American Tree Sparrow

Posted February 13, 2014

These days when I arrive at Blair in the morning, I find the tree sparrows foraging among yesterday’s leftovers at the feeders.  The American tree sparrow is a winter visitor to southern Ontario, returning to the far north to nest in spring.  The highest concentration of nesting records in the province is along the shore […]

Breakfast at Blair

Posted January 23, 2014

Mr. Gill’s class from Woodland Park P.S. was visiting the Blair OEE Centre for Winter Bird Studies today as part of their Habitat and Communities unit .  We were set to begin some bird identification outside at the feeders, but there were no birds to be seen.  Mr. Gill said “there’s one big one on […]

Welcome back Guy!

Posted January 20, 2014

On Sunday a group from the Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists descended on Wrigley Corners to feed some Chickadees and band with me.  Feeding at the Dickson was cold but productive.  We decided to do the bird banding at Wrigley’s where everyone could hangout inside where it’s warm.   While feeding the Chickadee’s we noticed that Jeff […]

Raptor Day

Posted December 20, 2013

At the end of the day yesterday, I went down to fill the bird feeder at the far end of the property.  With the approaching weather conditions, I thought I would keep it full for them.  I had seen some  Wild Turkeys feeding beneath it over the last few days (30+ at a time), so […]

I saw it too!

Posted December 16, 2013

Sean told me about his Brown Thrasher sighting so I have been on the lookout for it.  I thought I saw it this morning, but only its back as it flew away, not enough to be sure.  Right after the class left, I was working downstairs and saw a bird at the feeder. I grabbed […]

Christmas Bird Count

Posted December 16, 2013

On Saturday, I participated in the Christmas bird count with part-time outdoor-ed-guy, Adam Rooke, and long-time outdoor-ed-guy-wanna-be, Ralph Beaumont. We started our day of bird-counting at Laurel Creek at 6:30 am. We called for owls, and got one screech owl and one great-horned owl to make appearances. Then things turned a little snowy and windy […]

What a difference 15 degrees makes!!

Posted December 6, 2013

According to my trusty weather station here at Blair, the temperature reached +13 degrees celcius at about noon yesterday (Thursday), then began to fall steadily to a low of minus 2 degrees early (4 a.m.!!) this morning. Yesterday our feeder and forest bird count totalled only 11 species.  I had surpassed that before 8 a.m. […]

Why Chickadee’s take turns

Posted December 2, 2013

[wpvideo dw4A8hYw] If you have a bird feeder at home you likely have Chickadees visiting regularly.  At Wrigley Corners we also feed these birds by hand!  Though Chickadee’s do occasionally have little squabbles I find them to be relatively tame visitors, certainly compared to the various finches they are down-right polite. Chickadees form non-breeding flocks […]

That Chickadee Feeding (Repost)

Posted November 29, 2013

So, you’ve read That Chickadee Feeling by Frank Glew.  In this book, a child gets a wonderful feeling from a chickadee eating sunflower seeds out of her hand.  You really want a chickadee to eat sunflower seeds out of your hand.  What do you do?  How do you start? It’s not that hard.  You just need […]

Even more tracks!

Posted November 20, 2013

This morning when I was out filling up our bird feeders at Laurel Creek I found some more tracks on the swamp bridge.  These were really neat looking because they were left in the frost.  These are raccoon tracks as it walked along the bridge railing.  They walk with alternating gait so the back foot […]

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