May 10 2018, Rondeau Provincial Park, ON. As birding hot-spots go, Point Pelee (probably the foremost when it comes to rankings) is a bit too intense for me, I prefer Rondeau Provincial Park, topographically similar and just an hour east of Point Pelee. Both are peninsulas of a sort that stick out into Lake Erie and are welcome landfalls for the waves of northbound spring migrants. They arrive apparently ravenous and exhausted and linger, sometimes for days, refuelling and recovering. I spent this day at Rondeau in the company of good friends looking for engaging birds as well as getting to know my new camera; the two of us seem to get on quite well. Weather conditions were just right: not too hot, not too cold, and generally overcast under light winds.
Bird of the Day from among about eighty species was a Cerulean Warbler. It came just as we were leaving a small woodland pond where Northern Parulas, and Yellow, Black-throated Blue, Black and White, and Magnolia Warblers were busy picking insects from around the margins apparently unconcerned by our presence.
Cerulean Warblers are uncommon birds of tree-tops, more often heard than seen foraging in the thick canopy of oaks and maples. It is a really hard bird to study and its social system and breeding biology is poorly understood. Even hearing their little inconsequential song is a stretch.
But today the trees are still a long way from leafing out and this bird was staying down low, probably because it was warmer and more productive of insect food. I was photographing an Eastern Pheobe when one of my companions spotted it and called out, “Cerulean Warbler.” It’s a bit of a clarion call and word spread quickly by text. In no time we three birder pals had grown to a dozen, more were arriving and the bird was obliging everyone by staying fairly low and at one time bathing in the watery shallows.
The next stop was such an anti-climax that it began to feel we’d had enough for the day, a day that had started with a White-winged Dove, (a large semi-tropical dove that belongs in Arizona, Texas and Mexico, why it was here is anyone’s guess) and many others that have a special place in my heart: Wood Thrush, White-crowned Sparrow, Prothonotary Warbler, Veery, Red-headed Woodpecker and Blue-headed Vireos, among them.
