Exciting and new finds!

We walked down to Glenorchy tonight (the Conservation Area near our home) and had two exciting finds!

We saw a Beaver swimming around. First time ever!! He would surface, circle, swat his tail and submerge. He did this three or four times until we lost sight of him. I've never been that close to see one before and in previous sightings at other locations (I think I saw one in Algonquin once), the beaver makes an appearance and then isn't seen again.

We also have a new one to add to the life list- a Spotted Sandpiper. We were able to get a good look at it, although not a great picture. It was moving around quickly, going from the water's edge to the slope. We saw the eye detail and the spotted breast to help make the id, the tell-tale low flying directly over the water, the constant teetering and it's call. Apparently these are quite common, but this is the first we've ever seen it (and so it goes...) And because I love learning these names, from whatbird.com we have this info about the Spotted Sandpiper:

"A group of sandpipers has many collective nouns, including a "bind", "contradiction", "fling", "hill", and "time-step" of sandpipers."



Then the experience took a bit of a downturn when we came across two dirt bikers (who aren't supposed to be in the area - it's protected) driving around, making all kinds of noise and tearing up the land.


In other news, we saw the male and female Grosbeaks mating this evening, so there has to be a nest close by.


Dave checked the Tree Swallow nesting box and there are five eggs in there.



He also checked the nesting box at my parents' house and there are NINE Chickadee eggs! We looked up the record and Chickadees will have up to ten eggs, so there aren't any records being broken yet. Still pretty exciting though! We'll keep a closer eye on these ones and hopefully get some pics of the chicks.