October 5 2019. Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. Today’s birding was mundane at best. The sun shone all right but the wind was trouble, a howling Force 5 out of the east. Out of the east means that it has first swept the length of Lake Ontario raising whitecaps. The day was cool but at another time of year such an easterly would make it bitterly cold, Lake Ontario’s 47 fathoms holds winter’s cold long into summer months.
Our valley is well sheltered but, on this day, birds knew better and preferred to stay low and out of sight. I struggled to find them and my meagre daily tally was built in ones and twos. I can usually count on a few Great Blue Herons, but the only one I saw had backed into a stand of cattails safe from gusts which, I suppose, might be treacherous for a bird that flies so lugubriously anyway and on such a wing spread.
My Bird of the Day came as I threaded and slipped my way along a wet creek-side path. It was still mostly uninspiring going until I heard the cautious song of a Swamp Sparrow come from a reed bed some twenty or thirty feet away. Swamp Sparrows in spring and summer are, like most sparrows, inclined to be a bit reclusive but their song rings out across a marsh like a peel of bells. I was glad to hear it today, a welcome bright spot.
