Evening Grosbeaks

Evening Grosbeaks at Karl's "rusty nail" feeder. Yvonne Koenig/Karl Madsen photo

While some of our friends in northern Saskatchewan shudder when a noisy horde of Evening Grosbeaks descends on their feeders, our son and his wife are delighted to see them at their Okangan feeders. I think it's all part of the "familiarity breeds contempt" business. They come down from the mountains to search for lunch in the valley when their regular food sources are running low and so are a rare treat for Karl and Yvonne.

Thus far in the five years we've been in Naicam, we have not had Evening Grosbeaks visit our feeders although we have had both Rose-breasted and Pine Grosbeaks.

Did you know that an Evening Grosbeak is actually a finch and that they are named Grosbeak (i.e. big beak) for their thick, short, conical bills needed for cracking seeds? And that the Evenings have the largest (is that grossest) beak of all grosbeaks?

Several years ago, Yvonne was at her computer when a grosbeak crashed into the window right in front of her and dropped to the deck. She phoned me to ask what she should do, should she should take it to the vet. I advised her to put it somewhere safe from cats or other predators - like a box or an upturned bucket - and let it recover on its own.

I'd learned about the amazing recuperative power of birds the hard way. Middle daughter Kristin, then seven or eight,was going out the door on her way to school when she discovered a dead bird on the deck. It had obviously collided with the window. She was in tears watching me pick it up by one toe and deposit it gingerly in the garbage can. After school she brought a clutch of friends home with her to view the dead bird. When she opened the lid, the magically recovered bird flew off and I became known as the mother who throws birds in the garbage.

And yes, Yvonne's first bird rescue was successful. After resting and recuperating, the grosbeak flew off to join its buddies.

P.S. So this is Groundhog Day! Six more weeks of winter? If that's all, we'll be dancing in the street!

What are you eating?

Orange-variant House Finch on top of feeder made entirely of recycled wood. Margaret Madsen photo

My last blog was about a bird house recycled from a rotten log. Today we have a feeder built entirely of recycled wood by our son Karl. But actually, it's not the feeder I want to talk about, but that little guy perched up on top. Okay, okay, it's not a great photo. You'll have to trust me when I tell you it's a House Finch and not your regular run-of-the mill red-fronted House Finch but an orange variant.

House Finches are cheerful streaky brown and white sparrow-like little birds with red breasts, foreheads, eyebrows and rumps. The red can range from bright scarlet through shades of red-orange to orange and even yellow. We had yellow variants at our feeder here in Naicam last summer. It was hard to believe they were the same species as the scarlet red birds eating next to them. The variation in color is apparently linked to carotenoid pigments in the fruits the birds eat, according to The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior.

I learned another interesting tidbit about the domestic life of House Finches from Sibley. The male apparently feeds the female while she is busy incubating the eggs and after the chicks are born, he continues to feed her, regurgitating seeds into her mouth. She then in turn regurgitates seeds into the mouths of her newly-hatched babies. As soon as the chicks are covered with enough downy feathers to keep them warm when she leaves the nest, she joins her mate in bringing food to their growing family.

Another "red" bird that regularly visits our summer feeders is the misnamed Purple Finch. Roger Tory Peterson, author/artist of the famous Peterson Field Guides, described them as "sparrows dipped in raspberry juice." It's the perfect description. Their red has a tinge of blue in it, just like raspberries.

Female House and Purple Finches have no red but both are streaked brown and white. You can tell them apart by checking their heads. The female Purple Finch has a prominent light stripe behind her eye, a dark brown  cheek patch, white jaw stripe and dark broad chin stripe. The female House Finch, on the other hand, has a plain brownish face.

Ah me, life at our feeders at the moment is pretty boring - House Sparrows, Black-capped Chickadees and Redpolls. It was the red on the Redpolls that reminded me of the red finches of summer and inspired today's blog.

I'll be back here again on Monday. I will try to continue to post Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Meanwhile, if you have a bird photo or story you'd like to share, email it to me at rutan212@gmail.com.

Birdhouses and a cowboy

Simple birdhouse made from a hollowed log. Margaret Madsen photo

There's no better tonic for a cold, blustery day than to cuddle inside with a seed catalogue or gardening magazine and dream of summer gardens. It seems that birdhouses are the current decorative item of choice in all the gardens featured in magazines. There are birdhouses that look like churches or log cabins or alpine lodges or miniature versions of the gardener's home. They come in all shapes and sizes and every color of the rainbow to coordinate or contrast with the flowers growing near. In fact, it's like birdhouses have become the toss cushions in the garden "room".

Don't get me wrong. I love birdhouses regardless of their shape or color. As long as they actually welcome birds - like the one in today's photo. It was taken 15-20 years ago while I was still working for a newspaper - you can tell by the bark on the Ponderosa pine that it was in BC.

