Sunday Afternoon Birding

    I lead a Sunday afternoon birding group. I call it a field trip as I am interested in more than birds. Each afternoon is a surprise. There aren't many species around at this time of year. We also make too much noise as we're walking and the birds hear us and take off. However, it's always a fun afternoon. The hand fed chickadees were from one of the field trips.

    The area we walked through today should easily have 15 species. The problem is to find them. The surprise today was to find Pine grosbeaks. They are here for the winter and will share their charm with us.

   Another surprise today was to see many muskrats. The lake is called an oxbow as it's an old river channel.  It's about 150 m(165 y) wide and 800-900m(880-990 yd) long. The muskrats are very active as most of the lake is ice covered and they will now be busy building push ups which are breathing holes as well as food supplies.

   

Most of the lake is ice covered.

Those darn reflections showed up again. I'm going to have to check my camera!

Warmly dressed birders.