Belted Kingfisher

March 29 2017. RBG Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. The start of another season of census walks starts in a couple of days.  A team of us, in ones and twos, will be walking three different, more or less circular, routes just counting birds. In anticipation of that absorbing way of going spring birding, I walked down into my valley to see what I could find; it was full of pleasures.

A sustained level of background noise, literal and metaphorical, came from almost uncountable numbers of Red-winged Blackbirds, males only – the females follow in a couple of week, and spring-song Black-capped Chickadees. Scratching around on the ground Dark-eyed Juncos and American Tree Sparrows were abundant too, they’ll be heading north soon. Indeed for all I know, they may well have started their journey and those I counted today were from well south of us, Pennsylvania maybe, while our local, over-wintering birds have long since left.

It was a breath of fresh air to hear Song Sparrows singing and from far away a Carolina Wren too. And then the surprises started.  The first, while watching two Turkey Vultures  tree-skimming overhead, I saw something different, much smaller and fast, flying high above them.  What, I wondered, is that? I swept my binoculars up for a better look and got my first Tree Swallow of the year. As a mini celebration. I put an asterisk beside it in my field book – Bird of the Day maybe.

Checking a wide shallow pond I could easily make out Mallards, a Mute Swan and a scattering of Canada Geese.  Best though was a pair of Ring-necked Ducks; another nice surprise but really not unexpected, they are early migrants and usually appear to in time to clear out the last of the ice.

As I reached the turn-around point and my species list grew to close to two dozen, I heard but dismissed a faint rattling call.  Perhaps a bit woodpecker-ish, but never mind, it was faint and far away and I put it out of my mind; until it happened again and stopped me in my tracks. Belted Kingfisher!  Looking up I soon saw a pair of them wheeling around, sometimes high, sometimes not, moving fast and wide in a flirtatious side-by-side formation. Belted Kingfishers have a jerky, halting flight; you might almost think they’ll drop out of the air at times. Those, I knew, were my Birds of the Day, a low flying Great Blue Heron seen a couple of minutes later (another first of the year) couldn’t come close.