Yesterday was our final day for this year. There comes a time when it's too cold for binoculars, cameras and fingers. We start to see very few birds as we don't have many winter birds.
Yesterday was dull and cold . I didn't think we'd see much. However , our list included:Canada geese, black-billed magpie, common raven, downy woodpecker, black-capped chickadee, boreal chickadee, red-breasted nuthatch, white breasted nuthatch and northern flicker.
I sent the group around a 1.5 km loop and I went back to the nature center to get coffee and cake ready. Yes, we have coffee and cake on the last day. They were supposed to be back before three and they weren't back. So they had a story. They had almost got all the way around when they encountered a mother moose with two calves on the trail. When she lowered her head they cleared out as fast as possible and had to walk all the way back around the trail. They were excited about their experience.
Birding has changed a bit. Camera optics are better than binocular optics. Many times someone gets a good photo and we use that to identify a bird. The camera has a photo and it doesn't matter if the bird flies away.
So we had our cake and coffee and talked about what we'd seen over the summer and look forward to next year. This year we saw about 90 species. There are a little over 200 species in this area.
One of Lynette's photos that brings in the detail.
