Whitemud Ravine 23 May 2026, first quarter of Flower Moon

Visited Whitemud Ravine with Wayne Oakes and his cohort this morning, on the first quarter of the Flower Moon.

Got a chance to see one of the squirrels with most of their fur fallen out, the ones with the fungal infection. Apparently they can recover, and their fur will grow back. They can survive if it's not too cold, so that was good to know. Wayne also related how he had recently learned (from John Acorn, I think?) that the red squirrels we see around here are considered a subspecies, called the McKenzie red squirrel.

We got a rare sighting of a kingfisher near the river!

Wayne mentioned that he had witnessed a beaver eating a rose - I remember seeing browse on rose bushes when I was learning at my Forest Heights site - perhaps this was also due to beaver.

The female red-winged blackbirds had arrived, and we also saw a blue-winged teal pair on the pond, as well as a Canada Goose pair with three goslings. One of the Canada Geese had a white eyebrow, which according to Wayne is rare for Canada Geese, but the norm for the Giant Canada Goose. We saw 4-5 barn swallows swooping around overhead, and we heard boreal chorus frogs, and a few of the descending piping calls of the sora. We learned that barn swallows have an orange/brown underbelly, and cliff swallows look almost identical, but with a white band on the top of the head.

We got to see both a song sparrow and a yellow warbler singing up close. In both species, only the males sing. Male and female song sparrow plumage is indisinguishable, and the singing is the only way to tell them apart. Yellow warbler males, besides singing, also have thin red stripes on their breast, while the females have a pure yellow breast. I heard what I am certain this time was a clay-coloured sparrow. Later on we also heard pine siskins.

We saw elderberries with flower buds forming, and we learned that the berries are a favourite food of downy woodpeckers.

We saw a few northern azures, tiny blue butterflies, and a mourning cloak.