I'd gone to interview an old cowboy who in his late-70s was retiring as head herdsman on a local ranch, a job he'd had for more than 50 years. He looked exactly like one would expect an old cowboy to look - whip lean, leathery as an old boot, slightly bow-legged. He was soft-spoken and rather shy, so I was grateful his wife was there to prod him along and fill in the blanks.

They told me about the glory days of the 1950s when the herd he looked after was the most celebrated in Canada, sweeping top honors at the biggest Canadian cattle show, the Toronto Royal Winter Fair.

So how did you get cattle from the central Okanagan all the way across the country to Toronto in the days before Rogers Pass or the Trans-Canada highway or the mega cattle-hauling trucks of today? By rail, that's how. This was still a journey of four or five days which meant the cattle couldn't travel on their own; someone had to feed and water them - Harold and another ranch worker. And their wives.

They arranged for a boxcar to be spotted at the siding well in advance of departure date. This allowed them to have stalls built to keep the animals sorted, the hay and other feed and supplies safe. Above the stalls, they built a platform for the human caregivers to sleep, cook, eat and while away the miles. And as they told their story, it sounded like a great adventure, not a horrendous hardship.

As I was getting ready to leave, I noticed the rustic birdhouses in their yard. Harold explained that he made them from hollow logs he picked up in the bush when checking cattle. Small diameter logs like the one here, which was home to a tree swallow that year, were given small openings and closed top and bottom with pieces of recycled wood. Larger logs made homes for bigger birds. He'd put one of these big ones up back in the bush where he'd originally found the log and it had attracted a nesting owl.

Happy birthday, Evelyn

Female Rufous Hummingbird. Margaret Madsen photo.

Whenever my sister Evelyn's birthday rolls around, I cheer and feel like dancing in the street. It's so wonderful to be able to say, "Happy birthday, Evelyn!"

Ten years ago when a biopsy had just confirmed that she had cancer, we sat with coffee mugs at her dining room table in Humboldt, talking and weeping.

"I'm going to fight like anything to beat this," she said, reaching for my hands. "But if I can't, I'm okay with that, too, but I need to know you're okay with  it."

"I don't want to lose  you now. Not so soon after Joyce." Our sister next in line after Evelyn had died two years earlier in a car accident.

"I miss her too," Evelyn said.

We gripped hands tightly and wept, overwhelmed by thoughts of death and the waste of lives cut short. Our sister Joyce had had a turbulent and troubled life, and her method of relaxation and renewal had always been to walk on her own with a pair of binoculars around her neck, seeking solace in observing the wild creatures. In her latter years,she loved to roam the hills above Penticton where she lived.

When our children were young, she brought them unusual gifts like a huge, perfect abandoned wasp nest on a tree trunk, and another time, a plaster casting of a cougar paw print, and the first bird feeder we'd ever owned. She always had stories of birds she had seen on her walks, though she kept no lists and scoffed at those birders who worried about "life lists."

She was a quiet person, but at the same time, exotic and unconsciously flamboyant. I told Evelyn about the last time she and her husband had spent Christmas with us when their daughter was little. She had worn a brilliant scarlet poinsettia above her ear, very striking against her hair.

As Evelyn and I wiped our tears, movement in the still-leafless lilac bush outside the window caught our attention. The tiniest little olive green bird was hopping from branch to branch, poking at the leaf buds and flicking its short tail. We didn't know what it was - white eye ring, dark wings with white bars, light greenish yellow below, dark short tail.

And suddenly the little bird tilted its head down and we had a perfect view of a vivid red rectangle running front to back on top of its head. Evelyn and I both gasped. The red crown was so unexpectedly flamboyant on the rather drab wee bird. And the red was the same shade as the poinsettia Joyce had worn at the Christmas dinner years earlier.

We had just seen our first Ruby-crowned Kinglet in full breeding splendor. According to the guide books, it's unusual to be able to see the red crown because the male flaunts it only during breeding season and the birds are usually high in the tree canopy. We were very fortunate.

We felt strangely comforted and reassured, as though God had spoken or an angel had visited us.

Happy birthday, Evelyn.

Roman bath for Naicam birds

This is the revamped birdbath in my Naicam yard. John Madsen photo

Are you longing for spring, too, for the song of a meadowlark or the sight of flotilla of ducklings bobbing around their mamma, or the flash or orange and black that signals the return of the oriole?

It was about this time last year that my sister Linda began talking about a garden craft project, something we could make for our yards before yardwork season arrived. Over the next few weeks - and then the next few months - we traded ideas back and forth over the phone. My baby sister Linda is the Queen of Crafts. She came up with the winning idea - birdbaths tiled with leftover pieces of glass from her stained glass projects.

She and Howard have a waterfall under construction in the circular garden bordered by their driveway. She said envisioned water falling over the stones and splashing into a birdbath fashioned from a gold panning bowl.

