Life On and Off an Acreage: Pine Grosbeak

Showing posts with label Pine Grosbeak. Show all posts

January 14, 2020

Freeze Out!

The last few days have been a bust for taking photos! At -39C or -50C with the windchill it has not been possible to get out and about. Hands freeze (literally) in about 2 minutes at those temperatures. Believe me, you do not want to hold a camera with the gloves off!

Even the birds have been hold up somewhere. Today, a few Chickadees showed up at the feeder. I got a couple of shots through the window.

This Pine Grosbeak caught my attention. I haven't seen one in weeks. He made a big dent in my sunflower seeds! The sun hit him just right.

I saw somewhere that there are only 5 more Mondays until spring. One more week of deep freeze and then bring it on!

January 17, 2018

Improvements!

It was a great day with the temp actually getting up to +4C . Time to take the dog out for some exercise.

We took the camera and did about 4 klicks looking for wild life, but found nada.

Not even a bird was to be found,

We wandered along some bush roads for about an hour. It was a great time out. Quiet, Peaceful, and warm

I have to put out a couple of photos from the front window, just to show that all the birds are not frozen.

This Hairy Woodpecker had
just finished at the suet container.
The Pine Grosbeak similarly had pigged out on the sunflower seeds

The little Red Poll was so fat it could hardly move.

This guy enjoyed getting his photo taken. At least it seemed so!

It should be possible to bigify the pictures

December 12, 2017

Bush Walk

It was a very windy day, too windy for ice fishing, so I took Daphne on a 4 mile walk, looking for some critters. Even in the bush it was blowing. That let out seeing deer, moose or elk. They were all hunkered down someplace. The Bohemian Waxwings were very co-operative.

There were three Pine Grosbeaks, fluffed up and trying to stay warm The Male,2 photos below, were exceptionally fluffy.

The female Pine Grosbeak was a little more "normal".

Just in case you were wondering what its like taking photos in Whitecourt, this is the sun at high noon. The light is only good from 10:00 am to about 2:30. Otherwise it is a challenge to get a good picture.

January 31, 2016

Feeder Day

It was a crowded day at the feeder with the Hairy Woodpecker showing up again.

The larger of two look alikes, the Hairy Woodpecker is a small but powerful bird that forages along trunks and main branches of large trees. It wields a much longer bill than the Downy Woodpecker's almost thornlike bill. Hairy Woodpeckers have a somewhat soldierly look, with their erect, straight-backed posture on tree trunks and their cleanly striped heads. Look for them at backyard suet or sunflower feeders, and listen for them whinnying from woodlots, parks, and forests.

There were about 50 Red Polls lined up in the tree waiting for me to put the feed out. They are getting to be very tame.

As energetic as their electric zapping call notes would suggest, Common Redpolls are active foragers that travel in busy flocks. Look for them feeding on catkins in birch trees or visiting feeders in winter. These small finches of the arctic tundra and boreal forest migrate erratically, and they occasionally show up in large numbers as far south as the central U.S. During such irruption years, redpolls often congregate at bird feeders (particularly thistle or nyjer seed), allowing delightfully close looks.

The Pine Grosbeaks have been around all winter in a flock of about 100.

The pine grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) is a large member of the true finch family, Fringillidae. It is found in coniferous woods across Alaska, the western mountains of the United States,Canada, and in subarcticFennoscandia and Siberia. The species is a frugivore, especially in winter, favoring small fruits, such as rowans (mountain-ashes in the New World). With fruit-crop abundance varying from year to year, pine grosbeak is one of many subarctic-resident bird species that exhibit irruptive behavior. Inirruption years, individuals can move long distances in search of suitable food supplies, bringing them farther south and/or downslope than is typical of years with large fruit crops. In such years in the New World, they may occur well south of the typical extent of winter distribution, which is the northern Great Lakes region and northern New England in the United States. This species is a very rare vagrant to temperateEurope; in all of Germany for example, not more than 4 individuals and often none at all have been recorded each year since 1980. (From Wikipedia)