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Thursday, March 24, 2011

Hummingbird!!! dandelions and bees

Ok, so I’m cheating just the tiniest bit – I haven’t actually seen or heard a Hummingbird yet, but a neighbour came running out to tell me that he’d just had one at his feeder…this while we were returning from our walk – so I figure close enough!

Another nice day…again quite breezy…

log bay

It look’s deserted here but there were actually 8 or 10 Tree Swallows flying about, close to 50 Green Wing Teal all paddling around at the edge of the far shore…and

Mallard in log bay

right in the log bay…

Pair of Mallard

this pair of Mallard, who, as long as we were calm and quiet, were perfectly content paddling about in the shallows.

cloud moving in

looking towards the south you can see a change in the weather moving in…

Geese

and that pair of Canada Geese were back in the same spot…obviously thinking about nesting here.

I spotted the first Purple Finch of the season today as well…but didn’t manage a picture…

Dandelion flower

another ‘first’ for the day was this Dandelion flower…now I know to most people Dandelions are weeds and thought of as an annoyance at best, but they actually play a very important role in a healthy habitat…being an early source of food for the seed eaters like sparrows and finches.

Chipmunk

We mustn’t forget our furry residents either….Chipmunks, like this guy have been showing up for the past couple of weeks, although I must admit I have never seen a chipmunk in the park area – they seem to prefer the residential areas…as do the Gray (Black) Squirrels that now seem firmly entrenched, and the smaller, native, Douglas Squirrels.

Bumblebees and Honey bees

One final note is that yesterday was the first day when I’d really seen any number of bees…both the wild ‘Bumble’ bees (1 on left) and the very important to our food supply,  ‘Honey’ Bees (3 in picture).  Of course they are on flowering heather which is not a native plant and not growing in the estuary…but they will move to include native plants as they start to flower.

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