I loved the birdbath idea, but instead of the pan, could I not do something with my old metal birdbath that was suffering the ravages of time? The fake verdigris finish had worn off the bowl and it was down to black metal that attracted so much heat from the sun that in just minutes cool tap water was turned into a sauna.

As soon as Evelyn was back from Arizona, we had a sisters' day on Linda's deck on an unusually warm April day, and we tiled, gossiped and sipped wine. When I started, I envisioned undulating shades of blue and green creating the look of water in the bowl, and to this end I first affixed a wavy line of dark green across the diameter. We used silicone outdoor tile adhesive. After the first disciplined line went down, all hell broke loose and I just had fun adding pieces of whatever color called to me. Like the orange. Maybe it would attract birds flying high overhead. Like the white and light colors that I hoped would help keep the water cooler. Like the dollar store glass pebbles that might look like bubbles. It was definitely a fun project, and fun mostly because I was working side by side with my sisters, busy on their own tile masterpieces.

By the way, the birds last summer seemed to love the recycled Roman bath.

Shivering sparrow in a gray felt hat

Peek-a-boo House Sparrow. Margaret Madsen photo

From inside my warm kitchen I look out on the cold silver and blue morning, and yes, that is blue snow, not blue sky, beyond the feeder. It's minus 28 outside and according to the television, Jan 17, when I took this photo, is the most depressing day of the year. Yikes! When will spring come?

You can tell I'm suffering from cabin fever when a pesky House Sparrow starts to look appealing to me. Isn't he cute? He looks like he's playing peek-a-boo. House sparrows are incredibly difficult for me to photograph. The moment they notice the slightest movement in the window they take off in frantic flight. There were half a dozen on the feeder when I began to depress the camera "button" and just this one left when the shutter actually clicked. There was a dozen or so Common Redpolls among the hungry horde of sparrows on the ground under the feeders this morning. They stayed calmly collecting their breakfast while the sparrows leapt nervously to the spruce tree.

Why do you suppose sparrows are so jittery, chickadees so friendly and red polls so indifferent to people?

I think the House Sparrow must have been the first bird I learned to recognize. They were ever-present at Rutan, the elevator siding south of Meacham where I grew up. Because I've always known a Passer domesticus on sight, I never closely examined one until about 10 years ago when I was giving grandson Ian, then 6 or 7, a lesson on identifying birds.

"Describe the bird outside the window," I instructed, handing him the binoculars.

"It's brown and black," he said.

"What else?"

"It's stomach is white. And it's black and brown on its wings and there's white stripes. And it's black under its chin and up to his eyes. And then it's brown. And it's gray on top of its head"

"Gray on its head?"

"Yes, Grandma. Gray."

"Let me see." I took the binoculars and looked. He was right. I knew perfectly well what a sparrow looked like, but I had never looked closely enough to see the distinct gray, like a flat felt cap, on top of his head!

And that just goes to show how we can look without seeing, how we can see what we think is there, and how we can learn so much from children.

Black-crowned Night-Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron in Hawaii. John Madsen photo

When we arrived at our hotel in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii a few years ago, we were startled to see someone we recognized from Saskatchewan - a Black-crowned Night-Heron basking on a rock in the lobby pool. Prior to this, the last night-heron I had seen was the previous summer, slowly beating its way just above the water, following the creek on the ninth hole of Naicam Golf Course.

At first we didn't notice that the bird only had one foot. According to a hotel worker, its foot was probably snapped off by a fish. And this wasn't a winter visitor like us. It lives there year round and is called Aukuu in Hawaiian.

Black-crowned Night-Herons are the most widespread herons in the world found on all the continents except Antarctica. They are about the same size as crows and their bill is much shorter than that of a Great-Blue Heron. They don't stab their prey; they catch it. They also nest in colonies, in trees, bushes or cattails.

The first colony of Night-Herons John and I saw was at the Pamela Wallin Wetlands, just south and west of Wadena. It was surprising to see so many slump shouldered birds in the trees but they were also on the ground by the edge of the creek and seemed to be catching something to eat - maybe frogs? Apparently they prefer to hunt at dusk or at night - hence their name - and this adaptation allows them to share the same foraging territory as Great-Blue Herons, for example, which hunt during the day. It was afternoon when we saw them, so does this mean that they are night-hunters only if there are other herons around?

Female Night-Herons must be blessed with a surfeit of maternal instinct because they don't mind looking after someone else's babies, too. Or is it the opposite - so little maternal instinct that they cannot tell strange babies from their own? It's a mystery.

The one-footed night-heron in the photo did, in a sense, solve an old mystery for me. Some 60 or so years ago, when my siblings and I were trudging 2+ miles home from the one-room country school house we attended, we came upon a meadowlark hanging upside down with one foot impaled on a barb on the fence. We thought it was dead but, when we got close, it struggled mightily to free itself. We could see the foot was nearly severed from the leg. While one cupped the bird to keep it from causing further damage, another tried to free the foot but it was fused to the barb and could not be budged.

