Sunday, 6 December 2015

A Fantastic Start to Winter Birding!

We're six days into the winter "season" and I've already seen some great birds!

The Field Sparrow that I found in late November has been easy to see. Even after a light snowfall the bird continued to ignore my nearby feeder and eat seeds from the remaining grass.






I also managed to see the continuing adult male Summer Tanager:


The third great bird of the month was an adult Red-tailed Hawk! A new bird for me in Newfoundland. A species I spent a fair bit of time looking for in October & November during what exists of hawk migration here. I definitely wasn't expecting to come across one today: 





Here are some other birds I've seen this week:

male Downy Woodpecker:

juvenile Common Merganser:

adult "kumlien's" Iceland Gull:

adult Common Loon still sporting most of its breeding plumage:

A small flock of White-winged Crossbills was feeding in some big spruce trees that were on a hill below where I was birding offering my best looks and photos ever of this species.

This photo stood out to me: a male White-winged Crossbill in a sea of cones
Probably one of my favourite photos I've ever taken

White-winged Crossbills continue to be very common all around the province.


This Gadwall flew in with a flock of wigeon (including the Eurasian Wigeon seen in this photo) and made a crash landing on the ice. After regaining their balance they stood up and looked around to make sure no one had seen them make that embarrassing landing!