Photo gallery: the birds and landscapes of spring, 2015

Here are some photos of things that have caught my attention in May and June this year:

At Point Pelee we had long looks at this very famous and reliable
Rufous-phased Eastern Screech Owl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The breeding Prothonotary Warblers of Pelee Island where I attended the
Springsong Bird Festival again as guest birder, helping Graeme Gibson and
Margaret Atwood celebrate Canada's birds of spring.

 

Scarlet Tanagers lit up the Carolinian Woods on the island and
at Point Pelee

back home I visited the Spy Hill-Ellice PFRA Pasture
straddling the Sask/Manitoba border, working on a new
book with photographer Branimir Gjetvaj

 

 

 

 

This pasture is a wonderful piece of Aspen Parkland prairie and had
great expanses of Three-flowered Avens in bloom


   
Tufts of spear grass at dawn on the Spy Hill-Ellice PFRA pasture

 Yellow Lady Slippers in mid-June when we find them in ditches and
 nowhere else.

A calm morning on Cherry Lake

















On windy days we see this large floating island of
cattails venture out across the lake and back again before settling
against the shore again until the next big blow.

A Cliff Swallow decided to renovate and take over an old barn swallow nest under

the eave of our cabin. Odd to see this colonial species all alone.

 

A strange sight on my Tyvan Breeding Bird Survey last week--
Ed Rodger and I found six Pronghorns near the town of Francis,
on a cultivated field, far from any native grass. A buck and five does.