It is amazing what you can see practically in your own backyard. Any time I happened to be outdoors or up north, I had always heard the singing of birds, the overlay of so many unknown calls, but they always fell into that category of background music. Getting to know the source of the sounds is neat. Now, myself and my partner can identify blue jay, cardinal, song sparrows, ravens, yellow warblers, orioles, the sora, swans, the moorhen, and even muskrats, on our ventures. Recently, we've seen baby rabbits, a baby muskrat, mom and baby geese, a moorhen, an egret, painted turtles laying eggs, cormorants, a bobolink, a black bird chasing a king fisher, turkey vultures overhead, baby raccoon, the blue heron as close as we've ever seen, and to top it all off, we saw 2 Sandhill Cranes fly over, circle, then come back to the water and land, at Cranberry Marsh in Whitby. It was awesome! I had seen photos by others of them, so immediately their shapes said Sandhill Crane to me, but I didn't think they were in Ontario. Well, they do migrate for summer breeding to Ontario, but they don't venture into this eastern area too often, so it seems. However, they have been spotted in the Whitby area before, research shows us. They were a pretty amazing sight, flying in synch, over our heads then landing. We realized, 3 mins before or after, standing in some different spot, we'd have missed this!
Had the opportunity to go to a friends' cottage this past weekend. They told us about a nest near by, on the way in to town, along the shores of Lake Simcoe. We got there and grabbed some shots. I was not sure what the birds were, just knew they were birds of prey. I had not seen Ospreys up close, only flying in the distance near where we live, and though we looked them up once, I could not say 100% that these were Osprey. Once we got home, I ID'd them again online.
