Credit: Jeff Wells
After a great morning at Wasagaming yesterday we drove up into Riding Mountain National Park and walked the gravel road into Lake Catherine. Life birds for many in the group were coming swiftly. After announcing its presence with its wheezy version of the "chick-ah-dee" call, a Boreal Chickadee posed in the sun for us.
Birders
Credit: Jeff Wells
We joked about our almost clean sweep of the warblers named after cities and states when we watched singing Tennessee, Nashville, and Cape May Warblers (we missed the elusive Connecticut Warbler—they were not in yet because of the late spring). After numerous flyover Evening Grosbeaks, we finally found one that landed in a tree and allowed beautiful views through the scope.
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Credit: Jeff Wells
Here's a sound recording of one of the Tennessee Warblers that we found:
And here's one of a few calls of Evening Grosbeak, note that they sound higher to my ear than ones we usuallly hear out in Maine:
Evening Grosbeak >
After a lunch overlooking the lake we drove further north to the Boreal Trail where we had a highlight of the day—a pair of very close American Three-toed Woodpeckers, a boreal specialty species that is often very hard to find in the eastern part of its range.
American Three-toed Woodpecker
Credit: Jeff Wells
To top off the day, we spotted a large black bear eating dandelion flowers along the roadside on the way back to the Elkhorn Lodge. We stopped to watch her with a number of other vehicles and she ambled off into the woods, we thought probably for good. But in a few minutes we saw her go underneath a tree and suddenly three cubs that we hadn't spotted before, started shinnying their way down the tree to her. They made it down and then followed her as she ambled across the road behind us.
Bear cubs
Credit: Jeff Wells
So cool!
