Last week, my parents and I headed up to Moose Lake to pick up my brothers from 4H camp. The landscape around the lake is quite different from home as the lake area is part of the northern boreal forest. The habitat around the lake includes paper birch, poplars, jack pines, white spruce, sand dunes, and lots of wild blueberries!
There were quite a few of other berry pickers in the woods, but there were lots of berries go around. My family picked three ice cream pails of blueberries and so far, my mom has made jam, and a blueberry crumb cake, and I made blueberry-cream muffins.
There weren’t very many birds in the woods, but there were quite a few squirrels,
This squirrel was nibbling on a pine cone,
More blueberries,
I was walking through the woods and came across this active Osprey nest. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of the Ospreys on the nest as they flew away as I approached, but I watched them circle the nest for quite some time,
A close-up of the very large nest,
The Ospreys were a Year Bird for me, putting my 2014 Year and Alberta lists at 162 species,
There was a flock of Black-capped Chickadees and Yellow-rumped Warblers feeding in the the pines. There were also a few small songbirds mixed in with the chickadees and Yellow-rumped Warblers that I wasn’t able to identify as they were difficult to see in the trees.
Here’s my eBird checklist from our adventure of blueberry picking.
Here’s one of the three Dark-eyed Juncos that were feeding in the low shrubs,
Some of the beautiful trees that surround Moose Lake,
Those look like nice sized blueberries, but while we were in the Whiteshell, you could reach down and pick up a handful, it was crazy. My Grandpa who has a cottage out there said it was the best year for blueberries. There are like four blueberries on the plants in your picture, There would be 40 on one plant in the whiteshell. Blueberries were everywhere! We walked past bushes and bushes loaded with blueberries, trying to find the best spot. It was hard to believe how many there were. Were all the bushes like that? With that few on? How long did it take for you to pick a bucket? We were out picking with nine people and we picked four buckets and two sweatshirt fulls, in not more than 1 hour and a half.
My little sister baked a pie. But most of the other blueberries we picked we just ate them plain or with oatmeal or something. We ate a whole pale in just a few hours.
The Osprey nest is well camouflaged, it looks just like the top of the tree is falling down,
Some bushes had more berries than others with the average amount of berries on a bush being around 20. It took the five of us 1 hour to pick the three pails.
The pie your sister made sounds very good!
Fresh-picked blueberries sound amazing! One of my favorite things about having moved to Oregon this summer has been the gallons of blackberries we’ve been a able to collect every time we go out. We’ve never done much harvesting before, but there’s no going back now! Sounds like you got some good eats ahead of you
Great pic of the junco, too!
Lovely pictures, Charlotte !
Thank you, Lorraine Oakes, Blackfalds, Alberta
Sent from my iPad
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Charlotte, I love those blueberry pictures. Your knowledge of the nature around you astounds me! How happy I am that you eBird! How did you link to that checklist? I would love to be able to do that instead of always typing it out! Congrats on your year list and adding the ospreys! We have them here as well but soon they will be migrating south for the winter. I saw them all over Florida when I was there at the end of February!
Great pictures, Charlotte! Are Osprey nests always that huge? I’ve seen Ospreys but never their nests.
I love your blog! I have one too:
http://www.thecatsandthebirds.com/