That's when a pair of blunt-nosed scissors came out of a pencil case, and with one snip, the foot was severed and the bird was set free. Immediately it flew some distance out into the field and disappeared from view. But could a bird survive with only one foot? The night-heron in Hawaii answered that.

An eagle is not a birdie!

Bald Eagle rests outside our daughter's home in the Kentucky hills.
All photos here are by Kristin Farquharson.

Our elder daughter and her family lived in Kentucky for five years. Just before they moved to Ontario late last summer, she took these photos from her deck. Their apartment building clung precariously to the edge of a very steep mountain, so steep that this eagle, at eyeball level with her deck, is near the top of a tree with its roots 100+ feet below.

I am a "flat-lander" born and bred and was both agoraphobic and claustrophobic in the steep hollers and narrow valleys. Granted, their deck was a marvelous bird-viewing platform - if one kept one's back to the wall and didn't go near the railing - and I loved seeing birds we don't have here - cardinals and titmice, tiny California Wrens, etc. One evening at dusk I looked straight up to see a swirling flock of Chimney Swifts silhouetted against the sky. Yup, you had to look straight up to see the sky.

Bald Eagles, fortunately, also visit the flatlands. In late November, I stood on our deck in Naicam (you can't fall off a ground level deck) and watched a lone eagle leisurely flapping north, following the Rail Trail. I wonder if he headed to Kentucky for the winter? Like cormorants, there are more Bald Eagles around now than when I was a child. They too suffered the consequences of DDT and one point were close to extinction in the USA.

Talking of eagles reminds me of my friend Fay in Delisle where we lived 6+ years before moving here almost five years ago. Fay loved to golf and most summer mornings at 6:30, we would head off in her golf cart, she with her clubs, me with my binoculars. Fay is a good golfer, a good athlete from a family of athletes. Her uncles, for example, were the Bentley brothers of hockey fame. With her sister as skip she was a Saskatchewan curling champion in 1965, '66 and '68, and runner up Canadian champion in '66. I, on the other hand, am possibly the world's worst golfer.

Nonetheless, it worked out well for us. When the golf cart was in motion, we visited, and when we stopped, she concentrated on her golf game, and I on the birds. Going out regularly on a regular route enabled me to know where to expect to see different birds and to note changes which I recorded in pocket memo book.

We entered the golf course at about the midway point through a gate off the back alley a block from our houses. The cart trail ran along the fence adjacent to the back alley for some distance allowing me to check song birds in the trees. This was also the highest spot looking out over the valley. Just beyond the golf course to the north was a hay field on the left, and gully on the right and beyond that trees, where a pair of Swainson's Hawks had nested. From my upper vantage point I was able to see the brooding hawk on the nest and eventually the two chicks growing until they fledged and left the nest. For a few days I saw them on the ground near the fence, their parents apparently still feeding them.

But one day it was another species that caught my eye. I had been watching a hawk on the fence when I noticed a coyote hunting in the field below. Through my binoculars, I could see it was after something, ears pricked forward, eyes to the ground, doing "puppy pounces." Suddenly it ducked aside as though it had been kicked. In fact, it had been dive bombed by the hawk and then bounded off to the safety of the underbrush in the gully.

The cryptic notes in the little coil-backed memo pad brings back such moments in great detail. Which brings me to the one notation on Aug. 13, 2003 that had nothing to do with birds, everything to do with golf.

        * Fay - Eagle on 5

Such fun we had, Fay. Thanks. And now here's a few more Eagle-bird pix from Kristin.

Loose feathers from grooming?

Swiveling his head like an owl.

Dem's shags aka Cormorants

Double-crested Cormorant hangs his wings out to dry at Tobin Lake. John Madsen photo

Were Double-crested Cormorants around 40-50 years ago? I don't remember seeing them during the first 30-some years of my life before we moved to BC where we lived for 25+ years. And now over the years since we returned to Saskatchewan, we see them every summer at one lake or another.

It was my sister Evelyn who first pointed them out to me. We had just moved back to the province when she asked me about a strange big duck she had seen on a slough just east of Humboldt - a black duck with an S-shaped neck, sitting on the bank with its beak in the air. She even drew me a little sketch - and she is a good artist. Well, it certainly didn't look like any duck I'd ever seen so I silently handed her my Peterson guide. In just a few moments, she gave the "aha" cry, her finger jabbing at the Double-crested Cormorant.

Evelyn and I are from a family of nine siblings who grew up at a one-house-one-elevator siding south of Meacham. While I married a roamer and bounced around the country, she married a farmer north of Viscount (about 10 miles from home) and has always lived in the area, retiring later to Humboldt and Arizona. If she hadn't seen a Double-crested Cormorant in all those years, where were they?

