Hello Friend,

A dreary Monday.  Cold, damp and about to get wetter on Manitoulin Island.

    The birdfeeders were empty, so this past Saturday I decided to fill at least one of them up with
black sunflower seeds, to see if there were any interesting specials around.

     Well sure enough it didn't take very long for  over a 100 finches to show up in a swarm and
get to work on this one birdfeeder.

      Of course, this got our cat Merlin's interest piqued, as he was eyeing the many birds
through the back deck window.

     I spotted a couple of interesting birds as well.   A red grosbeak, and an Oriole.

All of a sudden, there was a loud thump on the glass patio deck door, which startled me.

    Turned out to be a Sparrow Hawk, that was dive bombing one of the finches, but missed
and temporarily stunned itself hitting the door, and fortunately was not hurt, and recovered
quickly after getting back to it's senses.

Now we do have these reflectors on most of our windows and doors to prevent exactly that
from happening, 

But occasionally you still hear the odd crash.

     Merlin the cat decided to sneak out, and hide behind the BBQ, but the birds were on to him
pretty quickly.

He's almost 12 human years now, so he's not as agile as he used to be.

Still not going to stop him from doing his duty, he might say, if he could talk.

Sometimes it's pretty remarkable what can happen in 5 minutes, if you just stop to pay attention.

Clear Skies,

Ray Khan

PS  If you are doing any kind of birdwatching, then having high quality binoculars make a huge
difference. I use a pair of Celestron 10 x 42 Granite's around the house. However Celestron
makes several different models with superb optics and solid design, and construction for field use.
You can check them out here.