A friend of mine recently decided she wanted to take up bird watching a little more actively. She can identify the common species, but wants to know what is visiting her yard and campsight. Naturally, I’ve jumped all over this.
Spring migration is well underway, and more returning species are being reported daily. It’s also the season for yard and garden work, but we managed to squeeze in an evening trip to the local bird sanctuary.
The sanctuary has a variety of habitats – a lagoon, mature trees, lots of bushes, some grassland – and is right along the Bow River. There’s generally a large variety of birds, and it’s close to home so that’s where we headed.
You know how some times things just don’t go the way they’re supposed to?
I had planned on starting her off with some nice easy waterfowl, but here’s the first bird we encountered when we got there.
If you’re a beginning birder, warblers are clearly NOT the place to start. I took pity on her and told her it was a yellow-rumped warbler. Let’s move on…
I was expecting the bushes and water to be alive with birds. We walked through the majority of the sanctuary and saw one female golden-eye, many European starlings and lots of crows. She knows starlings and crows.
We made it to the river, and way over on the other bank, just out of camera range, there were a couple of ducks you could identify if you were an experienced birder. Harlequin ducks were at least a life bird for her, even if we could just barely see them. There were more common golden-eyes on the river, but that was it.
Rounding the lagoon on the way back, we saw our first Canada goose of the evening. You have to look closely though – she’s hiding!
What we lacked in bird life, however, was more than made up for by the mammals. Every corner we turned, we saw mule deer.
Every path we took, we felt like we were taking our deer out for an evening walk.
The sanctuary is right along the river, and the deer make their way up and down it on a regular basis, but I’ve never seen this many there. And did they care if we were there? Not a bit. A few years ago when I was volunteering at the sanctuary, I was making my way down the path giving myself warbler neck, and walked right smack into a doe who was standing crosswise on the path. I think she might have raised her head a notch, and then just kept on eating. I was the one who moved off the path.
If you want to get up close and personal with mule deer, this is clearly the place. There are no dogs or bicycles allowed in the sanctuary, so these animals clearly feel safe there.
Lacking any bird life, it was nevertheless heartening to be greeted with this. Look at that face…
Maybe next time we’ll see some actual birds. Or not.