I found part of the answer in the June 2010 Blue Jay - the Nature Saskatchewan publication (it comes free with your membership). An article by Christopher M.Somers et al about pelican and cormorant population trends in Saskatchewn over five decades explains that historically both species were relatively rare here. (No wonder I was so excited as a child to see a pelican.) But populations of both have dramatically increased over the past 30 years or so. According to the article, they don't know "whether recent growth represents a resurgence to pre-human settlement numbers, or an usual range and population expansion triggered by as yet unexplained biological events."

Cormorants were apparently severely affected by the infamous DDT spray of the 1940s and 50s, but unlike the beloved pelican, these ugly step-sisters were not put on the "threatened with extinction list" even though there were five times as many pelican nests counted as cormorant nests.

Fishermen love to hate cormorants who dive for fish and see their increasing  population
as the reason that fewer fish end up on hooks and in nets. The Blue Jay article, however, suggests it's man who has over-exploited the top-predator fish like wall eye and pike and in turn, this means there are more bottom feeders that are prey for cormorants but of no value to fishermen. I'm not sure a cormorant diving for dinner would pass by a young pickerel to go get a sucker instead, but then I'm not a cormorant nor a biologist.

It's not just local fishermen who dislike cormorants. When we were on holiday in the Maritimes a few years ago we heard them referred to most unflatteringly as "dem **** shags." In addition to Double-Crested Cormorants with their orange throat patches, off Cape Breton we also saw the larger Great Cormorant with its white throat patch.

Okay, so everybody likes to hate cormorants, but I still have this wonderful memory from last summer, standing on the deck of a restaurant at Tobin Lake early in the evening watching a long line of cormorants streaming low over the water like an aerial freight train.

Ghost bird

Ghost-like partial-albino Pine Siskin shares feeder with regular siskin.

Pine Siskins and American Goldfinches love the niger seed John puts out for them here in Naicam. One day I was startled to see a strange ghost-like bird among the crowd of siskins. It was a pale creamy color on its lower back and on its front, slightly darker like pale wheat color on upper back and head with touches of yellow on sides.

Pink-footed albino shelling niger seeds.

The merest hint of pale streaking is barely visible on its pale breast. Note that even its beak is light colored. It is a partial albino, not a full albino, according to birding guru Dr. Stuart Houston of Saskatoon. It would be white all over with pink eyes if it were true albino, he says.

The regular siskin has dark feet and dark bill.

The albino is a pale copy of its friends.

I have no idea how unusual albino-ish siskins are. Dr. Houston says he has never seen one so they must be fairly uncommon. This little guy came to the feeder for five or six days before moving on to his next restaurant.  In Delisle, there were several robins with white blotches on their heads but no fully colorless robin.

A pelican is not a winter bird!

American White Pelicans at Gardner Dam. Feathery black cap on bird in foreground indicates it is a chick-feeding adult. Fibrous plate on bill of top left bird is part of his breeding display. John Madsen photo

I know you're wondering what is going on here. It's January on the prairies. What's with this pelican picture? A pelican is not a winter bird. Okay, okay. The truth is that this blogging idea was putting the cart before the horse. The day I got this new-to-me IMac computer, my darling daughter Karen cleaned off the hard drive, put on the new program thingies and then asked what I wanted to do on this machine.

"I want to be able to edit the pictures off my camera and I want to write a blog," I said positively.

Now I have not even read anybody's blog and the only thing I know about blogs is from the movie Julie and Julia, a movie I loved. But before I could blink, Karen had me set up with this blog and had bookmarked it so I could find it again, and had downloaded a free program to handle the photos. And so I dived into this blogging business, heedless of the fact I didn't have enough photos. I wish I had photographed the gangly Hairy Woodpecker clinging to the tower feeder, spewing seeds left and right, or the Blue Jay filling his crop before flying off last week. I never bothered with the ravens or the magpies. The big flock of Snow Buntings I could see in the field just outside the town limits were too far away for my camera.

And so back to pelicans. My favorite close up view of a pelican was on Emma Lake from Bob and Clistine's pontoon barge boat that's like a floating sun deck. When we got close to a lone pelican paddling lazily near the shore, Clis cut the motor and we floated silently as the pelican drifted nearer. We could almost reach out and touch him. He looked like something left over from the Jurassic era. This impression is probably created by the scaly yellow skin that encircles the eye and stretches down to the bill To stare into that eye is almost like peering back through the tunnels of time and evolution. (And of course, I did not have my camera.)

Pelican landing at Tobin Lake. Photo by Clistine Fisher.

The pelican is huge bird with a nine-foot (2.8 m) wingspan, an enormously long yellow-orange bill, and is white with black on its wings. It doesn't dive but scoops up food in its pouch-like bill and strains out the water.

