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April 12, 2007 - Beautiful sunny and WARM day, up to 12 C., resulted in a lot of melting of our lingering snow (from Apr. 8/07). I was in downtown Halifax at mid-day. I was walking past the currently vacant lot of soil and debris where the old parkade was at Sackville Ave.? and between Granville & Hollis streets, and blooming colonies of COLTSFOOT were lovely and very abundant. Pat noticed and I confirmed that again we have (or still have from mid-winter) a big, wary NORWAY RAT at our feeders. April 13, 2007 - As a ³gift from the gods² for the newly arrived flocks of migrant ROBINS, overnight the newly exposed small patches of lawns were all covered up with about 5 cm. of very wet, heavy, NEW SNOW, and there was freezing rain to boot. One ³female² PURPLE FINCH (i.e., brown-plumaged) still at our feeders. Kathy Schaffner called today to report that she is once again, for about 5 days now (after how long??), seeing CARDINALS in her yard along King St. off Orchard Ave. in Wolfville. Likewise, Gertrude and Mohammed Waseem report a couple more CARDINALS seen on Bay St. in Wolfville. Andy Nette told me that yesterday and on at least one other occasion recently he has heard 1-2 BARRED OWLS calling from his home at Main St. and Orchard Ave. in Wolfville. April 14, 2007 - Our male CARDINAL was at one of our feeders, after a few days of us not seeing any. Apr. 15, 2007 - Presumably the same male CARDINAL was repeatedly singing at the top of a leafless tree just east of our Wolfville yard in the full Sun in early afternoon. In a large bed of multi-coloured open CROCUS flowers close to the Wolfville Community Health Clinic, we saw NO HONEYBEES at all working the flowers; perhaps this is related to the general shortage this Spring of honeybees through many U.S. states and also in Canada? Apr. 16, 2007 - A female HAIRY WOODPECKER showed up at one of our suet feeders today; for a long time we have had only an occasional male, one which was immature last summer, but lately an adult (same bird?). Also seen were a cock pheasant with 4 hens, a male downy woodpecker, a male flicker, a mourning dove, blue jays, starlings, 2 c. grackles, male and female cardinals, song sparrow, white-throated sparrows, and goldfinches. Linda Sacouman called to say that just today she had a FOX SPARROW vist her feeder, south of Gaspereau, for the first time this year. In recent years she has seen one, and only one at a time, there in Spring. Also at my feeder I had a single big, gorgeous FOX SPARROW today, too. I think now that my suspected fox sparrow dating from April 12th was just a song sparrow that I ³wanted² to be something else. At the Blomidon Naturalists Society meeting tonight, Twila Robar-DeCoste reported that she and John DeCoste heard a single SPRING PEEPER at Aylesford on the evening of April 12/07. And Bernard Forsythe reported that he has 12 occupied BARRED OWL nest-boxes this year; CLUTCHES are unusually large, of 3 to 4 eggs per box (and mostly were laid in March); and signs show that SMALL MAMMALS seem to be generally abundant. He is also looking forward to checking his back-yard box during the NSBS/BNS field trip on April 29th -- he thinks the eggs there should be hatching about now (earlier than the other more wild barred owls that don¹t get daily treats in evenings). Cheers :-) from Jim in Wolfville, 542-9204 --------------------- Jim (James W.) Wolford 91 Wickwire Avenue Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada B4P 1W3 phone (902)542-9204 (home) fax (902)585-1059 (Acadia Univ. Biology Dept.) e-mail <jimwolford@eastlink.ca> ---------------------- ³...... the Earth .....belongs as much to those who come after us as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do, or neglect to do, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or to deprive them of benefits which are theirs by right.² - John Ruskin ----------------------
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