Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Water Birch

This has been a great winter for the dainty little Common Redpolls - lots of them about. They are frequent and often abundant winter visitors across all of Alberta, but some years see a lot more of them than others. Towards spring, redpolls leave for their arctic breeding grounds. Photographed this female at Carburn Park on January 28th. Not the easiest of birds to photograph, as they are either in flight or in constant motion while feeding on the seeds of the Water Birch. Love their little red foreheads. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Redpoll/id/ac en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Redpoll

Managed to get a photo or two of the Common Redpolls when I was at Carburn Park yesterday. There are plenty of these pretty little birds in the city this year. Out for the day today .... Does anyone know that this is a female Common Redpoll for sure and not a Hoary Redpoll? Guess I should have thought of asking this sooner, not when everyone had already commented! www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Redpoll/lifehistory/ac I uploaded today's photos really early this morning, before meeting Flickr friends Ron and Trish at Carburn Park. Trish had never seen a tiny Northern Saw-whet Owl, so that was the most important thing to do today! After that was very successfully accomplished, Ron drove us around the beautiful backroads NE and E of the city for a few hours, looking for Snowy Owls! I should mention that on two separate days, he had found a total on each day of 18 of these majestic, breathtaking birds of prey, so I was feeling really confident. Ron did what he does best - finding birds!! Even though I have seen him do this on several occasions, I still don't know how he does it. Anyway, he found a total of 12 Snowy Owls for us today! The forecast was for cloudy periods - well, all we had was cloud all the time, so I really wasn't at all hopeful that my photos would turn out. Amazingly, they seem to be OK, though I haven't looked at them properly. A bit of brightening will no doubt show up all the flaws - but, we'll see : ) I really do want to add something here - I have come across so many people (many of whom I have not met before) the last few days, while standing watching the Northern Saw-whet Owl, who have told me that they look at my photos on Flickr. I can't thank you all individually, but really want to say Thank You! for taking the time to do this. I greatly appreciate it - and it's very humbling. Later: totally unrelated, but I came across this link for a short video showing some baby Sloths being given a bath at the The Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica. The link was posted by gzebear on the HEGPS (Hornby Eagle Group Projects Society) forum website. Talk about cute!! www.slothsanctuary.com/sloth-rescue/