Faithful chickadees

The black capped chickadees seem to visit faithfully most days during the winter. There are never large numbers often just one or two at a time. They don't seem to like to share the feeder ledge space!

Even during this very frigid weather I see chickadees almost every day visiting. The only other birds lately are some house sparrows and a few red polls.

Squirrel staying up to see winter begin.

Our squirrel still visits the feeder quite regularly. Here he is sitting up opening a sunflower seed oblivious to the fearsome cold and wind chill on the first day of winter.

House Sparrows clean out feeder

The house sparrows have rediscovered the feeder and are feeding with a vengeance. Perhaps with this very cold weather they are having some trouble finding food since there have not been that many around so far. I will have to venture out into the cold and refill the feeder. Actually there is not that much wind so it is not too bad out. There are still redpolls and chickadees feeding as well.

More cold and more ravens..

We drove to Brandon and back yesterday. We saw one flock of birds that were probably snow buntings but otherwise there were only a few ravens in twos or threes. The wind chill was in the minus forties. We did not get out of the car to observe the birds more closely!

Very very cold and windy..

We went shopping to the next town today. It was more than minus 40C windchill. The only birds we saw were half a dozen ravens. At the feeder there are only red polls and chickadees and only a few of them.

More chickadees

There are quite a few chickadees visiting these days probably the most frequent of all visitors. I have seen a few more red polls and the occasional sparrow as well. The squirrel refuses to admit winter is well under way and is still active every day even though there is now a significant amount of snow on the ground.

Ravens and pigeons

A few days ago we drove to Brandon and back. There were few birds to be seen. At one point we did encounter a rather large flock of pigeons along the side of the road. I assume they were getting gravel for their crops. The only other birds we saw were ravens, one single raven and two groups of two.