FALL ROAD TRIP

A Painted Lady Butterfly at Ruthven Park.

Rob was on vacation last week, and I took the Friday off with him so we could have a long weekend together. We ended up going on a bit of a road trip for the day.

First up, we visited Ruthven Park, as the bird banding station was open for the Fall banding season. Unfortunately, with the extremely warm weather it was pretty quiet for birds, but we did have one very cool sighting, and we also enjoyed the many Butterflies and Dragonflies in the meadow.

Our first Canadian Yellow-billed Cuckoo!

Rob spotted a Yellow-billed Cuckoo down by the river in the trees. This was a pretty exciting sighting for us, as it was only the 2nd time we had seen one. First time was earlier in the Spring, in Cape May, NJ.

Open wing view of the Painted Lady Butterfly.

Eastern-tailed Blue Butterfly, we saw many at Ruthven.

A new Dragonfly for us, Arrow Clubtail!

Always makes me a little sad to see the Purple Martin houses lowered for the season.

Box 17 was home to a family of Eastern Bluebirds this season.

After spending a lovely morning at Ruthven we ate our picnic lunch and continued on our way. We had won a raffle prize from The Owl Foundation's open house earlier in the month and went to pick it up. We won a Screech Owl box which we are donating to the Humber Arboretum, a place where we go birding quite often.

After a short visit with a couple of the people who work there, we were on our way again. We stopped at Halifax Donair to pick up a donair pizza for supper.

Tastes just like home!

It was a great day!