Birthday Birding

It was a beautiful day yesterday for my birthday. I thought I'd go birding at the local woods.

There is a concrete block beside the Waterfront Trail upon which people put seeds for the 'fauna'. The cardinal let me get pretty close.

I love its contrasting colour to the grey woods.

Along the treeline of the meadow, there are always birds scuffling around on the ground.

White-throated Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco (slate-coloured)

This is exactly where saw a hermit thrush last year.

Hermit Thrush

I think this was a song sparrow.

There were lots of midges flying around - an excellent food source for lots of the birds. We always see lots of tree swallows here.

I almost always see an American goldfinch.

Just before I left, I got a quasi-acceptable shot of a hermit thrush.

Of course there were lots of robins and red-winged blackbirds as well. In the woods, there were several Northern flickers but too elusive for me to get a good shot in the late afternoon.

It was a very pleasant way to celebrate the day.

This morning, Skip and I ventured out again. Sadly, I left my camera back home so. of course, we saw some species really closely. Argh.

Today we saw yellow-rumped warblers, chipping sparrows, a brown creeper, ruby-crowned kinglets, a red-breasted nuthatch, three brown-headed cowbirds in the meadow, what we think was a field sparrow (a lifer for me), and a cormorant flying overhead.