My Bird of the Day

RBG Arboretum, Hamilton. ON.  October 12, 2024. This was one of the best days birding in a while. Perhaps it was the fine weather, certainly it suited me, but it’s the bigger weather events that nudge birds into heading south and make our transect work more varied.

I completed one of our transects, thoroughly enjoying a few special moments: dozens of White-throated Sparrows in one patch of weedy grasses, flocks of Cedar Waxwings settling into tree-tops and Yellow–rumped Warblers busily working wherever the sun stirred small insect movement. A Peregrine Falcon turning in relaxed circles high over the lake was a nice sighting, followed a little later and much lower, by a young Bald Eagle who cruised along unconcerned by the consternation it caused to the many ducks below:  Gadwall , Mallards and Northern Shovellers.

My Birds of the Day were hundreds of Blue Jays.  There was an intermittent stream of them passing overhead, trending south and west; but just as many stayed, milling around, socializing and most importantly feeding. A huge acorn crop made the ground crunchy in places and dozens of jays had found and preferred the fallen acorns of one Northern Red Oak in particular. The wide green expanse beneath the tree often had 20 or 30 Blue Jays all feeding hungrily, gulping down just two, three or four acorns before leaving, crop bulging, to be quickly replaced by another hungry jay. I wondered what was special about this oak but noticed that its acorns were quite  small, perhaps the size if the top joint of your little finger, while other oak’s acorns (also Northern Red Oaks) were twice as big,  thumb-tip size.

It’s interesting to note that almost exactly five years ago, I wrote about another Blue Jay acorn banquet.  The need, timing and place was the same, but the feeding behaviour a little different. The favoured tree then was a Shingle Oak (which this year has few acorns) and I noted that the jays seemed to prefer its smaller acorns.

Today’s jays were able to accommodate  no more than four smallish acorns in their crops, good food for a good while I’m sure. A dozen years ago I watched and wrote about European Jays (a quite different species and much larger) similarly gulping down more and bigger acorns.

RBG Arboretum, Hamilton. ON.  September 27, 2024. For many years I had it in for the Wild Turkey.  Not the bird, it is fascinating in many ways, and I’ll come to that, but the name, specifically the adjective ‘wild’. Briefly, I think wild is needless and self-evident, serving only to distinguish it from plastic-wrapped Christmas carcasses. For all those years I boycotted ‘Wild Turkey”, suggesting Woodland Turkey or Northern Turkey as more suitable. No-one shared my passion on the topic. I gave up.

I had hardly started my transect this morning, when four Wild Turkeys emerged from a woodland edge and made a stately march-past, left to right, in front of me. They were in no hurry, just making their way and picking at the odd food item as they went. Here are 2 of them.

There was ample time to admire them and ponder the folklore and stories that revolve around them.  These are big birds, almost unbelievably so.  One New Jersey morning,  I came across a male turkey in full display mode with his admiring harem staying close, he was surely as large as an armchair!  I wonder how those sad, starving and sea-sick pilgrim fathers of 1620 reacted at the sight of them; unimaginable feasts to people whose memories of table birds were probably limited to the Wood Pigeons of Europe.

Wild Turkeys are native to Ontario but were hunted to extirpation by 1910. Several attempts were made to reintroduce them but without success until about 30 years ago, since then they have gone from strength to strength. While abundant they do have predators, at night they fly strongly to roost in the upper level of woodlands.

The rest of my transect walk was rather uneventful lacking the surge of migrants that we hope for, although the song of a Pine Warbler reminded me a little of spring, but the Wild Turkeys were clearly My Birds of the Day.

RBG Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON.  September 25, 2024.  Sometimes while birding, I’ll find or see something just a little bit different or special, enough that it kickstarts writing in my head. Often an assemblage of ideas, phrases and half-baked stories finds their way into these posts.

It doesn’t always happen, most days, like today, are just another day’s birding, a nice day in the country. Things happen, birds appear, are noted but not necessarily celebrated.  I walked the valley today and even though the species count wasn’t high there was plenty to savour against a backdrop of early colour changes.

Two birds whose behavior didn’t quite fit the surroundings caught my eye. I was pleased to pick them out as Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, here is one of them. Not the eye-arresting black, white and crimson of a spring male grosbeak, but a tidy pair of buff, cream, and brown youngsters. At this time of year they have an unmistakable squeaky-toy contact note to give away their presence when otherwise they tend to move slowly among thick bushes. It’s been too long since I last saw grosbeaks like these and they were instant Birds of the Day for me.

