Thursday 6 February 2014

Weekend trip to see snow and maybe birds

This weekend I am heading up north to the Timmins area and back with Tyler Hoar and David Szmyr. Tyler proposed this trip to Dave and I a few weeks ago, and since I had nothing planned already I said, "Sure, why the heck not?" or something. We are hoping to see some of the more interesting northern birds that are in the area. What are our targets for the trip?

Personally I am looking forward to doing some snowshoeing in the boreal forest more than anything. I would love to have a close encounter with a Three-toed Woodpecker as well. Here is a list of the species we are hoping to see:

American Three-toed Woodpecker
Black-backed Woodpecker
Gray Jay
Boreal Chickadee
Northern Hawk Owl
Red Crossbill
Pine Grosbeak
Evening Grosbeak
Purple Finch
Spruce Grouse
Ruffed Grouse

There is always the possibility of running into something awesome like a Boreal or Great Gray Owl, but I'm not holding out hope!

I recently purchased a new Nikon DSLR, so I am pretty stoked to try it out!! Some of the above species I haven't photographed well before.

By the way, some of you may have noticed that photos for almost all my previous posts no longer show up. It had something to do with Blogger/Google Plus screwing up when I changed the email address I use to sign into Blogger to my current email address. Apparently all your photos disappear when you do that. Ugh...

I'll slowly work on getting all the photos back online. It may take quite some time before they are all back because I have to manually upload each photo from my computer, one blog post at a time...

4 comments:

Alan Wormington said...

I hope you see "a" bird on your trip, other than Common Ravens of couse LOL.

Josh Vandermeulen said...

Me too! Maybe we'll luck out and a chickadee will fly across the highway or something.

Mike Baker said...

Saw my first Three Toed two weeks ago out here in Calgary. Took me a minute to realize what I was actually looking at!

Tyler said...

Alan yeah of little faith. We will see a bird other than a raven. Maybe a a Pigeon in North bay. I actually will be disappointed if not at least one of the target woodpeckers, the staked out Hawk Owl and 2 species of Winter finches are about located. Going to do some grit birding. i.e drive some of the lower traffic secondary highways and hope for birds on the road for grit. And Josh that Chickadee could be a Boreal ;)
Anyhow back in the north, in the Timmins 9 burn, and on showshoes will make it worth while.