16 May 2013. Dyers Bay ON. A rip-roaring day at the bird observatory today. We had anticipated a large influx of birds overnight, and while it didn’t quite happen that way, within an hour or two of sunrise we were kept busy. Several warbler species showed up including: Yellow-rumped Warbler, American Redstart and Black-throated Blue Warbler. The treetops around the observatory were jumping with lively little birds and lower down, mostly in the bottom couple of meters, the most abundant bird was probably the Western Palm Warbler, a fairly large and pipit-like warbler. They are distinctive at a glance because they pump their tails up and down a lot as they move and forage around – and moving is something they do a lot of, it’s almost impossible to get them to hold still for the camera.
Although exhausted by the morning I skipped a planned power nap and headed for the nearest settlement to catch up on e-mail and to see what birds might be found along the way. Missions accomplished, on my return journey I ended up exploring the shore of a large and shallow lake and was rewarded with the sight of a family of River Otters plunging and playing like Marineland porpoises.
Turning back to bird activity, I watched a female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker punching holes in the bark of a small maple. This is what sapsuckers do and how they got their name, apparently the oozing sweet sap draws insects which are eaten later as needed. There were a couple of expected warbler species: Yellow Warbler, Common Yellow-throat, and…this is where it got interesting… hundreds (yes really) of Western Palm Warblers all around me. It was a virtual river of tail-wagging, ground-hugging warblers, and every now and then an intruder like a Yellow-rumped or Magnolia Warbler found itself swept along in the tide. On such a busy day it was hard to single out any one bird as the best, but in celebration of the novelty of a river of birds it would be a little churlish not to view the Western Palm Warbler as my Bird of the Day.