I caught our eagles perched together this morning on the topmost branch of the nest tree taking in the sites during a spell of sunshine.

 As they took off several minutes later a immature came in for a brief visit and I managed to capture him as he flew off.

Last visit to Buttertubs Marsh in Sept. 2012

The leaves are turning and the mornings are cooler. A large flock of Canada Geese along with American Wigeon had flown in to share the marsh with Hooded Mergansers, Mallard and Pied-billed Grebes.  I watched a Merlin chasing the last of the Dragonflies over the water and found a group of Woodies in a quiet stretch of the Millstone River.

Recent Visitor

Piper's Lagoon - Black-bellied Plovers

Wild Flowers at Piper's Lagoon

Silver Pheasants

 They always show themselves at the same time each year fighting over females prior to breeding.

The Scoters are back.

Large rafts of Scoters - Surf and a few White-winged along Hammond Bay the males displaying, feeding up before their return to the breeding grounds up north.

Thoughts of Breeding

It's that time of year again with the days warming at the approach of spring, the herring are spawning and our eagles are preparing for another breeding season. They have been collecting branches to add to their nest for the last month and are now regularly copulating. We had no fishing activity in our bay this year, with the Seiners cruising past most of the local spawn was north of us.

Woodpecker Visitor's

A pair of woodpeckers attracted to my suet feeder, two quite different species, the Downy, this ones a male, the smallest of all the North American woodpeckers and the much larger Northern Flicker. Both adapted to excavating into trees in search of grubs and beetles and also to provide nesting chambers for rearing young. The most remarkable adaptation is their tongues which is slender, manoeuvrable and like the flicker exceptionally long. As can be seen in the sketch to the right the tongue is anchored with flexible hyoid bones between the eyes at the base of the upper mandible and runs in a sheath on both sides of the skull up and over to the back of the throat. When the muscles contract the hyoid bones slide forward within the sheath and thrust out the tongue.

A American Robin was attracted to the cotoneaster berries and the Varied Thrush dropped in after the recent snow

Buttertubs GBHE

Bald Eagle Lunch

Sharp-shin visitor or is it a Cooper's