Pileated Woodpecker

October 6 2016. RBG Arboretum, Hamilton ON. It being late November as I write this and since much of the past few weeks has been absorbed by catch-up on the other demands of life, this is a look back at a day’s birding two months ago. The 6th October: 18 degrees C. (65 F), no cloud, a very light west wind; perfect day for a census and a walk through a hardwood forest.

It was, for a while, a bit on the average side: Yellow-rumped Warblers everywhere, a flyover Cooper’s Hawk and handfuls of Blue Jays. But then it seemed to become a woodpecker day: six Red-bellied and four Downy Woodpeckers, a couple of Northern Flickers, three Hairy Woodpeckers and even a quiet, minding its own business, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Only one missing – although not for long.

Nearing the half-way point of our census circuit we heard a Pileated Woodpecker’s fanfare call some distance away. And the thing about this loud, ringing cry is that it penetrates forests, carrying proportionately much farther than others of the clan; a distantly heard Pileated could be half a kilometer away. We could only hope that the one we could hear was somewhere in front of us and would stay long enough for us to get a lucky glimpse – that’s usually all you get. Our luck held and we soon found ourselves close enough to hear it chopping wood looking for a meal. I was keen to see how far our luck would carry us and wandered off the path a few meters, looking up and following the chunky hammering until I spotted it wrapped around the thin heights of a dying ash. Ash trees here and across much of the north-east are falling in quick succession to an imported pest, Emerald Ash Borer, and the only good thing to come of this blight might be a feeding bonanza for woodpeckers. I suppose it worked in my favour today. Here it is in a gallery visible only on the website, not if you’re reading this as an email.

European Roller

September 5 2016 Chokpak Pass, Kazakhstan. I’m digging back into my near-archives for this one, going back to September when four birder friends and I spent a couple of weeks in Kazakhstan. And I’m writing about the European Roller not just because we saw quite a few, or simply because they’re magnificent, but because I’ve been imagining rollers for decades; they are one of my childhood dream birds. A few times in past posts I have written about the thrill of finally meeting up with those I-never-thought-I’d-see-one birds: Hoopoe, Bee-Eater, Avocet and Osprey come to mind. Many of those elusives are Eurasian birds and in hindsight it’s evident they’re more –asian than Eur.

During our days in Kazakhstan we saw many European Rollers but rarely close enough to get a decent look or photo. For mile upon mile there seemed to be a roller on every loop of the utility lines that paralled the highway or railway, but trains don’t stop to look at birds and the glimpses were unsatisfying. But on this day of exploration of the wide valley that separated our camp from the Tien-Shan Mountain slopes, I finally had a chance to move in close to a small group of European Rollers who had settled in the upper reaches of a track-side thicket.chokpak-pass-looking-sw

What makes rollers so appealing is their glorious colour, a shimmering sapphire blue below and rich chestnut above. Superficially they look and sound (a hard crow-like RACK-ack) as though they belong in the crow family, but it seems they’re in a family of their own and are more closely related to bee-eaters, kingfishers and kookaburras.european-roller-chokpak-pass

Finally getting a good look at one of those childhood nemesis birds is satisfying; it seems to put to rest a nagging incompleteness. And if seeing is satisfying then getting a decent photo is truly icing on the cake. The photo above, while unmistakably of a European Roller, is, I think, of a young bird because it certainly doesn’t have the sapphire blue I referred to.

The illustration below dates from 1876 and shows the bird in the glory I innocently believed in from poring over the sometimes quaint reference books available to me. I was lucky to enjoy the generous, if slightly stand-offish, tutelage of a certain Major Fenwick who certainly was a child of the 19th Century.keulemans_onze_vogels_3_10

Peregrine Falcon

November 8 2016. The Owl Foundation  exists to treat and rehabilitate (if possible) wounded and orphaned owls; they’ve been at it for about fifty years. These sorts of undertakings rarely have a precise starting date but it seems it all got started for Kay and Larry McKeever sometime around 1967. Today the Owl Foundation receives a hundred or so damaged owls every year; sadly many are beyond saving.

Owls in the wild fly across political borders all the time but governments see borders differently and make it difficult for the foundation to accept injured or orphaned owls from anywhere other than Ontario. Interprovincial regulations make it complicated; international regulations make it impossible.

