Breakfast Table Birding

I went home to my folks place in Thorndale for the weekend and as per usual the bird feeder outside of the dining room was very active.  At one point this morning we had 24 Northern Cardinals simultaneously; it makes my feeders at home in Kitchener look pretty tame.  Here's this morning's ebird list.

You may recall a post from January 6th about the Eastern Towhee my mom spotted.  Well I was pleased to see that 1 male and 1 female have stuck around.

A hike Saturday evening at Fanshawe Lake yielded only a handful of Mallards hunkered down in some open water at the mouth of Wye Creek, a tributary to Fanshawe Lake that starts 10km upstream near parents' place.  It's funny how a degraded watercourse with the odd Crack Willow along the banks (which the farmer then cut down and planted with soybeans right up to the water) and which scored D for both water quality and forest conditions played such a role in getting me interested in nature at a young age.