A Cracking Beak, and the "Cascade-Cam" Goes Live
25 April
We rarely see Evening Grosbeaks hereabouts, and only once before in the garden. Just look at that powerful beak … Grosbeaks breed in mature and second-growth coniferous forests and are just passing through at the moment. They often travel in flocks out of the breeding season but this bird was on his/her own. Populations dropped by an estimated 74% between 1966 and 2019, possibly due to climate change and habitat loss.
The trail-camera has been brought out of storage and set up to see what visits the waterfall (Cascade) while we are not paying attention. This spring there will also be a few short videos … nothing very exciting yet, but it’s early days. This is just a technical check ready for the big wave of birds coming through in the next few weeks (we hope).
To start with, a Blue Jay freshens up … in video.
Two White-throated Sparrows, a Robin, a couple of Goldfinch and a Junco.
And a couple of cropped stills … heavily post-processed as I have to admit this is not a state of the art camera such as I use for my regular pictures. It does the job though for record shots … now, we just have to wait for the Warblers etc to arrive.
Great captures of images and video clips, Richard. The Evening Grosbeaks are such a unique-looking bird and truly live up to their grosbeak name. We've had them occasionally over the past few years in the Ottawa area.
I am looking forward to more of the migrant birds returning as well. Warblers, Purple Martins, etc. I am hoping to see an Eastern Bluebird this year as I have never seen one before. Fingers crossed. ;)
That Robin is certainly guarding that pretty splash of water!