Canvasback and Wilson’s Phalarope

14 November 2014. Hamilton and Burlington ON There has been a lot of fuss recently about a Wilson’s Phalarope lingering on some nearby mudflats and making itself generally available to those who would photograph or otherwise record its presence. In the course of some errands I found myself (An odd expression since I wasn’t lost!) close to its reported location, so made a short diversion to take a look. Well, there it was, exactly where everyone said, fluffed up, neck drawn down and hunched. It stood quietly with its back to a cold wind that owed more to January than November. I’ve got to admit that I was underwhelmed, feeling rather flat about this lovely little bird; maybe because there was no element of surprise in finding it, no wow! moment.

It did get up and run around for a while mixing in with squads of shuffling Green-winged Teal. Its slender, finely drawn features put it in the fine-china category of shorebirds, but dressed as it was in its winter greys and looking a little abandoned, it was well, nice but a little uninspiring. I think I quite unreasonably expected more of it.

Phalaropes are dainty little shorebirds; worldwide there are only three species, all of which breed in the northern reaches of North America, two of the three in Ontario. Wilson’s Phalaropes head to western South America for our winter, they gather in tens of thousands at highly saline lakes in the highlands of central Andes in Peru, Chile and Bolivia. The time to see them at their best is on their return spring journey when the females in particular are extremely showy. One of the pictures in the gallery below (visible only on the website, not if you’re reading this as an email) includes many spring plumage Wilson’s Phalaropes, it was taken by a companion in El Salvador in May of 2013.

Later in the day I stopped briefly to see what waterfowl had shown up in the harbour; it will soon be a mass of wintering ducks, species like Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead and Greater Scaup. In my brief scan I quickly picked up Trumpeter Swans, Red-breasted Merganser, Redheads and Canvasbacks, all nice birds. It’s not that I’m comparing Canvasbacks to Wilson’s Phalaropes, but the delight of seeing a Canvasback, a rather highborn looking duck, had that little wow! moment that made it, in some ways, a real Bird of the Day rather than the oh-yeah-there-it-is-ness of the earlier phalarope.