A flock of pelicans in flight is a fascinating aerial display as exciting as the famous Snowbirds at air shows. The first time we watched such a display was at Redberry Lake shortly after we came back to the prairies and were living at Delisle. There is a large colony of nesting pelicans established on an island in Redberry Lake. We watched seven pelicans flying in precise vee-formation in huge lazy circles. In perfect unison, they flapped their long black-tipped wings twice and then on cue, paused to glide, and then repeated this exactly in time as though they were watching an unseen conductor's baton or listening to music we could not hear

They hunched their heads back as they flew, making an S-curve of their neck, creating a place to prop up their long bills. They didn't seem to have any destination in mind that day at Redberry, but rather appeared to be just out for a spin. The passed so close overhead, we imagined we felt the air move with their wing beats, and continued so far they were almost specks as the completed the arc and began circling back toward us.

Someone told us that some of the pelicans seen fishing at the weir on the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon are probably non-breeding day visitors from the colony at Redberry Lake.

Watching them took me back more than 60+ years to when I was a child holidaying at Waskesui with my family. We were out on the Queen or the Shamrock, one of the tour boats that took visitors around the lake, when for the first time I watched this magnificent bird lifting powerfully into the air with the pouch under its bill distended and water spilling out the sides.

It's still thrilling today to watch pelicans. And to talk about them in January makes summer seem possible again.

Prairie newcomer - Eurasian Collared-Dove

Student Erik Hedlin holds aloft a fuzzy prairie newcomer. Margaret Madsen photo

When I heard the strange cooing like a Mourning Dove with a cold, I didn't know it was an historical moment. It was spring 2003 and we were living in Delisle, SK. The sound came from a pale dove on the power line running down the back alley behind our house. I needed my binoculars for a better view. Yikes! When I saw the black collar, I instantly recognized it as a bird I had first seen a few years earlier in Yorkshire, England - Eurasian Collared Dove.

There was a hitch, however. I couldn't find it in my old field guide books for North American birds. The next day, I saw a pair and this time had an even better view. It sure looked like the Eurasian Collared-Doves in the European field guide. That's when I phoned Dr. Stuart Houston in Saskatoon whose name I had seen often in Blue Jay magazine, a Nature Saskatchewan publication.

Could I possibly be seeing Eurasian Collared-Doves?

Absolutely, he said. They had been introduced to the Bahamas in 1974, dispersed from there to Florida and continued expanding their range until they reached Regina, but they had never been sited as far north as the Saskatoon area. He, his wife Mary and another couple came out to Delisle and confirmed their identity.

It was two years later that Tom Lawton, a neighbor across the street and down a few houses, reported a pair nesting in a tall spruce tree in his front yard. On Aug. 12, 2005, Dr. Houston arrived with his banding gear and with his young assistant, Erik Hedlin, to scale the tree. The chicks, two at this point, were too small to band and it wasn't until week later on Aug. 19 the first Eurasian Collared-Dove was banded in the Saskatoon area. The second chick had died from injuries.

Dr. Houston speculates that this could be the first photo taken of a tiny Eurasian Collared-Dove in Saskatchewan!

Great Blue Herons

At the bottom of Spenser's Hill - Photo by Clistine Fisher

It was a Great Blue Heron that turned me on to bird watching.

The year was 1979. That summer we drove across Canada in a van pulling a tent trailer with our three kids and Evelyn's three and our big German Short-haired Pointer. The cousins were 15, 15, 13, 13, 11 and 10 and looked like three sets of twins.

After exploring Fort William (the fort), we took a riverboat tour to view the grain elevators at the Lake Head. My nieces and nephew were, after all, the children of grain farmers. As we putted down the river, we spotted a hulking gray-blue bird on the river bank. That was my first look at a Great Blue Heron and I was thrilled. I wished I had a pair of binoculars.

A Great Blue Heron is so large and its movements so exaggerated that one really doesn't need binoculars to watch it stalking frogs in the mud or little fishes in the shallows. It takes slow, deliberate giant steps through the water on its long, spindly yellow legs Sometimes it pauses motionless for so long, it looks like a statue fallen asleep.

Years later when I did have binoculars with me, I had another memorable Great Blue Moment. It was at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary just south of Vancouver on the edge of the ocean. As we walked into the sanctuary, I lifted my binoculars to see beyond a clump of tall reeds to ducks in the shallow inlet. A huge pair of yellow eyes were scowling back at me. I hadn't noticed the heron in the yellow and green reeds not 10 feet away. It stood absolutely motionless, not blinking. Cautiously I lowered my binoculars. No wonder I hadn't noticed it at first. It was admirably camouflaged in the reeds. Its long yellow bill exactly matched the color of the yellow spears. Before we left the sanctuary, I had to buy a souvenir sweat shirt featuring a heron. It's still my favorite sweat shirt.

