Common Raven

December 26^th. 2018, Grindstone Creek, Burlington, ON.  I hit a new low today but proved a point in doing so. The new low was just twelve species in a morning of diligent searching; the point proved was that, despite the odds, there is always a Bird of the Day.

I was taking part in the Christmas Bird Count, a continent-wide project that has been running uninterrupted here since 1921, I participate periodically. My first Christmas Bird Count day, about thirty years ago, was so profoundly cold I have trouble shaking its memory. But a few days ago I was asked me to help out again and, feeling the lethargy that comes with December, I agreed thinking it would do me good to get out. As it turned out, conditions were good today, temperatures well above freezing, no wind and it was dry.  Dressed well, I enjoyed exploring new places and making mental notes of promising sites to revisit; the only problem was there were almost no birds.

I started by making my way slowly along some residential streets, the sort that are neither urban nor rural, looking closely for stocked feeders and the birds that might be drawn to them. My reward was just two Downy Woodpeckers.

One of these days a birder, maybe me, will have some difficulty explaining to a police officer quite why he or she is: A) Apparently prowling through a quiet nice-little-neighbourhood-like-this; and B) Using binoculars to look at folks’ homes, gardens and porches..

Leaving residents to their morning coffee and with one species to my credit, I made my way to a hikers’ trail that follows the edge of a deep valley, open fields to the left and quiet hardwood forest falling away to the right, I was hoping for anything with wings. I felt sure that an owl or two, perhaps even a group of roosting Long-eared Owls, must be watching me from their daytime hiding spots. If so it was definitely a one-sided encounter. The payoff was a mental note to revisit this corner of the world next spring; it will fairly ring with birdsong in June.  I shouldn’t forget though that, although deadly quiet, I added a far-off, solitary Red-tailed Hawk to my day’s list. Two hours work behind me and two species in the bag.

A roadside flock of about a hundred European Starlings didn’t add any particular sparkle to the day but boosted individual bird numbers. But with three species I’d reached a quarter of the day’s eventual tally. Happily a Northern Cardinal, a Blue Jay (one!) and the distant call of an American Crow soon took me to six. Then followed a long spell with nothing at all, although I noted that road traffic increased as people started to emerge from their post-Christmas torpor.

I made my way to another valley-side trail having been tipped that there, with luck, I might find Wild Turkeys (birder code, WITU) and maybe some owls.  But I saw nothing. Retracing my steps, I heard a funny gurgling sound, faint and somewhat familiar. Probably some kind of quiet turkey conversation I thought. Then came another and a third, louder and not far behind me. Semi-convinced, I penned ‘WITU? 3’ in my note book and thought how well-suited and appropriate turkeys would be to this mixture of thick forest and open farmland. I caught a glimpse of a large bird wheeling by behind me and above the tree tops, I followed its direction until it resolved itself as a Common Raven, and then it all made sense, it was the raven’s chuckle I had heard, not turkeys at all.  All thoughts of turkeys vanished and I was struck by the size of the raven with its long, tapered wings and diamond-shaped tail. It opted to pick a fight with a passing Red-tailed Hawk and the two of them engaged in a rolling, swooping entanglement until a decision of some kind called a truce and they went their separate ways. So, there it is, point made: no matter how dreary the day, there’s always something, one bird that’ll make me say wow! Today this completely unexpected Common Raven, My Bird of the Day, once rare around here but now increasing in numbers.

And for the sake of the arithmetic of the day’s short list, the others were: Black–capped Chickadee (9), House Sparrow (8), Canada Goose (7), one each of Dark-eyed Junco, and Red-breasted Nuthatch.  A short list but, as ever, it has its Bird of the Day.