11 April 2014. Cayuga ON. I’ll get straight to the point. Bird of the Day today was a Louisiana Waterthrush; a REALLY big deal – particularly to those who pay close attention to rarities and early arrivals. I’m quick to admit that what follows won’t excite everyone but for those of us at the bird observatory today it was (I repeat) a REALLY big deal. Here’s why.
Waterthrushes, there are two species Northern and Louisiana, are warblers, not very colourful and a little oddball when it comes to behaviour and appearance. Warblers, or so I believed, arrive in May and late April, not early April. I’m well acquainted with the Northern Waterthrush, it’s a fairly common summer resident around here, choosing wet woodlands as its habitat. Unless you’re quite at ease with mosquito country you’re not going to run into many of them. The Louisiana Waterthrush is a bit of a stranger to me, it’s a much sought after bird, a species of special concern, rarely seen in Ontario and known to breed in just a handful of locations. It too inhabits wet woodlands; I saw my first one ever last May, far from home, and only by joining a keen group led by an even keener local specialist.
Well, I found the Louisiana Waterthrush along the flooded banks of a forest creek while conducting the daily census and thought at first that I’d found the more familiar (to me) Northern Waterthrush. An understandable mistake as the two species are very similar and well, what, I thought, are the chances of finding a Louisiana Waterthrush anyway? Based on a long-shot photo by colleague Renata, Matt began to suspect that today’s bird might just be a Louisiana and, on further investigation, re-found it and took the photo above. Louisiana Waterthrush it is! To put a bit of perspective on it, below is a picture of a Northern Waterthrush, taken (by me) last year. Not a lot of difference for sure but, on the Louisiana, the pale eyebrow line becomes wider behind the eye and the breast streaking is less dense.
We had several new-for-this-year birds: A Horned Grebe on the river (rarely seen at the bird observatory); A high fly-over by a Sandhill Crane heard gurgling like a turkey long before being spotted, and; an American Kestrel that zipped past looking for lunch. And that was the excitement for today, most of it anyway. Spring and sunshine produced some nice photo ops and these: two of a Tree Swallow confirming possession of a nest box and one of a male Eastern Bluebird, just speak of spring.
