2016/05/10

Canadian Tulip Pre-Festival (2016) & birds (and one squirrel) at FWG!

The popular Canadian Tulip Festival will begin in two days (here is one of my posts from two years ago).  To avoid the crowd, I went to Dow's Lake this afternoon to see if there are any tulips flowering beforehand.

Ottawa Tulip Pre-Festival
And indeed there were!

Ottawa Tulip Pre-Festival
Love the colours!

Ottawa Tulip Pre-Festival
Floral sea of red, white, and yellow.

Ottawa Tulip Pre-Festival
Love the multi-coloured tulips.

Ottawa Tulip Pre-Festival
Another sea of tulips.

I only stayed for a short while because I needed to walk through the Arboretum and Carleton University to take the O-Train home.

Paddle-boating on Dow's Lake
Tourists paddle-boating on Dow's Lake.

Along the lake, I noticed an Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) hiding in a tree.

Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus)
First kingbird of the year.

American red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus)
American red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) munching on a nut.

Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula)
Another reason why I wanted to come here today was to search for a bird reported at FWG - the Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula), a species that I only photographed one time almost six years ago!

Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula)
The bird even sang a short song to defend his territory.

After watching the oriole, I (fittingly) had an orange and reminded myself that it was time to go home to make dinner.

American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis)
Before leaving, I searched for this American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) singing pretty songs while hiding in a crabapple tree.

White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)
White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) at the bottom of the feeder at FWG.  What a handsome sparrow.

2 comments:

Tim said...

We'll be seeing the Tulip Festival next week, thanks for the preview!

PSYL said...

You're welcome. Enjoy your visit to Ottawa.

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