At Lake Beaumaris, a family of Red-necked Grebes turned the summer water into a floating nursery. Beneath the tenderness of back-brooding chicks lies an unexpected evolutionary story linking grebes to flamingos across deep time.
Several hours north of San Pedro de Atacama, we spent the morning searching a high-altitude bofedal for the elusive Diademed Sandpiper-Plover. We never found it. Instead, among grazing guanacos and wandering Lesser Rheas, a surprisingly tame Red-backed Sierra Finch provided one of the most memorable encounters of the trip.
From Humboldt Penguins on the Pacific coast to flamingos and Diademed Sandpiper-Plovers high in the Andes, this Chile birding journey follows the edge of the continent through deserts, wetlands, and some of South America’s most extraordinary landscapes.
This is one party where the boys do all the dancing—and the girls just watch. At dawn on the Wainwright prairie, male sharp-tailed grouse explode into motion in a high-stakes performance to win mates. It’s an ancient ritual set against one of Alberta’s last wild grasslands, where every stomp and strut keeps the prairie’s story alive.
It’s been over three years since I last posted here. Three years is enough time for a lot to change. Enough time to lose track of something you loved, and then—quietly, slowly, perhaps even serendipitously—find your way back to it. And that’s what this post is about: I’m back. Back to the birds, back to…
For a second day in a row I was sitting in my car at the parking lot of the Whitemud Creek waiting for sun dawn. At -10 C it was a “mild” morning compared to the previous day when the temperature was a bone chilling -20 C. At this time of the year, the first…
The last birding outing of the year was to the same location as the first one 365 days ago, at the Whitemud Creek. As far as birding goes 2020 certainly did not break any personal records due to the severely curtailed travel. The furthest I ventured were to our local patch of the Rocky Mountains,…
Yesterday was winter solstice which means that in our Northern Hemisphere it was our shortest day (7 hrs 27 min 41 sec) of the year and last night was the longest night of the year (16 hrs 32 min 19 sec). Today the day was already a modest 6 seconds longer than yesterday. It is…
After a long birding hiatus the indoor isolation of these crazy times finally caught up with me. On a whim, I took a few hours off in the afternoon and headed down to the Whitemud Creek, for the first time in seven months. The usual suspects greeted me along the trail – Black-capped Chickadees, Nuthatches,…
What is Project 366? Read more here. Its seems surreal that I actually have reached post 366, that it has been a whole year and that this project has now been completed. So much has happened during this year, I am one year older, my teen is different person altogether and the world has changed…