Saturday 26 November 2016

Oct - Nov 2016 - Birds and Scenery

Cackling Geese

Cackling Geese

Chickadee

Common Merganser 

Dark Eyed Junco

Double Crested Cormorant - Mallards

Downy Woodpecker

Feather in the ice

Grey Catbird

Hooded Merganser Female 

Smaller ponds and lakes were ice covered in mid November. The white spots on the ice are feathers trapped in the ice

Another ice covered pond

Magpie

Mallards

Fort Whyte Path


Ox Cart

Thursday 17 November 2016

Fort Whyte - Stephenfield - 17 Nov 2016 Birds, Deer, Scenery

Just parked at Fort Whyte when a large group of Geese took off from the Buffalo compound, this photo shows about 1/3 of the group. They were very noisy.
As I was watching the Geese take off I heard the Prairie Dogs to my right all start calling. I turned to see this Bald Eagle swooping down on the colony. It didn't catch any, then zoomed up and flew away. I only managed this one photo. It was all so quick. There were 2 Bald Eagles at Fort Whyte but they had roosted at quite a distance and I wasn't able to get a good photo of them.

Stephenfield Manitoba
We came across 2 Eagles sitting in a field, maybe 75 feet off the highway, surrounded by Crows and Magpies.  We drove until some bush concealed us then turned around and returned to the field. I just raised the camera when all the birds took flight. We followed this one Eagle and got a few poor photos of it.

Fort Whyte
Buck just getting his antlers




Buck
Stephenfield Manitoba



Geese fly over

Still a lot of Geese heading South



Mallards

Mallards

Fort Whyte path looking pretty desolate




Ruffed Grouse
Stephenfield Manitoba

Starlings

End of our day

Friday 11 November 2016

Fort Whyte - 1 Nov 2016 - Eagles, Birds, Scenary

Bald Eagle
First of the day. 

Same Eagle
Closer and cropped

We wandered off after pestering the Eagle for photos for several minutes. We then came across this Eagle by another lake and assumed it was the same Eagle kindly providing us with a better photo op. We got much closer, probably about 30 feet (10 Meters).

It posed for a few photos at 30 feet but not for long. The flight photos did not turn out well. The Eagle banked briefly giving a very impressive view of its wing span but I missed getting a photo.





When we returned to the area where we first saw the Eagle we were a little surprised to see 2 Eagles now perched in the tree.


Cackling Geese

Geese

Cackling Geese I surprised behind a hedge as I was trying to get closer to some Hooded Mergansers It was quite a surprise for me too as about 10 of them all took off at once for the lake. The thunder of wings was pretty impressive.

Geese

Chickadee

Coot

Geese

More Geese

Hooded Mergansers

Hooded Mergansers

Mallard

Mallards

Muskrat
Just after I took this photo another Muskrat jumped out of the reeds and attacked this one. I had lowered the camera and was about to check this photo when the action occurred. Action was done by the time I got the camera back to eye level.

We were surprised to see 2 Pelicans this late in the season.

Pond

Squirrel Tarzan Lord of the seed feeder