Last few weekend photos

So here are the last few photos from a busy weekend. The oft spoken of birding law which says 'go somewhere and something will show up there after you have gone' sort of kicked in with a Piping Plover at St-Barthelemy today. I can't go though.

Shots below, all with the Canon Rebel + 100-400mm IS lens.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak belting outits crazy rythmn.

A Lesser Scaup showing its diagnostic bill pattern and a Redhead head below showing its red head.

A Yellow-bellied Flycatcher at Cap Tourmente

Another stab at digiscoping

After watching bird guides in Ecuador using compact digital cameras to great effect, I decided to try again the mystic art of digiscoping.

My previous efforts have been with traditional Nikon Coolpix housebricks and the sort of adaptor that requires a degree in geometry and more fingers than is fashionable. I also did a bit of hand held stuff but we don't talk about that. The new rig should have been pretty easy to set up as Nikon had deigned to develope an adaptor specific to their cameras and scopes, the bad news is that they only seem to have made one of each and the cameras they were made for, although launched in 2006, are available nowhere.

Having worn out a key board trying to find the digiscope adaptor, really its easier to find a holy grail, I decided to mackle something up, as we ex-mechanics say.

The main use for the rig is on vacations, in jungle and with birds that only blink once every three minutes, trogons and the like. The rest of this is going to sound a bit like Blue Peter (just Google it if you are not English) but so be it.

Take a spice jar lid, plastic, any flavour, only birds with the olefactory abilities of vultures can tell the difference. Cut a 7/8ths hole in it, from the centre (sorry, may contain peanuts mentality kicking in here), then use fine sandpaper to smooth out the hole, regularly checking it for interferance fit on the camera lens, that means tightish. Er, that is it really. To make the lid stay on the eyepiece I used broad, short elastic bands. Technical details below.

This scope is a Nikon 50mm travel scope with an up to 75x (on a big scope) zoom. They also do a small mag lens just for digiscoping which I am prepared to accept as a gift from Nikon for this advert for their excellent products.

The camera is a Nikon (that word again) Coolpix S210, very important because the camera is diddy and the lens central. It just pushes into the Special Particular Instrument Calibration Equipment (SPICE) cap, clever eh? It sits there nicely and you can use the two second delay shutter release to stop wobble.

See below for the camera, $170 from Best Buy.

These phalarope shots were taken at 15 feet range through the 50mm Nikon and zoom lens.

The Wilson's Snipe was taken using the 85mm Nikon, it was rather front on which is why it looks so well fed.

The Yellow-bellied Flycatcher was in deep dark woods where the Wolves roam (just setting the scene) on two second time release through the 50mm scope.

Phalaropes - what great birds they are

In need of a migrant fix we decided to go off to Cap Tourmente, east of Quebec City. Its a great reserve to visit although get this, this migration hub actually has a falconry display, how stupid is that! Anyway, more of Cap Tourmente later.

On the way we dropped in at Baie du Febvre, which I'm sure I always spell wrong. Usually its blowing a gale there, this time it was refreshingly calm and pretty birdy. The highlight was two phalarope, both females so the pretty ones, a Wilson's and a Red-necked.

In the bad old days taking over 900 photos would have meant re-mortgaging the house, digital has changed that and so below you see my humble efforts. Being phalaropes they were constantly on the go picking insects from the surface of their favourite pool. Just standing, without bins, watching them go about their business was a great birding experience.

The demi weekend yielded 110 species including a few migrants and we still managed to miss a Sandhill Crane and Northern Mockingbirds, it hardly mattered.

Click on the images for the full phalarope experience.

Footsore and virtually bird free!

This has been a lousy spring so far. Migrant warblers have been like Rocking Horse manure out west of Montreal, it has been very hard work! Despite this, and although my 50 year old body objected, I decided to do a Bigby big day.

The whole idea was to go out and see what I could see on foot, the alternative, give my remaining vacation days back to the company, no contest. So Tuesday 20th May, the day after all of Quebec celebrated Queen Victoria's birthday!!! (God bless you maam, no matter how dead you are), I started out checking out the local lake and migrant tepid spots before walking to the pits. Things started well, a Pileated Woodpecker was setting about a local tree and my summer resident Northern Waterthrush even obliged with an impressive display of tail pumping.

The eight kilometer walk to the pits added a few birds to the Bigby list and attracted stares from local residents who used the formula guy + rucksack + walking = call 911, or at least that is how it felt. The pits were not great, there is way too much water now and some of the marginal habitat has disappeared. A pair of Greater Scaup remained, the regular hirundines were about and the breeding Pied-billed Grebes eventually came out of the margins but, can you believe it, no Ring-billed Gull! At least the reliable Vesper Sparrows had read the script.

