Foam Lake Birding No. 34




FOAM LAKE BIRDING
No. 34
It was never my intention to do a repeat article on a particular bird. However, an extraordinary event this past week made me do just that.
In my last article, I had written about a flock of nine Grey Partridges (Huns) landing in our neighbour’s front yard. Several days later, about 5:15PM, I was sitting in our living room when I noticed a flock of “little chickens” walking on the deep snow in our front yard. They were Huns alright – probably the same ones that I had written about last week. I did not see them land; I just saw them walking leisurely from north to south. When they got to the hedge on the south side of our yard, they slowly gathered into a cluster of birds partially buried in the soft deep snow. They were still there when it was getting quite dark. It appears they spent the night there.
I got several pictures of them just as the light was starting to fade for the evening. As a result of the poor light, the pictures are not of the best quality, but they more than adequately capture an unusual event in the birding world. I, also, got several shots of the Huns before they gathered to roost for the night. One of the photos (of several walking birds) came out in quite good resolution. However, I decided to publish the picture of them huddled together like a bowl full of perogies. They simply looked cute! It does appear that Foam Lake just might have its own family of Huns that do not mind (perhaps, even like) human presence. I certainly hope so.
The high winds of this past week knocked one of our niger seed feeders down. When it fell down the lid came off, but only a few seeds actually spilled onto the snow. It was quite comical watching a Redpoll “walking” into the open end of the feeder in order to get at the niger seed inside.
Last week we drove to Humboldt for a weekend visit. On our way there, about halfway between Dafoe and Watson, we saw a beautiful Snowy Owl sitting on a power post. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me. It would have made a terrific picure.
Finally, I want to announce that I now have my very own website that contains all of the Foam Lake Birding articles. It is current. The site also has all of the photos that appear in the Foam Lake Review except that they are not cropped and in full colour. In addition, I have usually added another picture or two to each article that, for reasons of economy, cannot appear in the local newspaper. For example, my article on the Northern Shrike stated that it had just killed a Redpoll that lay in a heap on the snow beneath it. The newspaper article had the Redpoll cropped out; the website shows it as described in the write up. In addition, I also included another picture of the Shrike sitting on a branch with the Redpoll impaled on a thorn right beside it. It simply adds to the event.