Because herons are solitary hunters, it's surprising that they are communal nesters, choosing tall trees to establish a heronry. The first one I saw was at the edge of a residential area in the north part of Vernon, BC, in a tall stand of poplars several miles from the nearest water. Before leaves were on the trees, you could view the dozen or so large, messy nests of sticks and twigs. When Norm and Karen lived on Okema Beach at Emma Lake, they were close to a heronry on an island opposite the art camp. Doesn't it seem incredible that such a large bird with such long gangly legs should choose to set up its nursery high in a tree? Actually, I understand that the deluge of excrement out of the nest eventually kills the tree supporting it.

The only person I ever met who hated Great Blue Herons was a Rotarian in Yorkshire, England who was proud of his garden and his pond with colorful (and expensive) koi. The heron thought the pond was a local deli serving his favorite lunch and his frequent raids drove the Rotarian to distraction. He would lay in wait, ready to drive the big bird off before he could land. But the heron was too smart. He would stop on the roof of the solarium and peer in through the glass to see if the gardener was lurking before he would make his raid. The Rotarian tried to protect the pond by stretching a green net over it, but this was a failure because the heron soon learned to rip or stretch it to reach the fish. Last we heard, man and bird were still battling.

This wasn't the first time I witnessed a heron's resourcefulness when it comes to food. I was working for the weekly newspaper in Winfield in the Okanagan. It was a slow news week in January but I noticed dozens of people ice fishing on Wood Lake. Maybe there was a story there. They didn't use fishing huts on Wood Lake. They simply brought folding lawn chairs to sit in with their tackle boxes, thermoses, lunch buckets and other paraphernalia arranged around them. While I was chatting with a fisherman, I was startled to see a Great Blue Heron standing watching from the middle of the lake. It shifted from foot to foot on the cold snow covered lake. Usually herons leave the valley in the winter. Immediately I switched to my telephoto lens to try to capture it on film.

"Don't bother trying to photograph at that distance," one of the fishermen advised. "Just wait and watch."

At that moment, another fisherman had a bite and the instant his rod dipped, the heron half lifted into the air and flew-hopped towards him. Apparently the bird had learned that if he was patient, men would do his hunting for him. If the catch turned out to be too small for the human table, it was tossed to the bird for his dinner.

A partridge in a bare tree...

My friend Clistine took this photo of a partridge (or grouse) on a gray winter day.

It's hard to tell if this is a partridge or a grouse in today's picture, but at any rate it seems a rather unusual roosting spot. I'm more used to seeing them on the ground huddling together in snow banks or bursting into explosive low flight if disturbed. But do they roost in trees at night?

We lived in the rural Okanagan for 25 years where Ring-necked Pheasants are a common sight and in all those years, I never once saw where they spend the night. Actually, I never once thought about their sleeping arrangements. After we retired back to Saskatchewan, we were on a trip through Montana when we stopped very early in the morning at a bird sanctuary between Minot and Bismark. When we were driving into the sanctuary, I spotted the first Ring-neck roosting in a scrubby bush, and I had to laugh. The bird looked too big for the spindly shrub with most of its leaves already fallen. But as we continued driving toward the lake, we saw more and more pheasants in big trees and small bushes. Obviously 6 a.m. was too early for them to be out of bed. Later when we were driving out, we never saw a single pheasant in a tree. They were all stalking around on the ground doing their breakfast search.

Actually, if the bird in the tree had a slightly longer tail, it could be a female Ring-necked Pheasant! Pheasant hens do resemble female Sharp-tailed Grouse.

Speaking of hens, I had a brief one-season stint with a few chickens during the time in my life when I kept milk goats for my growing children. John, unfortunately, does not like chickens or any barnyard fowl and was not the least impressed when a neighbor presented me with a Bantam hen and her four newly hatched chicks. In a few days, the mother flew back down the hill to my neighbors' hen house, leaving the fluffy offspring with us. Of course the cute cuddly chicks quickly lost their downy look and turned into proper bantams - one rooster, three hens - promptly referred to as Rooster Cogburn and the Girls.

Rooster Cogburn, for some reason, took great delight in terrorizing to my youngest daughter. When he heard the school bus stop at the main road, he would rush to the top of our driveway and wait, pawing the ground. As soon as her blond head appeared, he would thunder down the driveway in a great show of ruffled feathers and she would detour off the road and race screaming through the trees with Rooster Cogburn nipping at her heels. He always broke off the chase before she reached the house so I suspect he was just trying to add some excitement to his life. Unfortunately, when he extended his terrorizing to my little niece Kim who had come to stay for a visit, he met his Waterloo and ended up fitting into a pint-sized freezer bag and later reappearing on the dinner table with other fried chicken.

