The song of the Bobolink is both strange and delightful, a percussive mix of clinks and warblings heard on warm summer days above unmowed fields. Even his latin name, Dolichonyx oryzivorus, sounds like a phrase from the bubbly babbling if this charismatic blackbird. A few weekends ago I returned to Grass Lake for another session [ Read More ]
Saturday was cloudy and drizzly for most of the day, but as the sky began to break up a bit in the afternoon, I took the opportunity to pay the Cooper’s Hawks at the Guelph Lake Nature Centre another visit. It had been three weeks since I’d last been by, and I found the female [ Read More ]
Long-eared Owls are tough birds to find to begin with, and owlets doubly so. So we local birders were delighted to discover that a group of four LEO chicks have been hanging around Starkey Hill Trail, often snoozing only a few feet above the heads of oblivious hikers. Despite being so close, I didn’t have [ Read More ]
A family of Red-tailed Hawks have taken up residence on the roof of Central Church in Cambridge. In consideration of the birds, the church has postponed their scheduled roof replacement and abstained from the ringing of the chimes until the young have fledged. Two of the four young were in the nest when I dropped [ Read More ]
While on my way to Grass Lake early yesterday morning, I came across this Cedar Waxwing lying in the middle of the road. The back of the bird was a bit smashed up, but I keep plastic baggies and a box of latex gloves in my vehicle for such occasions (nestled beside the jar of [ Read More ]
I hear the note of a bobolink concealed in the top of an apple tree behind me. [...] He is just touching the strings of his theorbo, his glassichord, his water organ, and one or two notes globe themselves and fall in liquid bubbles from his teeming throat. It is as if he touched his [ Read More ]
Birder with a sketchbook, skeptic and popular science junkie. Spends too much on books. Fearful of spiders. Is well trained.
Currently resides in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
