While walking home from school yesterday during a short blizzard I flushed a medium-sized orange/brown bird. My instincts called it a thrasher with the 1-2 second glimpse, but after 15 minutes of searching for it again and after walking home I thought that it was probably 'just' an oriole.
Long story short, it was re-found this morning and a great bird was added to the life lists of many local birders!
Despite the distance, you can see the large tail here:
On Thursday, while 45cm of snow descended on the Avalon, Ian Jones, Miguel M., and I ignored all warnings and headed straight for Holyrood. We were expecting Ivory Gulls around every corner but didn't find a single one.
This Common Merganser was at the ice edge riding out the wind and snow:
Thorough scans of the gull flocks revealed nothing unexpected:
