Saturday 16 March 2013

Lethbridge Birds!

Well I have finally decided I should try to keep a blog again so I'm just going to jump right into it. Migration has really started to pick up in Southern Alberta in the Last couple weeks. I had my first Snow Geese on February 28, two Western Meadowlarks singing South of Medicine Hat on March 2, and since then the migrant waterfowl have just kept coming. The group of Snow Geese at Milk River Ridge Reservoir have grown from 14 on Feb. 28 to well over 200 as of last weekend. Northern Pintails arrived soon after in large numbers and I saw my first wigeons of the year on March 9 which included a beautiful male Eurasian Wigeon at Ridge Reservoir. There have also been Redheads and a pair of Canvasbacks at Park Lake Provincial Park for well over a week.
Snow Geese at Milk River Ridge Reservoir
Today after a very frustrating Saturday at school I decided to drive past Henderson Lake to see if there was any open water on my way home. To my surprise, there was a decent amount of open water on the east side of the lake. I had driven by yesterday and it was still covered in ice. From the road I could see a good number of Canada Geese on the lake and a couple dozen gulls! I parked and quickly grabbed my bins and camera. I was a little to far to get great views of the gulls so I decided I should pick through the few ducks on the water before frustrating myself with gull ID. There were 2 male Redheads and 3 American Wigeon and my thought process while sorting through them was "canada, canada, wigeon, redhead, canada, wigeon, white-front, canada, canada wait what!?!" Out on the ice with 200 other geese was my first Alberta Greater White-fronted Goose!

Greater White-fronted Goose at Henderson Lake
Redheads among Ring-billed Gulls at Henderson
This species has kind of been a nemesis of mine, they rarely pass through the Lethbridge area, and when they are being seen in other parts of the province I am stuck at school. As far as I know this is the first one seen in the province this year. I spent some time taking a few half decent shots of the bird and finally got around to looking at the gulls. There were about 20 Ring-billed Gulls which were a new year bird for me with a hand full of Californias mixed in, but nothing overly exciting. 

An overly edited shot of the gulls and geese because yolo
After going home for a quick supper I went back out to see if anything else decided to show up on the lake, but when I arrived there was not a single bird around and someone was fishing in the spot where the birds were before. I cut my losses and drove over to Jail Lake where among the Mallards and Canada Geese were 2 more Redheads and my first Lesser Scaup of the year. I then headed down to Peenaquim Park where the only interesting birds were 3 newly arrived American Robins and 4 very noisy Killdeer. 

I might get a chance to go out tomorrow in between studying so stay tuned! 

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