Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: standing on a rock

Posting this photo simply for the record. Usually, if I see a Townsend's Solitaire, it is high up at the top of a tree or shrub. This time, we saw one that was down on the snowy ground near the edge of the Bow River in Carburn Park. The actual colour of this bird is more grey than it looks in my photo. "The Townsend’s Solitaire is an elegant, wide-eyed songbird of western-mountain forests. Their drab gray plumage gets a lift from subtly beautiful buffy wing patches and a white eyering. Though they're thrushes, they perch upright atop trees and shrubs to advertise their territories all year long, and can easily be mistaken for flycatchers. Their sweet jumbling song gives them away and enlivens their evergreen forest and juniper woodland homes. In winter they switch from eating primarily insects to eating fruit, particularly juniper berries." From AllAboutBirds. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Townsends_Solitaire/id I actually got out on a birding walk with a group of friends two mornings ago. Quite a photographic leap from the hot rainforest of Trinidad (previous photo) to the cold, winter sights of Calgary. One look at the weather forecast for this week and I decided that, if I was going to head over to Carburn Park, I had better do it (two mornings ago). The temperature was a balmy PLUS 1C-3C! Today, 10 January 2018, it is snowing again and the temperature is -22C (windchill -31C). Crazy weather. Just noticed that tomorrow morning is supposed to be -29C (windchill -37C). The light was not good for photos on this walk and most of the birds were very distant, as usual, at this location. Funny how it always works - if one is walking along the edge of the river, the birds are mainly on the far side. We did see 29 bird species, though. Later in the day, a friend very kindly picked me up and we went to the meeting about the recent Christmas Bird Counts. What an enormous amount of detail and facts are collected each year - most impressive and very useful!

This morning, I dragged myself away from my computer and joined a group of friends for a walk at Carburn Park, down by the Bow River. I missed the walks the last two weeks for one reason or another, and it felt good to take a short break from going through my Trinidad & Tobago photos - not to mention posting them! - but I know I must plod on. I only took a handful of photos today, as the birds were so far away. However, I was happy to see this American Robin posing nicely down by the edge of the river. Not far away, we found a Robin's egg lying on the ground. A brilliantly coloured Baltimore Oriole flitted from branch to branch, usually mostly hidden by leaves, but I did manage to get a very distant, cropped shot. A second Oriole was spotted in the same area. Towards the end of our walk, we stood and watched a pair of Canada Geese swimming with a long line of maybe 20 or more goslings, all in a very disciplined line. Apparently, some orphaned goslings had been placed with this pair, for them to adopt. It seemed to be working out just fine. Once they all reached a sandbar, then chaos ruled, with each gosling moving in a different direction. It almost looked like the adults seemed to be a little frazzled. Hopefully, tomorrow I will get some time to start on the photos from Day 7 of our trip to Trinidad & Tobago.