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Birds & Beers, June 12th, 2025

Jun4

Next Thursday, June 12th, join us for The Big Birding Quiz of the Year!!

For the last Birds & Beers of the spring/summer season, we will be meeting as usual at the Royal Canadian Legion at 9202 Horton Road SW, from 5 to 9 pm. Instead of a presentation this time, we will have a birding quiz starting at about 7 pm.

Come early if you want to eat, drink, and socialize, and then at about 7 pm Joan Walker will host a special Trivial Pursuit-style “Wing and Feather” Night. A night when we can share our knowledge of our feathered friends, and perhaps gain some new insights into their unique habits and behaviors.

This promises to be a lot of fun! Each table, whether four, five, or six people, will be a team, and the teams compete to get to a certain number of correct answers. Questions will be on any birding topic, but weighted towards local birds. Songs and calls may be involved! And there will be some surprises too!

Joan introducing last month’s talk at Birds & Beers. (This shows about half of the 96 attendees.) This time, we will stay at our tables and take part in a birding quiz.

Everyone is welcome to join us, even children if accompanied by an adult.

Birds & Beers takes a break in the summer and will resume in September. I will post the schedule and upcoming presentation topics once they are booked.

Wednesday Wings: Merlin with Rock Pigeon

May27

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

I have often seen Merlins chasing Rock Pigeons, but it seems to be a very hard bird to catch. On April 10, 2015, near 19 Street NE and the Trans-Canada Highway, Chris Johnson got this excellent shot a Merlin with its Rock Pigeon prey.

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Merlin with Rock Pigeon. Photo by Chris Johnson.

Taken with a Canon 6D 70-200 2.8 lens. At 200mm, f/4.5 1/400 and ISO 100.

Q & A: Follow-up on Attracting Birds to Feeders

Mar12

Last May we answered a question from a reader who had been trying unsuccessfully to attract birds to her yard in Calgary. The yard was in an awkward location at a small townhouse without trees or shrubs. Although she was putting out many types of high-quality seeds, the birds were not coming.  We gave some advice on attracting birds, which you can read about here. We are happy to report that after nearly a year of persistent effort, finally there are birds coming to the yard.

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Hi,

Nearly a year ago I approached you looking for suggestions on how to attract birds to my feeder in my awkward yard.  While I was not successful last year, I’m happy to announce that my patience has finally paid off.  
 
I thought I’d send you an update because others in a similar situation may find what I did will help them as well.  When we got our Christmas tree (real) I kept the branches that were cut off the bottom, and was able to take a bunch more from other people’s trees as well.  When I got home I bunched all the branches together and made several boughs out of them, tied them with wire, put a pretty bow on them and hung them from our balcony.  Within 24 hours I had birds foraging through my boughs and feeding at my feeders!
 
The last month has been wonderful, I’m finally able to watch birds from my own window and I have a steady flock of Common Redpolls and finches that come throughout the day.  I’m not sure what I’m going to replace the boughs with once they’re all dried up, but I’ll figure something out.  I’ve attached a few photos just to demonstrate my situation and solution.  I hope my experience may help someone else in the future.
 
Thanks again for all the suggestions, all the best.
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Here are the photos of her yard:
Rachel Paris 1
Rachel Paris 2