Of birds and dogs and bird dogs (and Piping Plovers)

Atlantic Canada, Barks, BEYOND, Birds, Canada, My Dogs

Tomorrow my life is going to change a lot as I have adopted a 15 month old Border Collie / Australian Shepherd from Ontario and she will be arriving on Tuesday night.

casey

It has been a tough time living without Nelson since September and I still miss him dearly, but it is time for new pawsteps in the house.

I have done a lot of birding this year to fill the void and been able to be footloose and fancy free as far as my schedule goes and I know that is about to change.

So today I took the day off to spend it birding alone as it will be the last chance I get hands free for some time I think.

My plan of course is to take my new girl birding with me whenever possible. She really can’t be off the leash for some time anyway so I think I’ll hook up the hands free leash and get moving!

Honestly unless you have a dog with high prey drive, or have them off leash where they can step on birds by accident they are great birding companions and some of the best birders I know take their dogs with them. Well why wouldn’t you? Who wants to go for a 2 hour walk in the woods and leave their dog home?

Anyway, I digress.

(PS – For the dog people in general one very important thing to note is that it is now breeding season for shore birds like the Piping Plover and other small shorebirds. Make sure your dog stays off all dunes and dry areas of the beaches so he doesn’t squish the babies! Wouldn’t you be heartbroken to know this had happened? From May to September I would recommend very strongly your dog is only on the wet part of the beach. Humans too! We love our little shorebirds and some like the Piping Plovers are endangered and protected so you can be fined too. Although I know you love all animals and would never let your dog step on a baby birdie on purpose.)

Moving on to my last day of dog-free birding. My first stop was to watch my first goslings of the season in Lower Sackville. So cute, even rare birds have a tough time holding up against them.

Second stop was to look for one of my target birds for the day and voila….right where some local birding folk promised in their eBird reports they would be.

I was so delighted to have a nice sighting of a mated pair of Blue-winged Teal who were both lifers and Nova Scotia ticks for me so highly prized.

There were also so many Red-winged Blackbirds there I could not believe it, and a healthy number of Grackles in the mix too.

Then off to the Herbert River Trail which is a generally great spot to visit I found out, and known to have Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers who were my second target bird. I left empty handed but was entertained by a number of other woodland birds including this nosey Purple Finch. Perhaps she was nesting because she was quite agitated even though I did not pish her or make any other noise. I was simply too close for her liking. Well if she weren’t so noisy I would not have stopped to investigate what can I say.

I did also here many Northern Flickers and 4 of them in a group flew right in front of me it is fun to watch the yellow and red flash of them in a group. There was a loud drumming I would love to attribute to a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, but I would not be so bold.

But the who-cooks-for-you of the Barred Owl I am happy to record by ear.

I spent an immense amount of time on the mountain outside of Canaan looking for Sapsuckers but with no luck, although I did locate a good birding trail for the future.

The adventure ended with a little stop to Miners Marsh where it was difficult not to locate the Pied-bill Grebes noisy little things.

A great day of sunshine and quite reflection. It’s raining now and for most of the week they say, as well I have quite a bit of work to do.

And Spacey Macy arrives soon enough to really mix things up!

I hope she will be as good a bird dog as Nelson was, he was a king among bird dogs…my favorite memory of him and birds was when he casually tried to smell the Sanderlings here in Eastern Passage and the birds hardly noticed. Good times and more to come 🙂

Happy outdoor adventures,

Angela

on Nelson, and birds as a lifestyle

Birds, My Dogs

Kate Steele is always mentioning birding as a lifestyle. She may not have coined the phrase, but I heard it from her first and I love it.

Recently I figured out that for almost 14 years, Nelson was my lifestyle. I miss him every single day he was the great love of my life and will never be replaced.

Nelson after a bath summer of 2014

The first few days after he was gone I couldn’t even look at other dogs. They seemed like a creature I could never feel for again. Time of course is a wonderful thing in some ways and slowly and surely I’m warming up to the canine world day by day. They are starting to sense it and running up for pets when I’m out in parks and at beaches.

