Tony LePrieur photographed a nice variety of wildlife in the park on October 5.
Pileated Woodpecker.
Greater Yellowlegs.
American Three-toed Woodpecker (male).
Boreal Chickadee.
White-breasted Nuthatch.
Yellow-rumped Warbler.
Red-breasted Nuthatch.
American Robin (immature).
Downy Woodpecker.
Muskrat.
White-tailed Deer.
Posted by Dan Arndt
Shorebirds are my thing. I love watching flocks of them wheel and turn in flocks of tens, hundreds, and even thousands at a time, so when I heard about the initiative of World Shorebirds Day, I immediately signed up for a few sites at one of my favourite shorebirding locations just outside the city. Leading up to it, there had been some great sightings of somewhat uncommon birds, and between July 29th and September 6th, I probably spent at least one day a week visiting it for at least a few minutes.
Killdeer
Weed Lake
July 29, 2014
Early on, the usual shorebirds that breed in and around Calgary were abundant and relatively easy to find. Killdeer, Wilson’s Phalarope, Willets, Black-necked Stilts, American Avocets and Spotted Sandpipers were everywhere, but as migration ramped up into mid-August, the shorebirding really began heating up. The first Black-bellied Plovers were seen in early August, and by August 10th, just about every species of shorebird we can expect to move through the Calgary area was there to be counted!
Lesser Yellowlegs
Weed Lake
August 10, 2014
Semipalmated Plover
Weed Lake
August 10, 2014
So many shorebirds!
Weed Lake
August 10, 2014
Baird’s Sandpipers
Weed Lake
August 10, 2014
A trio of Ruddy Turnstones showed up at the lake in late August, and on my scouting weekend they turned up and I had a chance to get relatively close looks at them. One of the more colorful shorebirds that we get around here, I think!
Ruddy Turnstones
Weed Lake
August 30, 2014
Ruddy Turnstones
Weed Lake
August 30, 2014
Willet
Weed Lake
August 30, 2014
And if you ever need some sense of scale for some of these small but powerful fliers, my current phone is roughly the same size as a Semipalmated Sandpiper. I’m not quite sure what caused the demise of this little fellow, but in the wild there are so many more things to be worried about than just predators. Disease, untreated injuries, or even simple medical anomalies can bring natural selection into play.
Unfortunate Semipalmated Sandpiper
Weed Lake
August 30, 2014
And finally, after months of anticipation, the magical day arrived. Sadly the big numbers of shorebirds were nowhere to be found, though I did still get some good finds on the day!
American Avocet clearing its throat
Weed Lake
September 6, 2014
Semipalmated and Least Sandpipers taking off
Weed Lake
September 6, 2014
Stilt Sandpipers and California Gull
Weed Lake
September 6, 2014
Pectoral Sandpiper
Weed Lake
September 6, 2014
Oh yeah, and I mentioned predators before, didn’t I? A pair of beautiful Peregrine Falcons were doing a great job of scattering the shorebirds that had stuck around. One of them even managed to snag a distant Lesser Yellowlegs while we watched on, and its mate gave us some good fly-bys as well!
Peregrine Falcon
Weed Lake
September 6, 2014
Thanks for reading, and good birding!
Posted by Dan Arndt
This post recounts our first Sunday outing of the season with the Friends of Fish Creek, Autumn Birding course on September 7, 2014.
While it’s been a few weeks since our first outing, it’s still great to be back birding in Calgary’s incredible parks. Our first week back was a visit to Carburn Park, where Gus Yaki had led a few late summer birding trips in search of fall warblers, turning up a wide variety of great birds. By the time we got there in early September though, most of them had moved on, though a few Yellow-rumped Warblers were still to be found here and there!
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Pentax K-5 + Sigma 150-500@500mm
1/1250sec., ƒ/6.3, ISO 800
Along the river was our best and most productive area throughout the walk though. Early on, a male Belted Kingfisher flew across the river and right over our heads, not too common a sight!
