American Avocet

In Canada, Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May. This happened to be on 10 May 2015 this year, and my daughter had asked if I wanted to spend the day out with our cameras, looking for birds and old barns and anything else that was interesting and/or beautiful. I couldn't imagine a nicer way to spend this special day : )

We started off locally, visiting a wetland in the SW of the city, where we had good or reasonable views of several different bird species, including Lesser Scaup, Redheads, a pair of Red-necked Grebe, a Killdeer, Savannah Sparrow, Wigeon, Common Grackle (which I love to see) and, of course, a few Mallards.

From that location, we drove some of my familiar backroads SW of the city, where we saw a Snipe walking across a gravel road (it had such a cute way of walking), another pair of Red-necked Grebe, a quick glimpse of a Mountain Bluebird, and a pair of juvenile Swans (very distant, but I think they were Trumpeters).

Our drive then took us further south than I had ever driven before. We knew we wanted to see an old grain elevator at Azure (near Cayley) and we were able to find it. Drove a few of the country backroads in that whole area, eventually ending up at Silver Lake, where we watched some American Avocets (including the one in this photo) and Black-necked Stilts. I'd never even heard of this lake before.

From there, we drove the backroads east of Highway 2, all the way north to Frank Lake, where we saw Eared Grebes, a Western Meadowlark, Yellow-headed and Red-winged Blackbirds, Coots, Canada Geese (of course!), and RAIN! A lot of the day, apart from when we first started the drive, was overcast and we did have a bit of rain on and off. There were some rather black clouds seen from Frank Lake.

Managed to get a few photos of a couple of different Swainson's Hawks during the day. Twice, when we had a great opportunity to get photos, they were disturbed by a vehicle driving by. The driver of one car thought it would be fun to drive past as noisily as he could to make the hawks fly.

We called in at the Saskatoon Farm on the way home, hoping to have a delicious meal there, or at least we drove as far as the entrance. The parking lots were full and overflowing and there was a constant stream of new arrivals. No idea if it was because it was Mother's Day, or perhaps there was a wedding being held there. Whatever the reason, we knew that there was no chance of ever getting a table in the restaurant. Thanks for the treat at Tim Horton's, Rachel : ) And thank you for spending the whole day with me - it made a lovely Mother's Day!