Birding is my recent lifestyle as of just about a year now, and for some of it I was lucky enough to incorporate my old bird dog into it for about 6 months before he passed.

It will not be at least until late summer to early fall that I get another dog and believe me it has crossed my mind that it will be nice to have a young dog to go with me on deep woods adventures birding. A friend told me the other night she believed that Nelson would want me to make a home for a new rescue dog, and not to be without a dog in my home. I am just not ready, but it will come.

Anyway, of birding as a lifestyle I work it into everyday if I am able, if only for 15 minutes.

About a week and a half ago I got a tip there was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet hanging around Brookdale Crescent and even though that is only about 15 minutes from my house I haven’t been able to make a case to get over there in the morning to check it out. Work calls of course, and I try not to drive to far off my destined path to see the birds. Everyone birds differently but this approach works very well for me.

This morning I had a doctor’s appointment in that area so of course I dropped into Brookdale briefly and found the Kinglet as promised (thank you very much Clarence Stevens for the tip) just where it was supposed to be. EBird counts my lifers so I happen to know this was NS Lifer 177 which is nice as 7 is such a cool number and I’ve been hoping for a Ruby-crowned Kinglet for some time now.

As promised those little devils are the fastest moving bird I’ve ever seen so my photos are barely passable but I can ID my little friend from my shots.

Song Sparrows are much more obliging in the photo department, and once I start working on more my actual photography skills I’ll bet they will be a common subject.

Song Sparrow Jan 18, 2016

When I woke this morning I knew it would be a birdie day as the Cedar hedge was alive with Goldfinch, and it’s not the case every day so I also made a quick stop on the way home at the shore and the Long-tailed Ducks were flying around like crazy.

The one new camera setting I’ve tried other than Auto is the Sports setting, so tried some flight shots. They are blurry but all things in good time a study of many birds in flight will be required to find the proper camera settings for each one.

I found a wonderful beginner’s photography tutorial a little while ago on YouTube you may want to check out btw:

Photography Tutorial: ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed

And it was a birdie day indeed, because my female Northern Cardinal was in my backyard when I got home and I had not seen her for about a week and a half.

Busy week ahead with work and was sick on the weekend so it was really nice to have a little birdie time handed to me by mother nature today.

Hartlen Point, my bird dog, and my heart

BEYOND, Birds, My Dogs

I lost my old bird dog last week. I keep going to Hartlen Point looking for the piece of my heart that I lost. Nelson was 14 years old when he died and with me for most of those years as I adopted him from the Lillian Albon Shelter when he was 10 months old.

He was their very first out of town adoption and they kept each of my 3 references on the phone for almost an hour each. Nelson was the least adoptable dog in the shelter (and had been there for 5 months) the day we went to meet him but my partner at the time wanted him because he liked his big feet. Then we broke up and I got the dog.

Well for all the work he was in the beginning, he sure turned out to be one hell of a dog.

Full of life to the end but his legs failed him and there was only one option unfortunately. A big active dog cannot be without the use of his hind legs. My poor boy.

For the past year he has been having trouble with long walks so we took to doing a 10 minute loop around the block and to the ocean once in a while and I would bring my camera so we could stop and look at birds and he could rest. I also took him to the little beach at the bottom of Oceanlea for a swim two weeks ago and he tried to sniff the Sanderlings. He was always very curious about the birds but never ever mean to them. Nelson was a Black Lab / Irish Setter cross would be my best guess so a bird dogs on both counts.

So, Hartlen Point was a very favorite place of Nelson’s and mine long before I became a birder. Security is in place now and you really can’t take dogs in there anymore but I took him a few weeks ago in on leash to stand on the rocks for a while. The walk down the path by the Coast Guard shed just to the shore was pretty much all he could do for the day. I knew it would not be long before our bad day would arrive.

But I am so happy I made a point to do this. And now that I am a birder, Hartlen Point has become a special place for me in a new way and I spend a lot of time down there birding.

And as sad as I am, I feel like he is walking with me and I hope that piece of my heart will come back to me in time. Whenever I spot a new bird at Hartlen Point I’d like to think Nelson saw it first…

RIP my heart dog Nelson 2001-2015