I volunteer some of my time and energy to help raise funds for the foundation and I spent half of today at their facilities just learning more about the operation.  If you like birds and feel that wildlife gets a bad deal, feel free to donate to the Owl Foundation; they will sincerely appreciate your support.

I had thought to open this post with a list of bird sightings today but no one would be fooled. Today’s list of birds included: Great Grey Owl, Barred Owl, Barn Owl, Eastern Screech Owl, Great Horned Owl, Snowy Owl, Long–eared Owl, Short-eared Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl, Northern Hawk Owl, Peregrine Falcon, Northern Goshawk, Bald Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk, Osprey and American Kestrel – I think that’s all of them. And yes they do sometimes accept other raptors, usually another rehabilitator’s overflow.

But of course, notwithstanding the mission of the Owl Foundation, these are all caged birds – well there was a free flying Red-tailed Hawk perched in a Red Oak just outside the foundation’s office. Many of them will fly free again once strong enough or fully re-feathered.

Peregrine Falcon - young and recovering from surgery.
Peregrine Falcon – young and recovering from surgery.

Any one of these birds whether owl, falcon, buteo or eagle could make Bird of the Day. My loudest gasp of appreciation or admiration was for this young Peregrine Falcon. Just look at those flight feathers! It had somehow suffered a torn crop (how that could happen is anyone’s guess) but surgery, tube feeding and recovery time have done the trick and it will be released fairly soon.

And, by the way, on my return home I saw a free-flying, wild Peregrine Falcon sitting on wires close to a nest site that has been reliable for a few years; so it wasn’t all captive birds.

European Starling

November 6 2016. Cayuga ON. Every year about this time our local naturalists’ club undertakes a one-day bird count across the club’s defined study area, a territory lying within a 40 Km radius of an historic grand mansion in the City of Hamilton. Actually a goodly chunk of that range is open water of Lake Ontario – which presents its own opportunities and challenges. I’m sure if our moderator were to compile a map showing the precise areas actually birded by the dozens of active counters he would see an irregular and scattered patchwork. It might reasonably prompt the question of the value of a count with such erratic and incomplete coverage.  The answer to which is that the goal of such a count is more about identifying long term indicators of species increases, decreases or other unusual changes than it is to attempt to know exactly how many birds exist today. Any data is more useful than none – and it’s good exercise too I suppose.dscn2352

A new-to-birding companion and I spent four and a bit hours criss-crossing our chosen study area, a mix of farmland and thick deciduous forests. It was a bright, sunny and mild day, the predominantly oak forests were startlingly colourful and along some swampy edges were patches of Winterberry Holly carrying heavy loads of brilliantly scarlet berries.

Winterberry Holly - Ilex verticillata
Winterberry Holly – Ilex verticillata

November birding is rarely stimulating but today we enjoyed two or three stops where the birding was really quite good. At one we scanned a line of fences and found several Eastern Bluebirds, an American Kestrel and a Northern Mockingbird – all good sightings even if they were rather distant. A little later, along a quiet gravel road flanked by oak forests, dozens of American Robins and Cedar Waxwings were filling up on holly berries while Dark-eyed Juncos and American Tree Sparrows found something indeterminate yet edible along the grassy roadside.

European Starling
European Starling

Birds of the Day were an enormous flock, or murmuration, of European Starlings, murmuration being the generally accepted collective noun for starlings and other chattering crowds; probably conferred upon them by Victorian lexicographers. They had gathered in the pastures around a radio transmission tower and every now and then a swirl of hundreds wheeled around choosing one minute to search for food in the short ragged grasses, the next to gather and chatter amongst themselves on the guy-wires of the radio mast.dscn2351

Apart from the sight of this large, perhaps five hundred strong, murmuration was the spectacular beauty of the individual birds. Not something you’d usually associate with starlings. But starlings have just finished a post-breeding moult to replace most body and flight feathers, and these new feathers come with pale tips. You’d hardly recognise the birds in these photos as the same rather dark and dowdy starling of urban living; but there they are, glorious for a while until the exigencies of their daily scramble for food, warmth and space gradually wears off those glorifying accents.