Taken at 10:41 am on 28 May 2023.
Thursday, 1 June 2023: our temperature is only 12°C (windchill 9°C) at 10:00 am. Sunrise was at 5:27 am and sunset is at 9:41 pm. Cloudy and windy this morning, with desperately needed rain expected.
The annual May Species Count for our area started at 6:30 am on 28 May 2023, but I managed to get to the area a bit early (around 6:10 am) so that I could check for Wilson's Snipes at one of the locations. Saw and photographed two and then heard a third one. Normally, I am never up and ready at such an unearthly hour! The secret for this day was that I simply stayed up all night. I had been busy on my computer till late at night and then was concerned that if I did go to bed, I would very likely sleep right thrrough my alarm clocks that were set for 4:00 am.
Our group of three people stopped at seven different locations during the day, gradually working our way further west till we reached highway 762. One of our first stops was enjoying Barb's acreage. Though I didn't get any decent bird shots, I was happy to see an American Goldfinch and an Evening Grosbeak.
Quite a few of the birds on the Count were not seen by me - I just don't have the experience of spotting small birds flitting about in the trees. My knowledge of bird songs is extremely poor, too.
The weather was beautiful all day, apart from the very low cloud early in the morning. The two 'real' birders did a great job of finding 65 or 66 bird species. Perhaps the highlight -certainly for me - was finding two Bobolinks, though I only saw one of them. Far away, but I have posted a really bad photo just as a record of the sighting. There are a lot of much better images of these beautiful birds in my Bobolink album.
A great day!
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