Posted in GARDENING on 21 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
The Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) tree which is still quite young has really started to show its fall colour potential this year after several seasons of more lacklustre performance ……. the books say it needs considerable moisture so doubtless this wetter than usual summer has been a big help to it :
Mid-October is always the time [...]
Posted in BIRDS & BIRDING on 21 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
The cold weather residents are beginning to make more frequent appearances at the feeders. Llast night was very wet and it wouldn’t have taken much for the rain to turn to snow so although today has been dry and reasonably bright it is still quite cold and the birds need to fuel up.
Today we had [...]
Posted in Other Stuff on 20 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
This is merely a placeholder to open this new category …… apart from the fact that it is raining cats and dogs and the government is getting dangerously close in some of its ideology this week to Mrs. Thatcher at her most rabid life is going well, it’s Friday and an evening in a local [...]
Posted in GARDENING on 18 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Last year we grubbed out a batch of self-set maple seedlings that had established themselves in a gully. One of them was a glorious golden colour, unlike the lacklustre yellows of the rest, so it was carefully re-established in a site that could use some glorious gold. At the moment, last year seems to have [...]
Posted in BIRDS & BIRDING on 18 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
A damp day graced by the visit of a couple of late straggler Grackles and a small flock of American Goldfinch - we haven’t seem them for a while but we always have several residents in the winter. Shouldn’t be long now before the flocks of sparrows and Juncoes arrive.
Posted in BIRDS & BIRDING on 16 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday started far too early for a Sunday at 5am and involved almost 8 hours sitting on a coach in the company of members of Bird Protection Quebec and le Club ornithologique d’Ahuntsic on the way to Cap Tourmente to see 44,000 Snow Geese and three Golden Eagles. Worth all the pain.
Cap Tourmente is a [...]
Posted in GARDENING on 14 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Welcome to a new category of posts to the Sparroworkers’ blog ………. you can read about the raison d’etre by clicking the Gardening button on the bar above but simply put, what started out as a record of the garden birds is trying to branch out in many directions and there is a need for some order. There [...]
Posted in BIRDS & BIRDING on 13 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Starting to get chilly now but today the garden was visited by both sorts of Kinglets (Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Golden-crowned Kinglet), some Dark-eyed Juncos and a couple of House Finches. Meanwhile, one of the resident Northern Cardinal families that hang out around the garden have been overproducing youngsters this summer. We are sure they have raised three broods [...]
Posted in BIRDS & BIRDING on 10 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
Today’s arrivals included a flockette of about a half a dozen Dark-eyed Juncoes that stayed around a couple of hours before moving on ….. they were the first this season and now looks like summer is really over.
Posted in BIRDS & BIRDING on 9 October, 2006 | Leave a Comment »
My birding chum, Mark, who keeps a much birdier blog than this meandering text (see http://qcbirdingdiary2006.blogspot.com/ ) has noted that we are in the quiet period between fall departure and winter arrival. Very true – today was passed doing important gardening chores and were it not for the odd Chickadee and some very noisy Blue Jays [...]
