Milk River Ridge-March 17

So, maybe I'm not cut out for this blogging thing... I am going to try to keep up with this thing but I cant seem to find time!

Anyway, on Sunday March 17 I decided to drive down to Milk River Ridge Reservoir to see what new waterfowl had shown up. My first decent bird was a Golden Eagle just west of Raymond but the real show happened when I arrived at the Lake!

As I drove the north side of the lake it became apparent that my 200 Snow Geese had turned into thousands! Almost every field was completely covered in a white blanket, but that blanket was geese not snow! The number of Northern Pintails in the area was also staggering.

Snow Geese and Northern Pintail

Lots of Snows...

Sorry about the poor cell phone video quality! One of a few flocks of Snow Geese...

There was a small patch of open water on the north side that had a few Mallards, American Wigeon, Northern Pintail, and Common Goldeneye. There were also about 10 Redhead, 4 Canvasbacks, and 1 Lesser Scaup rounding out the ducks. A flock of about 100 Tundra Swans was also present.

I spent quite a bit of time looking through the flocks of geese in the field trying to pull out a Ross's Goose, but I'm either the worst or most honest birder ever...The south side of the lake had more of the same species but a flock of about 50 Lapland Longspur was a nice surprise and a new year bird for me!

Lapland Longspurs!

And in flight!

On my way back I saw 2 more Golden Eagles and about 5 Rough-legged Hawks. Considering the amount of raptors I was seeing, I decided to drive the back roads back to Lethbridge in search of a Gyrfalcon. I was not overly hopeful and by the time I was 90% of the way back I had pretty much given up. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark blob in a stubble field to my left, but passed it off as a cat or garbage bag, or something non-birdlike, but something told me to go back and make sure. I trained my bins on the blob and there it was...GYR!!! I couldnt believe my luck, I was only 2 minutes away from the city. I watched the bird eat a Richardson's Ground Squirrel for a while but because of the distance I was unable to get any good photos.

You are going to have to believe me that this is a Gyrfalcon

Overall it was a pretty good Sunday drive! Stay tuned for my search for a Red-bellied Woodpecker!