Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Grosbeaks at the Blue Spruce feeder station

My final stop on my day trip to the Sax Zim Bog on Sturdy March first was the feeder station on Blue Spruce Road.
When I arrived it was pretty quiet. This was quite different from the time that I spent here on the Friday of the Sax Zim Winter Birding Festival. On that occasion there were many birds at the feeder station. When I arrived on March first all that I saw where redpolls, which I had already taken some nice shots of off on Owl Ave, and black-capped chickadees.
Every once and a while a woodpecker would drop in to check out the suet feeders, but they were nothing unique. Just hairy and downy woodpeckers like I see all the time around home.
Finally after a little while a group of pine grosbeaks came in to check out the feeders.
The females were the first to arrive.
Followed shortly by several males.
They all stopped and perched on the evergreens surrounding the feeding station for several minutes to check out the situation.
Finally they determined that it was safe and flew over to the feeder station to indulge in the free feast.
I also did spot a boreal chickadee at this feeder but included those pictures in my boreal chickadee post.

1 comment:

John Mikes said...

You're not making it any easier for me to decide what I should do tomorrow. I really want to go up to Sax Zim tomorrow, and all these pics are adding to the pressure. But I'd also like to take a last gasp effort at shooting some fishing eagles at Colvill, and this might be the last week we see them in any numbers. What do do, what to do . . .