Belted Kingfisher
Pentax K-5 + Sigma 150-500@500mm
1/1000sec., ƒ/6.3, ISO 250
A bit further down the river, a young Bald Eagle flew overhead and gave some great flybys. It’s likely that this is one of the young from a nearby nest across the river from Carburn Park. This is one of the best places to view Bald Eagles in the late fall and through the winter as the river freezes over and the waterfowl congregate in the open water.
immature Bald Eagle
Pentax K-5 + Sigma 150-500@500mm
1/1250sec., ƒ/6.3, ISO 160
Cedar Waxwings were everywhere, picking mosquitos and other small insects out of the air by the dozen, while much higher overhead the Franklin’s and Ring-billed Gulls did the same with recent hatches of flying ants.
Cedar Waxwing
Pentax K-5 + Sigma 150-500@500mm
1/1250sec., ƒ/6.3, ISO 500
We did have some great looks at some Double-crested Cormorants at the furthest north “pond”, or what used to be a pond, anyhow. The flood of 2013 stripped away the banks and trees at the north end, turning what used to be a large, deep pond into the primary river channel, and good habitat for the Double-crested Cormorants and even one Great Blue Heron to sun themselves and hunt for fish.
Double Crested Cormorants
Pentax K-5 + Sigma 150-500@500mm
1/1250sec., ƒ/6.3, ISO 640
Great Blue Heron sunning itself
Pentax K-5 + Sigma 150-500@500mm
1/1250sec., ƒ/6.3, ISO 400
This young heron took the opportunity to open up its wings and absorb the sun, like some of the cormorants were doing further up on the debris. Soon, both of these species will be headed south to warmer climes while the mercury dips close to the freezing point and below through the course of our walks this fall.
Thanks again for reading, and good birding!
We don’t often re-post material but we don’t often make two identification mistakes in the same post (I hope). Reid Barclay has pointed out that the bird I labelled “Swainson’s Thrush” is actually an Ovenbird, and Ron Kube says that the “Swainson’s Hawk” is a Broad-winged Hawk. I think they are both correct. In each case, I didn’t consider these less-common migrants here, and tried to fit the photos to my expectations. Sorry for the errors. We always welcome comments from our readers. – Bob Lefebvre
Tony LePrieur has another set of beautiful bird and mammal photos, taken on September 14, 2014. He says it is getting harder to find the birds, but there is still a good variety of species around.
From Carburn Park:
Orange-crowned Warbler.
Orange-crowned Warbler, actually showing the seldom-seen orange crown.
Red-eyed Vireo.
American Goldfinch.
Cedar Waxwing (juvenile).
Ovenbird.
Yellow-rumped Warbler.
Tennessee Warbler.
From Fish Creek Park:
Broad-winged Hawk (juvenile).
Belted Kingfisher (female).
American Mink.
It’s been a really good fall for warblers in Calgary. Here are some warblers and other birds that Tony LePrieur captured in Carburn Park on the weekend of August 29-30.
Rose-breasted Grosbeak (female)
Least Flycatcher
Tennessee Warbler
Warbling Vireo
Townsend’s Warbler
Gray Catbird
American Redstart
Wilson’s Warbler
Solitary Sandpiper
Do you have some bird photographs from the Calgary area that you’d like to share here? Send them to us at birdscalgary@gmail.com and we may post them on our Sunday Showcase.
This summer Tony LePrieur found a Cedar Waxwing nest in Fish Creek Park, and he managed to capture this amazing sequence of photos showing the young birds from hatching to fledging, over a period of sixteen days.
The nest was about three feet off the ground, in the Votier’s Flats area of Fish Creek Provincial Park. Tony was careful not to be intrusive, making four very short visits over a period of just over three weeks. Initially there were four eggs in the nest. Photos were taken with a Canon 60d and a 18-135 mm lens.
As a bonus, I will post a photo of a slightly older juvenile Cedar Waxwing. It was spotted by Cicely Schoen hunkering down under a lawn chair in the Woodlands neighbourhood in SW Calgary during last week’s snowstorm. She calls it “The Original Angry Bird”.
“The Original Angry Bird” – Juvenile Cedar Waxwing. Photo by Cicely Schoen
Nikon 5100 with Nikkor lens 55-200mm.
