Marsh Wren

Safari Road Marsh, Flamborough. ON. June 5 2022. There is a wide marsh, bisected by a busy road, about 40 minutes drive from home. It’s a good place to look for American and Least Bitterns, Virginia Rails, Sora and Common Gallinules, they’re all there. Given peace and quiet you’ll usually meet with some success.

I’m not sure what ‘they’ were thinking when the road was imposed upon the marsh a hundred years or so ago, it must have had a huge impact on the wildlife at the time,  tons of gravel poured in and laid down to make a road bed. And tarmac too in time. But decades on, we birders value that obscene scar on the landscape. We value it for the birding access it affords despite the speeding traffic, beer-can litter and road-killed frogs, turtles, snakes and birds.

I went there this morning and found that the road had been closed to traffic, it was barricaded and detours set up. High water and a tough winter had deteriorated the road surface to the point that the local roads department had deemed it unsafe for vehicular traffic; but importantly it was okay for walking birders.  I was there a bit after first light and other than bird song, the distant coughs of lions at a safari park, and the crackly trail of small planes high overhead, it was all very peaceful.

I was lucky enough to watch a Virginia Rail pace across the road, but it was nervous and soon ducked into thick cattails and was gone. I could hear Common Gallinules singing in maniacal cackles and maybe best of all Marsh Wrens announcing their hold on a patches of reed-bed.

Around me, Barn and Tree Swallows swept the air for flying insects, a Sandhill Crane and a couple of Great Blue Herons laboured by and two Blue–winged Teal were a colourful surprise as they leapt out of the water showing off the wide blueness of their wings in flight.

Marsh Wrens can be a bit quick to take flight so I count myself lucky that this one, above and below, posed patiently, and steadily enough for me to photograph it. Perhaps it was just determined that I should understand its place in the marsh and mine on the roadside. In any event it was My Bird of the Day.