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Friday, February 16, 2018

The Weekend Roundup: G

This weekend's prompts from Tom the Backroads Traveller are: Starts with G, Green, and Favourite.

Starts with G
Goldfinch starts with G.  This is a picture of an American Goldfinch at the feeder last week.  It is, obviously, wearing its winter plumage, not its bright yellow summer outfit!

I don't see them every day, but I do see them with some regularity.  In 2017, the finch populations of Atlantic  Canada were decimated by a very contagious infection called trichomoniasis, caused by a parasite.  People were advised to take down their feeders all summer because the parasite is spread easily between birds.  With the onset of winter, feeding could occur again because the parasite doesn't live very long in the cold, so it seems to have abated now.  I hope that the finch populations will rebound this coming spring and summer.

Favourite
Early this week we had a first egg from my cream legbar hen, Lady Charlotta.  She lays pale blue-green eggs.  The very first one was very thin-shelled and it broke when it was gently cleaning a bit of dirt from it.  She laid her second egg today and it seems to be a more solid shell.  I am sure you can see which egg is hers.  The blue-green coloured eggs are my favourites!  They taste the same but they are just so pretty.  I love all the different colours of eggs we get from our flock.  Today was also our first 6-egg day since having chickens here at our current home.  How eggciting!

Here's a "bonus" favourite shot.  Yesterday was a lovely day - much warmer than normal for February at 6 Celsius, or about 43 Fahrenheit.  I could not help but go for a quick walk in the middle of my day so I went to the local waterfowl park.  I didn't see many birds - just a few chickadees and a crow, but I did see beautiful blue sky and the lovely trunks of the birch trees.  This particular point on the boardwalk is one of my favourite spots with all the trees making a kind of living tunnel to walk through. It will be a while before anything begins to turn green, but it was still nice to be out on such a sunny day that was, comparatively speaking, warm(ish).

Green
Things remain mostly white (or brown) around here, but of course, the evergreens are still green, although a less vibrant green than they are in summer.  Here's a cone on one of the trees in our yard, with lots of green needles.

5 comments:

Tom said...

...Claire, I've always loved to wait Goldfinch in flight. Come Easter you would need to color eggs, what an array you have. Birch are always a wonderful sight. Your Scots Pine finishes 'G' week in style. Thanks for sharing, have a 'g'reat week and b e stop back again.

Margaret Birding For Pleasure said...

What a wonderful assortment of coloured eggs. it is very exciting when a hen lays her first egg. Have a lovely wekend.

ellen b. said...

Such pretty eggs. Hope the bird found some shelter from that snow. Nice shots for the roundup.

vesselsmemories said...

Hello Claire,
Lovely photos for the "G" week! I especially like those eggs, that green/blue egg is beautiful! Enjoy your week.
Dawn

Jim said...

You have a really nice one-day egg colection. The green one adds color, your presentation looks like a group of Easter eggs. I've never seen a green one. Guess you are too far north for oak trees. Ours stay green all winter long as do the holly and evergreens.
Thank you for rescuing me, I'm glad I came here tonight.
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