Today, we were secondary guides “Bog 1” which was great, but we need to rethink the strategy in upcoming trips. Perhaps oddly, the festival doesn’t have any trips geared toward the crepuscular hours, so people usually do that on their own (though great gray owl is perhaps the most sought-after target). Nonetheless, we made a failed run for Admiral Rd. to look for owls, though it was too late into morning by the time we got there. Along the way, we did see magpies, which were lifers for several people on the bus. We also had a pine grosbeak teed up in poor light that we abandoned after quick looks for time’s sake.
If it were up to me, I would have hit the Admiral Rd. feeders first thing in the morning and drenched the place with peanut butter, and waited. Perhaps would have gotten the boreal chickadee (we missed it for the trip). Instead, we put out peanut butter and paused for a bit before moving on. Then, we went down McDavitt Rd. and half-stopped to investigate black-backed woodpecker sightings (it’s still unclear to me if the people searching along the road found anything; we never saw BBWO then or later when we went back). Anyway, we then headed for the sharp-tailed grouse lek, and saw them, but too late to see them displaying. We headed to Mary Lou’s feeders which was crowd pleasing, for all the beautiful evening and pine grosbeaks. From there, we went back to McDavitt Rd., and ended at Loretta’s feeders. All in all, it was a good day for the participants!