Spring - time for birds and bees

This past two days, I have been attending the OCIB symposium at Carleton University.  On my way home, I walked through the Fletcher Wildlife Garden and Arboretum to enjoy the beautiful spring weather.  I saw many birds yesterday but I did not bring a binocular or a camera to identify the birds properly.  Today, I brought my camera and it was definitely more satisfying when I can identify the birds.

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I saw many skinny small birds fluttering from branch to branch that we could not identify.  Today, with my camera, I realized they were probably Blue-headed Vireos (Vireo solitarius) which I have not seen before!

Fauna/flora surveying at Gatineau Park (2016)

It is that time of the year again where I help out with the survey of spring ephemerals and emerging bees at Gatineau Park.  To read more about it, check out my previous posts from 2014 and 2015 (parts 1, 2, and 3).

It is always nice to be back out in nature (especially after a long winter), to step on foliage and into muddy puddles, and search for anything moving, making sounds, or just being attractive.   Since it is only early spring here in eastern Canada, we didn't see any bees constructing new nests in the nest boxes and saw only some hepatica flowers in the quadrats.

While I was checking the nest boxes, I noticed this Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) pecking a tree nearby.