As for The Girls, they began laying eggs and since John refused to build a chicken house for three birds, finding the eggs was a daily treasure hunt around the yard. At night, they roosted in the Ponderosa pine trees and when winter came and snow piled on their backs at night, we felt sorry for them. Truthfully, Karen felt sorry for herself; she was usually first out of the house to feed her horse in the morning and would be startled by hens shaking snow down her neck as they dive bombed from the trees. And so we rounded them up and took them back down the hill to our neighbor with the hen house.

Colorful Pine Grosbeaks

Pine Grosbeaks having lunch at Fisher's feeders. Margaret Madsen photo

We have yet to see beautiful red Pine Grosbeaks at our feeders here in Naicam, but our friends Bob and Clistine are lucky to have them in their yard two hours further north. I took this shot during our recent visit. They appear to be all males and juvenile males which are a rusty color. The females apparently prefer to head off for an all-girls winter holiday.

Occasionally we have lovely Rose-breasted Grosbeaks stop by here and it is always a thrill to see the large black and white birds with florescent hot pink bibs.

The yellow Evening Grosbeaks also don't make it to our yard often, but they do visit Bob and Clistine. In fact, they are as popular in their yard as House Sparrows are in ours. When a big noisy mob moves in, they empty the feeders in no time flat, rather like a biblical plague of locusts clearing everything in sight, and cause Bob to gnash his teeth. When they lived at Emma Lake, he was known to take down all his feeders in an attempt to convince the rotters his restaurant was closed for the season.

They have White-breasted Nuthatches; we have Red-breasted Nuthatches. but by and large, our winter feeder visitors are pretty much the same.

Male Pine Grosbeak looks like a Christmas ornament high in this tree.

In our winter world devoid of strong color, the red of the Pine Grosbeak is a treat for the eyes. I must admit, however, that this red pales in comparison to the vivid strong scarlet of the Northern Cardinal. The first cardinal I saw was near the waterfront in Oakville, ON, when we went down for the wedding of Shiri and Etta's youngest daughter, Terrra to her John. What a jolt it was to see the incredibly bright red birds, glowing like Christmas tree bulbs against the green leaves.

When Kristin, Peter and the kids moved to Kentucky, the first thing Ian told me about their new home was that they had cardinals in their yard. He painted a cardinal for me on a wooden plaque which hangs above my kitchen sink - next best thing to having a window over the sink.

Lovely Luna Moth

Lovely Luna Moth at Tobin Lake - Grace Garrison photo

Happy New Year, everyone!

We have just returned from our annual end of the year bridge-and-booze holiday up north with our friends Bob and Clistine. This marked the 12th year we have seen the new year come in with them since we moved back from BC. About six years ago, they moved from Emma Lake to their farm in "Hungry Hollow" off the beaten path north of Weirdale (south of Candle Lake) and their neighbors, Buzzy and Grace, became part of the New Year's Eve frivolity.

Buzzy is one of the world's greatest story tellers. He sees humor in everything and with his soft voice and dry wit, he can keep you laughing for hours. He is also a great tease. And once he gets a reaction out of you, watch out.

A few summers ago when we were on our way to visit them, Clistine told me to watch for an American Bittern that resided in the slough on the south side of the road near their driveway. I was really looking forward to seeing it. It wasn't there when we arrived so early the next morning, I took our schnauzer on the leash and walked down the road hoping to glimpse it. When I got near the slough, to my horror, I found a dead bittern on the side of the road. I couldn't see obvious signs of trauma but with a bouncing schnauzer, it was hard to check and impossible to carry the dead bird back with me. I could only guess that it must  have been hit by a car. When I took the dog back to the house and returned to the slough, the carcass was gone - maybe a coyote?

Well, when Buzzy heard the story, it morphed into a new version - I was the one who had run down the poor Bittern with my vehicle. I had murdered the magnificent Bittern with its sword-like beak that stood sentinel there at the slough, delighting the poor souls of Hungry Hollow.

So now we get to the reason for the photo of the Luna moth. The six of us were at Tobin Lake, sitting on the cabin deck sipping something cool when Buzzy said, "Hey, Birdwatcher, what's that funny looking green bird under the tree there?"

I looked where he pointed and there, rolling and scrambling, was something bird-like but not bird colored. The green was a cross between lime and celery. Quickly I focussed my binoculars.

"It's not a bird. It's a Luna moth," I said with absolute certainty. I didn't explain that for the month, the wildlife calendar had featured the spectacular moth in full color.

My theory is that the moth had just come out of its cocoon/chrysalis and was trying to get its wings in working order. It was truly a fantastic sight - a moth with a wingspan of three to four inches wearing a chiffon negligee. Did you know the adult moth doesn't eat because it has no mouth and only lives about  a week? The female secretes a powerful scent that a male can detect through its feathery antennae from far away. In that short week, the female hopes to mate and lay eggs. The eggs hatch to green caterpillars that munch away on leaves until its time to put themselves to bed in their own cocoons attached to a tree branch where they hang out over winter until early summer.

Got it now, Buzzy? A moth is not a bird!