarfrost on everything. Winds, variable direction, 10-15kph. -7°C. Ground mostly bare of snow; Little Bow River 95% frozen.

1. Mallard-1 f.
2. Scaup sp.- juv or f, likely Lesser-1
3. Gray Partridge-7
4. Ring-necked Pheasant-2
5. Bald Eagle-3 ( 2 ad/ 1 juv.)
6. Merlin-1 m.
7. Rock Pigeon-8
8. Great Horned Owl- 5 [an additional one seen N of Hwy 23, just W of Frank Lk exit at 16:56 pm.]
9. Snowy Owl-3
10. Downy Woodpecker-2
11. Northern Flicker-2
12. Black-billed Magpie-83
13. Common Raven-15
14. Horned Lark-20
15. Black-capped Chickadee-7
16. Common Redpoll-155
17. House Sparrow-669
18. 17 species of birds

MAMMALS:

Deer Mouse-1, deceased.
White-tailed Jackrabbit-1
Mule Deer-25
White-tailed Deer-44

Total Km by car-111; by foot- 3.
Total hours by car – 6; on foot-2.5

Gus Yaki"

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I now have to work through all the photos I took yesterday on the Christmas Bird Count, get some of them edited and then sent in. Tomorrow, I will be spending the day outside the city with my youngest daughter for our Christmas get-together. She suggested that we spend the day driving some of the backroads : ) She is really, really hoping that we will be able to find a Snowy Owl, as she has never seen one. The weather forecast changed overnight and now mentions a few snow flurries for tomorrow, at least for Calgary. The next day, I go on a Bird Count for the town of Nanton, south of Calgary, and will then have to go through all those photos and edit some to send. Two days later, I have yet another bird count, NE of the city, in the Badlands of Alberta. You would think that by now, after taking part in so many Christmas Bird Counts the last few years, I would have learned how to be organized enough to get all my dozens of overseas Christmas letters and cards finished and mailed before the very first Count. That just never seems to happen, somehow .... sigh.