Northern Pintail

27 March 2017. Vinemount, Hamilton ON. Although weather patterns vary from year to year, when I look back over my posts I find that you could almost set your watch by some of the returning birds. It’s usually in late March, if there’s a breath of warmth, that Turkey Vultures start streaming in and it’s when we see and hear the first Killdeers and Song Sparrows too. About now, local birders routinely visit certain poorly drained fields, which, while flooded, lure migrating ducks to rest for a while; it’s also an area where we have a good chance of finding Wilson’s Snipes. Once those fields dry out we probably won’t give them another moment’s thought for twelve months.

No snipes today, not that I could see anyway, but lots of ducks and swans. Among the thousands of spectacular sights to be enjoyed in the birder’s world, one of them has to be male ducks (drakes) in breeding plumage. In those flooded fields there were hundreds: mostly glistening Mallards but plenty of American Wigeon, several American Black Ducks, Gadwall, Green-winged Teal and almost best of all, many Northern Pintails. All of them kin, colloquially puddle-ducks and scientifically of the genus anas; a,platyrhynchus, a.americana, a.rubripes, a.strepera, a.crecca and a.acuta.

It was the Northern Pintails that won my heart today – the drakes are so incredibly handsome, almost military, with their white pinstripes on chestnut.

If I have over-played the males of the species in this account I make just a small apology; the fact is that the females of all these duck species aren’t nearly as snazzy. They have no time for vanity, they face a long season of doing the hard work: building a nest, laying a dozen eggs, incubating them for a month, guarding and raising the brood; there’s just not enough time in the day.

Off to one side, aloof and avoiding the puddle duck rabble, were half a dozen Tundra Swans, the first I’ve seen this spring. I probably missed most of them while I was in Uganda, an unusually mild February seems to have prompted an early migration. I smiled inwardly, a contented smile, I haven’t missed them after all.