June 24 2017. Flamborough Ontario. Birding is a very different pursuit as June matures. The headlong rush is over: the rush to get here, seize territory and find a mate; the task now is to get the next generation launched, literally airborne.
I spent half of today scouting ahead for a trip I’m leading tomorrow, it’s billed as Birds, Swamps, Bogs and Marshes. It was cool when I started but even so a few dedicated mosquitoes viewed me as a warm breakfast and, to add to the distractions, I was irritated by the almost constant sound of small aircraft overhead. There is an airport with a flight school several miles away and apparently the airspace above where I like to go birding is remote enough to try the riskier aspects of learning to fly.
I went to half a dozen of my better birding sites and was a little surprised when a few species I’d expected to find were absent. Still, Northern Waterthrushes, a Canada Warbler and a Grasshopper Sparrow were fairly easily found in the same places as last year. An Indigo Bunting, Common Yellowthroats, Veerys, a Great Crested Flycatcher and an Eastern Towhee were all singing loudly to reinforce their territorial claims and, near a small lake, a pair of anxious Spotted Sandpipers begged me to keep my distance.
Bird of the Day was probably an Eastern Kingbird eyeing me warily from its nest. Kingbirds are pugnacious defenders of their territory and don’t seem to go to a lot of trouble to conceal their nest, but then again set among the spikes and spines of a hawthorn bush like this, maybe it’s not so important.