The day was far from over and dealt more noteworthy sighting. A Peregrine Falcon and a Red–tailed Hawk in a brief and vocal skirmish, the falcon protesting and taking close swipes at the much larger and slower red-tail. What it was all about is anyone’s guess.

A Bald Eagle drifted high overhead, sliding easily along on an unseen path, while at treetop level, a Cooper’s Hawk– or was it a Sharp–shinned Hawk, they’re hard to tell apart, sat stolidly in an old Red Ash. A trio of young Northern Flickers taunted the hawk until it gave futile chase.  I’ve seen this sort of play before, where a hunter is drawn reluctantly into a catch-me-if-you-can game by a group of flickers or jays. I speculate that there is some mutual benefit: the hunter practices or sharpens its chase skills while the teasers know they have enough of a head start to out-run and out-wit the hawk, learning despite the risk that it just may not work out well.

RBG Arboretum, Hamilton. ON.  September 20, 2024.  After a mid-September birding drought, things picked up this morning. I started one of our transect walks on a fine day, a little overcast, not warm but warming. Things went quite well for a long while with dozens of shrieking Blue Jays streaming south-westwards.

Tree and shrub growth is full and thick, and much birding is, of necessity, done by ear. I used to be pretty good at it but hearing loss (hereditary) makes it increasingly probable that I miss some.  I use an app, Merlin, for back up. Merlin quickly matches and announces an i.d from its vast database of birdsong and what the phone’s microphones pick up .  Merlin is a tool, I read off what Merlin has detected and sometimes scratch my head. It may confirm what I already know or suspect, and it often reports species I did not hear. In that case I’ll listen hard, sometimes I hear it and agree, sometimes too late, but other times know that the song or call is too high frequency for me to hear anyway.  I never accept Merlin’s sole opinion as confirmation of a species’ presence.

I paused for a while among tall pines in a quiet woodland and got Merlin to listen with me. It quickly reported: Chipping Sparrow (no?), White-throated Sparrow (possible), Blue Jay (agree), Red–bellied Woodpecker (agree), Pine Warbler (agree), Tufted Titmouse (skeptical), Brown Creeper (possible but too high for my ears), and most amazingly  “Black-capped Chickadee Your Bird of the Day”. Really?

I had not heard a Black-capped Chickadee then, but it was quite possible, even probable but it definitely was not Bird of the Day, not for me.  Not my idea, Merlin evidently thinks Bird of the Day is its new toy. I’m not about to let Merlin, a bundle of algorithms, make that determination.  What Merlin didn’t hear, after I had turned it off in a fit of pique, was a Pileated Woodpecker that called loudly from a little farther back in the woodland.

I watched for but didn’t see the Pileated Woodpecker, now My Bird of the Day. I didn’t need to, I heard Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers this morning, and saw a dozen Red–bellied Woodpeckers and three Northern Flickers (woodpeckers) too. All good solid sightings or sounds.

Valley Inn, Burlington. ON.  September 16, 2024. I don’t chase birds, not anymore, not the way some do. I used to, but as my tastes have changed and the environmental and social cost of yet another car on the roads seems too wasteful, particularly when I feel I’ve seen and hold satisfying memories of most eastern North American birds.

And yet I made a short trip today to see if a recently reported Wilsons’ Phalarope was still there. It wasn’t.  Too bad, it’s been years since I last saw one, they are a dainty and at certain times very pretty shorebird. They winter in South America and breed in the north-western quarter of North America and are only very occasionally seen this far east. This photo of a flock of migrant Wilsons’ Phalaropes in their breeding finery was taken by a colleague in El Salvador some twenty years ago; see what I mean about pretty?

The substitute was the pleasure of watching several Lesser Yellowlegs, a few Killdeers, Great Egrets and an Osprey. The yellowlegs have the same winter/summer distribution as the phalaropes but can be seen across the whole of north America during spring or fall migrations. I enjoyed watching them quite close to me and busily striding, sometimes knee-deep, picking for unseen invertebrates in the mudflats.  They are busy birds and there was quite a bit of anxious vocalization with a short, sharp, almost piercing, keup note. For their charm they were my Birds of the Day.  Both Lessser and Greater Yellowlegs are fairly common at the right time of year but are not often seen together.  Here’s one of each, an instructive  photo from April 2017.

A Great Egret caught my attention as it lowered itself into this curious sitting position. You can easily imagine this posture being appropriate for a bird on its nest and incubating, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this resting position before.