July 28 2019 Burlington, ON. So, maybe it’s started, the fall migration. Well the tide has turned even if the big rush south is still a good two months away. In my birding calendar January and July is slack water, the pause between inrush and outrush; nautically between high and low tides, when boats may launch or conversely be fast aground.
But today I heard a Northern Flicker calling, a call something like a forced ha-ha-ha laugh; it’s the first I’ve been aware of for several weeks. The flicker inrush peaked here in the second half of April and by mid-May they had dispersed, finding their place in the world, most of them passing over and spreading widely across the continent.
Other birders will have looked for and spotted some early (July) southbound shorebirds, yellowlegs, dowitchers and sandpipers. But let them look, I’m in no hurry to usher summer out, slack water or not. Such early southbound shorebirds are conjectured to be failed breeders or quite possibly one-year-old birds who have not yet figured out their part in the whole life-cycle story, frustrated or baffled they turn and head back south.
I hear American Goldfinches singing overhead as they explore my neighbourhood for ripened sunflowers and other sources of seed. The goldfinches start breeding late, usually in mid-July, timing the need to feed their broods with the best of seed production. I suppose you could call breeding goldfinches part of July’s slack water but their musical foraging is an August sound, a sign of the tide’s turning.
For all I know, today’s flicker could also be a failed breeder or a naïve one-year old; but I didn’t seek it out, it just showed up reminding me that something’s in the wind. The flicker and goldfinches are not alone in hinting at change, I hear Common Grackles in small post-breeding gangs chattering amongst themselves. Those flocks will accumulate new members and in time start wandering south and west.
Still, it’s high summer with everything that goes along with it, but the flicker in particular was notable and a high-summer Bird of the Day.