25 November 2013. Burlington Bay, ON. There is a sheltered corner of our large industrial harbour where thousands of ducks and swans gather for the winter. It would be a stretch to suppose that this little haven owes its attractiveness entirely to its natural attributes: sheltered from north winds and shallow weedy waters; but it’s very much a man-made spot with a busy spring-summer-&-fall marina, fish-friendly artificial rocky reefs and perhaps most importantly, for the ducks and swans anyway, the almost industrial scale of grain handouts.
It’s a good place with plenty of waterfowl variety including Canvasbacks, Redheads, Bufflehead, Tundra Swans and early migrant Horned Grebes to name a few. Not surprisingly odd species show up almost every year: last winter it was a male Wood Duck, and the winter before a King Eider. It reminds me of the oft-cited aphorism about the weather, if you don’t like the ducks, wait a half hour and they’ll change.
It has become the premier overwintering spot for Ontario’s small population of Trumpeter Swans and I went to see if they’d arrived for their winter handouts yet. About a dozen had and I’m sure the others aren’t far behind. Making a sweeping binocular scan across the waters it seemed to be all Mallards out there. The odd American Coot, Scaup and a Red-breasted Merganser, but hundreds of Mallards. I noticed how the male Mallards’ heads, if turned just the right way, shone in the sun; so the picture at any one spot was punctuated by bright iridescent green heads. Here’s a handsome group, handsome enough to make them Bird of the Day, nicer even than the returned Trumpeter Swans.
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