Posted by Bob Lefebvre
Last week’s late summer snowstorm in southern Alberta flattened crops and gardens, caused power outages, and damaged or destroyed trees numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It must also have been devastating for many migrating birds. A storm like this, lasting for several days, blanketing the ground with snow throughout the southern half of the province, and accompanied by temperatures as low as -7 degrees Celsius, must surely have caused high mortality among warblers and other neotropical migrants.
Here are some photos taken on September 10 of a hummingbird caught in the snow. I believe this is a Rufous Hummingbird, the last of which usually move through Calgary in early September. Fortunately there are still plenty of flowers around so perhaps it was able to find enough food to continue on its southern migration.
All photos by Debbie Reynolds.
The last few weeks, Tony LePrieur has been sending us some outstanding photos of birds at Carburn Park. We had some technical difficulties with the blog and have been unable to post, but we’re back to full speed now. Here is Tony’s great collection of photos from the last three weekends in Carburn.
This is a good year for wood warblers, and there should be several species around until Sept 20 or so. Carburn Park has been a great place to see them, or anywhere along the river. Confederation Park is another warbler hot spot in the city.
Some of these fall birds can be tricky to ID, so please comment if you think we’ve got any wrong. There are two we weren’t at all sure about, the recently fledged one and the orange one, both captioned “???” – give us your thoughts on those!
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Canada Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Red-eyed Vireo
female Tennessee Warbler
Wilson’s Warbler
Warbling Vireo
Magnolia Warbler
American Redstart
Townsend’s Warbler
Warbling Vireo
Red-eyed Vireo
Northern Waterthrush
Canada Warbler
female/immature Tennessee Warbler
Orange-crowned Warbler
???
immature Baltimore Oriole
House Wren
Sora
???
Solitary Sandpiper
Eastern Kingbird
American Goldfinch
Posted by Dan Arndt
While work has kept me rather busy and out of town for the majority of the past 6 weeks, on my brief trips back to Calgary I’ve been making a serious effort to get out and find some local birds. One of the most tantalizing of these birds was a lifer that’s eluded me for a few years in the Calgary region, a Bobolink. Their song is reminiscent of a robot, crossed with a blackbird, and is actually produced by two separate parts of their vocal cords singing entirely different songs. This particular pair of males was found near Priddis.
Pair of Bobolinks
Plummer’s Road, south of Calgary
July 2, 2014
Bobolink
Plummer’s Road, south of Calgary
July 2, 2014
On one of my trips down to this area, I managed to find some adorable little baby American Coots still being fed by their mothers.
American Coot and chick
Plummer’s Road, south of Calgary
July 2, 2014
American Coot and chick
Plummer’s Road, south of Calgary
July 2, 2014
On another morning I took a visit to Frank Lake, and found a few different babies of different species, including a baby Willet, baby Ruffed Grouse, immature Western Meadowlarks, and baby Eared Grebes, all staying safe and close to their parents. With the breeding season being so short in this area of the world, one could almost blink and miss the whole thing!
Eared Grebe chick
Frank Lake
June 27, 2014
Willet Chick
Frank Lake
June 27, 2014
baby Ruffed Grouse
south of Turner Valley
June 27, 2014
baby Western Meadowlark
Frank Lake
June 27, 2014
And last but not least, thanks to a very special friend on the Facebook group Alberta Birds, I was able to find this adorable trio. An adult and two immature Black Terns, northeast of Calgary, just last week. Amazing, huh?
Baby Black Terns
NE of Calgary
July 15, 2014
Baby Black Terns and mom
NE of Calgary
July 15, 2014
Yesterday I posted Tony LePrieur’s photos of the damage at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, and some of the birds he saw there. Here are more of his shots of birds at the sanctuary, all taken in early June 2014.
Baltimore Oriole.
Common Goldeneye with chicks.
Red-tailed Hawk.
Red-tailed Hawk.
Western Wood-Pewee.
House Finch.
Northern Flicker.
Spotted Sandpiper.
Warbling Vireo.
Tree Swallow.
Downy Woodpecker.
Double-crested Cormorants.
Blue-winged Teal.
American Robin, possibly banded at the sanctuary.
Wood Ducks.