Petroglyphs Count Circle (click to enlarge)
Great Gray Owl near Jack Lake courtesy of Anne Anthony
Something had to give. Yesterday morning, the five very mature nestlings were crowded on the nest. I checked on them a few hours later and there were only two birds on the nest. I glanced overhead and saw the missing three perched on one of the rafters.
This male Pine Warbler was flitting about the White Cedars in front of the cottage this afternoon.
Our feeders have only a handful of species attending frequently - Hairy Woopecker, both nuthatches, Black-capped Chickadee, Red-winged Blackbird (mostly females), Brown-headed Cowbird, Common Grackle, Purple Finch, American Goldfinch and a lone Pine Siskin this morning - the first in weeks.
A late afternoon walk through the hardwoods near our home turned up very few birds although I had good looks at Scarlet Tanager, Veery, Eastern Wood-Pewee and Black-throated Green Warbler.
I was out with a friend to do a little birding at the edge of the shield, Between Bobcaygeon and Burleigh Falls. I was very pleased to see and hear some late warblers - Bay-breasted, Blackpoll, Mourning and Canada, which hadn't materialized around our cottage. Also new to me were a few open country birds - Clay-colored Sparrow, Bobolink and Savannah Sparrow. Near Woodview, we encountered some Evening Grosbeaks and some Small Yellow Lady Slipper Orchids growing in a boggy wetland - new to me!
Twenty metres off our shore is an island composed of uprooted water lily rhizomes. The uprooting occurred when the lake level was drawn down in the winter. Ice formed withing the matrix of roots and when the water level was increased, the rising ice tore the roots up from the mud. Now, on any given day, our odd little island may provide footing for Great Blue Herons, Hooded Merganser, Northern Map Turtle, beaver and muskrat.
We are accustomed to seeing Evening Grosbeaks looking resplendent against a snowy background. It's unusual for us to see them in late may and to hear their calls along with those of BAOR, WOTH, WAVI, and PIWA.
This isn't just another bad image of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird. It's actually an image captured through the built-in video camera on my MacBook during a Skype "videoconference" with Martha. This is her capture from the video that I was streaming to her, via my wireless router. 
The sensitivity of the built-in microphone and the high fidelity of the audio stream are better than you might expect. If I point the WIFI enabled laptop towards an open window, Martha, who's sitting at her desktop computer 1300 km away, has no trouble picking out the songs of Baltimore Oriole, Tree Swallow, Pine and Yellow-rumped Warbler. Skype is pretty awesome - perhaps the coolest thing ever to come out of Estonia.
