Perhaps I should predict the Lottery numbers!

Taking a day off work to go birding in Quebec ,based on The Weather Network's forecast is a bit hit and miss. Cloudy skies but bright and warm seemed perfect for an autumn day's birding, instead it was blue skies all day so not quite so good. One of our favourite games when watching local weather is flipping from the English channel to the French channel to see who gets the best weather. You might think that it would be the same but no, usually there is a couple of degrees difference and I can't help wishing I was Bilingual so I could enjoy their warmer days when they get the nod from the weather experts!

Back to the birding. Early morning fog effectively ruled out birding until 10.00 so I did the shopping adding duck, turkey and chicken to my oven ready list. At the pits there were good numbers of Canada Geese, most in the process of preparing to commit suicide by flying out over nearby farmland. On the main island around 30 Snow Geese snoozed in the 17 degree heat so I scanned through picking out a slightly smaller bird, different in shape around the head which was neatly tucked under its wing. After several sweeps of the rest of the avian delights, I returned to the sleeper and up popped its head for three seconds, Ross's Goose!!! I then waited another 35 mintes before it stuck its head up again, had a look around, yawned and went to sleep. Brief but at least I was able to confirm the ID as pure Ross's and not a hybrid, species 196 for my patch list. The bird was about 200m away so photos were difficult, eventually it had a prolonged fidget and I got some distant video.

While waiting for the sleeping goose I also snatched a short video of the Hooded Mergansers as they breezed around. Later a Cackling (Richardson's Canada) Goose dropped in but I've spared you the video of that, now that was distant.

In addition to the wildfowl a nice little flock of White-winged Crossbills were roaming around, a portent for later on when 20 dropped into the garden making them Bigby species 140 and a new species for the garden.