Stéphane’s Blog for May 08, 2011

“The animal in me crouches, poised immobile,

eyes trained in the distance, waiting

for motion again. The sky is wide;

blue is depthless; and the animal

and I wait for breaks in the horizon.”

Simon J. Ortiz, Acoma Pueblo

And it nicely sums up the day! We had a brilliant sky with tiny flickering specks appearing from time to time, as if falling from the depthless blue. They turned out to be mostly Yellow-rumped and Palm Warblers, but we also had some Black-throated Green, Nashville, Black-and-White Warblers. The Cape May and Blackburnian Warblers easily matched the sky brightness.

The first Northern Waterthrush was heard and the first Chestnut-sided Warbler was seen. There was a Clay-coloured Sparrow near the tip (which is the spit of land enclosing the basin on our side), the first detected of the spring. Among the Barn and tree Swallows, a single Bank Swallow was heard and seen, sporting its neat, brown, necklace.

However, numbers were low, except for flock after flock of Chickadees. At the very end of the morning, the Boreal Chickadee was heard again.

A beautiful day!

Stéphane