Common Loon fishing on the Niagara River on a rather cold and dreary day. Since there wasn’t much colour anyways I made this Black and White to focus a bit more on the Loon’s feather textures.
We had a very odd spring this year, cold and wet until the last couple of weeks of May and then 30 degrees Celsius immediately afterwards. No transition, and due to that the spring migration of birds felt kind of abbreviated.
The ducks and loons came through and stopped on Lake Erie and the Niagara River for a few days before heading north towards their summer haunts anywhere from southern Ontario all the way up into the arctic.
Bald eagle returning to the nest with a decent sized fish on another grey day. High key images can be a challenge with the contrasting white and black of the eagle.
Osprey and Eagles came back into the area and started setting up nests quickly. Many of these nests are located on the US side of the river but we do get to see these birds fishing along the edge of the river. If/when the borders open back up it will be nice to get over to see some of the nature areas around Buffalo again to see what has returned.
Female purple martin taking off from the martin condos on the Lake Erie shoreline.
The next thing we tend to see just as the swarming bugs emerge are the swallows, Martins and swifts. There are plenty of houses that people put up along the shore for these birds along with bridges for many swallows to build their nests. It can be quite the scene in the mornings and evenings when there are hundreds of these birds doing aerial acrobatics lunging after tiny bug clouds up and down the shoreline.
Wilson's warbler stopping for just a second beside a wiggly branch
Usually a big thing, but this year not so much. The warblers come through and if we are lucky stay a few days in the small woods nearby getting back energy by eating the bugs in the trees. There are years that I have seen more that 30 different species of warbler, this was not one of them. I did get to see a few very pretty warblers and a couple that I have never seen before this year. Now that spring migration is mostly over, it is time to get out in the kayaks and canoe to see what we have in and around the lakes of Ontario…I guess that will be another story depending on where we can venture off to on this odd 2020.
Magnolia warbler down low in the thick of the bushes.
New bird for me, Cerulean Warbler.