Old English phone box, in Alberta, Canada

This evening, I am quickly adding 11 new photos, taken this weekend during two May Species Counts. Not the kind of photos that really deserve to be posted, but I wanted them saved just as a record of the fact that I participated in both of these annual counts. Hopefully, I will then be able to edit and post a few more of the photos I took at Pt Pelee, Ontario, and Tadoussac, Quebec. I am still on the first morning of our two-week trip.

Yesterday, Sunday 27 May 2018, was the second day of the annual May Species Count. On the Saturday, I had taken part in the Count at Votier's Flats, Fish Creek Park. We took three cars yesterday, but one car had to leave early. The Count started at 8:00 am and, when we arrived at the starting point and briefly got out of our cars, someone spotted a Killdeer nest right by the cars - I stood in the road and zoomed in. The adults were very near by, but we did not see them do the broken-wing action. Instead, they just kept walking down the road, no doubt hoping that we would be distracted. Later in the day, we had a great view of a different Killdeer, performing the fancy broken-wing activity.

This year, we finished our Count around 2:00 pm, which was earlier than usual. The number of species was quite a bit lower than the last two years. Usually, we see a great variety of birds at one of our stops (Barb Castell's), but things were very quiet yesterday. As Barb reminded us, there are more birds earlier in the day, and late afternoon to early evening. Thanks, as always, Barb, for letting us wander round your beautiful garden!

We were very lucky with the weather for our Count. I think the temperature got up to about 22C, cooler than the last few days - today is forecast to have a high of 29C. After driving various back roads all morning, we ended up at Brown-Lowery Provincial Park, where we stopped to eat our lunch. The parking lot was absolutely packed. A short walk within the forest produced two or three past-their-prime Calypso Orchids. Each year, we do this walk to look for these gorgeous flowers, though Brown-Lowery is actually covered by a different group of people for the Count. Not a single owl of any kind was seen by our group yesterday, unlike last year, when we had a beautiful Great Gray Owl.