I love this warm weather we’ve been having, so I’ve been going around stalking out more birds :)

The clouds this day were amazing!

After all that trouble finding the three pelicans last time, it was suddenly a lot easier!

These geese patiently rested on Whoop Up Drive’s concrete while I wandered around.

I think this was the first time I had ever seen a robin running and not hopping!

It finally feels like spring is here and the birds no longer sound angry about having returned to a lot of snow so I felt it was a perfect time to go out and take some photos of them. Any excuse to be out in the new found sunshine is a good one. I was most eager to track down some pelicans, which I’ve been wistfully watching out the windows of the university as they fly like pterodactyls over the Old Man River, but since I’m a little scared of them (their wing spans can be up to 10 feet!!!), I started out slow with some more domesticated birds. I live close to (a) water, and (b) a high school, so the seagulls were an easy one to cross off the list first. Nicholas Sheran had the first of the season’s song birds and ducks, but the pickings were still slim. The Canadian Geese are always easy to find by the nature reserve next to the golf course, but the pelicans (the aloof, terrifying birds they are) took a bit of tracking down…

Crows are always easy to find around here. Several were hanging out in the trees at Nicholas Sheran when we arrived.

Is this the red-winged blackbird? There are usually so many of these in Lethbridge, but I could only find the one.

Bottoms up!

A robin doing some grooming

Chickadees are so cute, but hard to stalk because they jump around so frantically.

While I was at the University, I thought I should stop for some gopher (aka ground squirrel) photos. They aren’t the brightest animals, but they’re still pretty cute.

The geese were not impressed we interrupted their hangout on the path. They honked a lot, then retreated to the water.

By now we had been walking around for over two hours, and still no pelicans. We finally found three of them at one last spot in the river bottom where I remember seeing them, sitting on a pile of rocks in the river. After patiently waiting a whole ten minutes, they annoyed each other with some pecking (I suppose with pelicans it’s more like jabbing) and took off in a beautiful flight.

The seagull looks like a little spec in comparison.

PTERODACTYLS. I’m telling you.

I wasn’t as intrigued as last year, as I exhausted the photos I could take that time around (opting to take more “noble” looking photos of the birds), so I spent much less time there on this visit. It didn’t help that I felt too impatient to wait for the flight demonstration, after which I could hold an owl again! However, I was pleasantly surprised with some of the photos I captured… all animals can be quite amusing if you watch them long enough!

“Sarah” – she is always my favorite

“Snoopy” – he was very inactive this time, but I still love how ugly he is

gentleman’s beard

This was the first time I’ve noticed the spot on the end of the bill!

It’s hard to take photos of ducks when you have a telephoto lens on and they are chasing you. I think it was worth risking my life for these duck shots though.

Random duck freakout

“Lincoln” – I took every possible angle of him last year… probably including this one!

Signalling to each other to peck your eyes out

This was an interesting moment. This owl was doing fine, minding his own business, until he spotted my mom’s blue umbrella, obviously the owl’s natural predator. He eyed us suspiciously and would not shrink back down until we were at least six feet away. Even then, he cautiously eyed us until we were completely out of site, even straining to peak around the corner of his pen at us for a longer visual!

Blue umbrella!

The most interesting bird cleaning I have seen yet!