Tundra Swan

The last day of the month and I’d been thinking good riddance to it…I don’t know if I can recall another month were so many people have had so many problems to deal with…and the birding was pretty dismal too…

so with those thoughts in mind, and another dull damp day…I wasn’t expecting anything too much to happen…

then I noticed, out there on the flats….something ‘white’…a Swan or a Goose???  for either to be out there all by it’s self would be odd…

yet there it was, a little white dot way off in the distance…  It wasn’t until I got home and downloaded the pictures and then zoomed way in that I found

it was a Tundra Swan.  If you click on this picture it will enlarge…so hopefully you will be able to see the yellow at the base of the bill where it meets the head…the head shape, too is rounder, than that of a Trumpeter…

I’ve cropped this one even more…you can make out the yellow on this one.  I went back later with a more powerful camera, but couldn’t see the bird – perhaps because of an off leash dog in the area?!

The rest of the walk wasn’t as exciting although there were all kinds of little birds all along the route…

House Finch (a female above), Juncos, Towhees, Song Sparrows, Black Cap Chickadees…and Red-wing Blackbirds calling…

back at the viewing platform, that you can now get to – just – a pair of Fox Sparrows…

one being particularly co-operative for pictures…

and I’m going to throw this picture in because it was on the memory card – I took it a week or so ago in the snow….it is, of course a European Starling, one of those birds we love to hate…but when you get one alone, they are quite attractive birds…that being the quality that caused people to import them and introduce them to this continent in the first place.