Moving on I walked the St-Lazare Pinade, normally quite reliable for several species but useless this time. My final throw of the dice was the meadows on Montee Ste-Angelique. This area normally has a nice mixture of species associated with grasslands, even Grasshopper Sparrows breed there sometimes. I did see Savannah Sparrow and Bobolink but no Eastern Meadowlarks, Eastern Bluebirds or even an Eastern Kingbird. To top it all a shiny new 'For sale' sign had appeared dooming the meadows to becoming a Horse playground or, worse still, more 'executive' homes.

I arrived home footsore, added White-breasted Nuthatch in the garden to the Bigby Big Day for a total of 63 species, a list that contained no migrating warblers, just the odd summer resident Yellows, Nashvilles, Yellowthroats and Pine Warblers.

To rub salt into the blisters, the next day three Solitary Sandpipers stood in the middle of a local lake not being solitary at all. Where were they on the Bigby Big Day?

Below a few photos, I've just added a tiny coolpix to the armoury and I'm hand holding the camera, training for those distant trogons in Belize but more of that later.


Solitary Sandpipers ignoring each other and using a little known call which goes ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

When Pileated Woodpecker decides to destroy a tree its more effective that a local property developer, almost.

This shot and the one below digiscoped through the Nikon 50mm travel scope using a spice lid with a hole in it to centralise the image.

One White-crowned Sparrow lingered long enough to make the Bigby Big Day list, my favourite sparrow.

Duck dip

In keeping with the Universal law of chaos, two good birds appeared in Quebec the very weekend that we had guests from Europe. The first, a male Garganey was, by all accounts, awkward to see but quite getable. The second was an addition to the Quebec list, a Common Pochard.

Common Pochard is a bird I know very well and so when the opportunity arrived, a week after its discovery, we went off early to St-Barthelemy. Typically it was not where it had been the day before so we set about searching all areas. The main floods to the south of highway 40 were the only place where we found any aythyas but the light was rubbish and it was hard to make out any detail on the Redheads present. One bird was slightly smaller but features were just impossible in the heat haze and over the distance.

We saw a few birds though including a Greater White-fronted Goose but had to accept that the views of the probable Common Pochard were just not tickable. Only later the same day did a birder we met there reveal, via email to OrnithoQuebec, that the Common Pochard was present with the Redheads where we had looked but that you needed to ask permission to cross a field, I wonder why he never mentioned this when we saw him later after he'd seen the bird, he knew we'd been looking, he'd even asked me whether we had located it.

It might stay a bit longer but the water level will drop quickly and getting to and from St-Barthelemy from the west of Montreal on a weekday is a pain in many regions.

What a difference a month makes!



The spring rush continues apace with species filling the gaps where the snow used to be. A sortie on May 7th around the general area, St-Lazare sand pits, Le Grande Montee and then over to St-Timothee marsh and environs produced an absorbing day and the first 100 species trip of the year.

Starting at Saddlebrook Bog, or at least what is left of it, an earlyish Common Yellowthroat and a couple of Rusty Blackbirds got the day cooking, also a singing warbler just would not show and I'm hoping to settle down with the tapes later to confirm my tentative ID.

Moving on to the pits where a flock of 25 American Pipits were a nice surprise although they are annual there. Both Scaup species were on the main body of water and the Vesper Sparrows were singing loudly. New for the year there were Nashville Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, Rose-breasted Grsobeak and Warbling Vireo. Northern Rough-winged Swallows were 'in' and a Solitary Sandpiper stood a lone vigil in solitude.

A few miles further on and Montee St-Angelique had a thrashing Brown Thrasher and a couple of Purple Finch, no bluebirds evident though.

I regularly visit an area called Le Grande Montee which is a minor road that is 150m into Ontario. I was a bit late in the day so the Upland Sandpipers were not showing but several Bobolinks were back from their South American wintering grounds, singing their larynx twisting song.

Progressing to St-Timothee in an orderly manner as they say, a pleasant few hours failed to be troubled by anything unusual. At around this point I realised 100 species was possible though and so I made a bit of effort. At Melocheville the first two Caspian Terns of the year loafed with the Ring-billed Gulls above the hydro dam and I found a few Hooded Mergansers and some Green-winged Teal.

With two species to go for the ton I resorted to the garden feeders adding Red-breasted Nuthatch in the evening drizzle.

Below a few shots, you are all big birders now so don't really need the ID on a plate now do you?

Noisy the local Red-shouldered Hawk setting up the territory with a few chosen threats.

A little sequence of Ruby-crowned Kinglets with their ruby crowns a glowing.

The Caspian Terns at Melocheville, a neat birding spot for a scan around.

Below a Mourning Cloak, there are more thing flying than just birds and the all round naturalist should be able to take time out to ID at least the common species.

Don't House Finches look gorgeous when wet!