'FORUM FRIENDS, WILDLIFE-FROM-WHEREVER' (Off-season, all cams off at Loch Garten)

Tiaki the albatross has been fitted with a GPS tracker. She had been doing some hover practice and this tracking data seems to suggest she has fledged and made a wee trip! (Click on Tiaki)

I've just found out what happened to the Ontario backyard feeders  

The same devastating infection that afflicted the Pot Plant Owls.

Sad that the feeders had to be removed but fingers crossed, they will be back fairly soon. But I thought a longer time than two weeks of no feeders was suggested by experts here...

Oh no, I haven't been keeping up with any of the feeders. Must start soon now. I did hear of the trichomoniasis, and took my own feeders down for the summer, soaked them in a bleach solution and washed them out. I will want to put them up again for wintertime.

Two wildlife reports:
OSPREY!! While I was out kayaking in a lagoon five minutes from my home last week, I saw a juvenile sitting atop a tree (luckily had my binoculars) and got the best look of the entire season, complete with orange eyes and white tipped feathers! I think a male, but I am unsure if he was migrating through or had come from a nearby nest. Hoping for latter!

MONARCH butterfly. I managed to find a chrysalis that formed right next to my front stoop, under a milkweed leaf. I hoped to see it during or after it emerged, but it eclosed while I was out and when I got back nothing was to be found but an empty chrysalis. I gathered it up and upon examination, found it was a girl butterfly! She is on her way to Mexico, so I wish he safe travels and a return to the southern US to breed next spring.

Love Jays of all sorts! We saw Canada Jays in Alaska when we visited there in 2019. They used to be called Gray Jays, and are still called that in some places, That is the American spelling of 'grey' (not sure how Canadians spell grey/gray.) I wonder if birds who live in the north have more feathers than those who live in warmer climes. Here is the Cornell page about them--click on various places on that page for more about them: www.allaboutbirds.org/.../Canada_Jay

CC, Congratulations on seeing the juvenile Osprey and on finding the Monarch pupa case. How can you tell by looking at the case what the sex is? I know the adults have a black spot on a particular area of the wing if they are males...Or was the butterfly still on the case?

Tiaki the Northern Royal Albatross fledgling in New Zealand has been venturing a little further

GARDENBIRDER

While I was looking for the following, I saw you and I to-ing and fro-ing about memory problems

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scylla wrote the following post at 7 Dec 2020 8:05 AM: ©CornellLab, Boreal, Ontario The C-jay is a very frequent visitor, here it was testing (what I presume to be) the "peanut butter suet in a homemade hanging log": Cornell have made a list of nearly 100 common feeder birds (and what they like to eat) but the Canada Jay isn't there! EDIT - Yes it is!  They're calling it a Gray Jay and this is their picture:

Also while I was looking for it, I mourned the wonderful views of all the wonderful birds we got from that cam.

There are at least 6 babies being raised in this box, they've all "fledged" now but still crowd the box to sleep: