The supermassive wind storm we had yesterday caused enormous destruction in the woods. There were downed or damaged trees just about everywhere we looked. Here two big pine trees have fallen across the trail. Hank and Joe survey the damage in the distance. The famous six spruce trees at the east end of the ridge at Mud Lake are now five, one of them toppled over by the wind (below). It would be interesting to hear what happened to the trees on the Shirley's Bay dyke. With their exposure to the elements and beaver damage, surely trees were downed all along. Here in my neighborhood, I haven't yet checked the woods, but I may do that later in the afternoon.
 
This morning I forgot to bring my binoculars along with me, something I realized when I got to my destination, but there weren't many birds around anyways. There was still a good number of Yellow-rumped Warblers around, but only a fraction of yesterday and a fraction of a fraction of the day before. We saw at least four individual Palm Warblers this morning, heard Pine Warblers and that was it for warblers. The story was similar with Ruby-crowned Kinglets: a fraction of what was around yesterday and a fraction of a fraction of what was around the day before. My backyard Eastern Towhee was not seen or heard today and today was the first day since February that I have not had a Common Redpoll at my feeders. Lesser Scaup and Bufflehead were the only waterfowl species I was able to spot out on the river this morning. The winds yesterday appear to have blown everything out. I was hoping that new arrivals or something really rare would have been blown in with the 90 km/h southwest wind gusts, but that was not to be.