The Greenbelt Trails - Ottawa West with Tony Beck

Thursday April 9, 7:30am.

For this outing, we had Rick Collins, Ian Jeffrey, Helena Garcia and me.

We toured all the Jackpine trails first thing. The ponds has a skim of ice, which the Mallards had to break as they swam along. We saw a Canada Goose already on the nest.

We saw many Song Sparrows and heard a White-throated Sparrow. We also saw our first Northern Flicker of the spring. The feeders were empty except for the suet feeder which had a Downy Woodpecker at it.

After that, we visited the Burnside Pit. There were thousands of Canada Geese, but Rick finally spotted a few Snow Geese in the far right corner. No sign of the elusive Ross’s Goose.

We cruised the back roads out to Richmond, stopping now and then to scan the fields for unusual geese. Finally, at the Jock River at Twin Elm, Tony spotted a strange Goose, very like a blue-morph Snow Goose, but too white on the head and neck, and too dark on the body.

We went up and down Eagleson and the side roads looking for unusual geese. But we had to settle for a perched Merlin. Finally Helena spotted a juvenile Snow Goose in a flooded field at the dead end of Twin Elm road.

Returning along Moodie Drive, we saw a male Northern Harrier in the adjacent fields.