Princess Point, Hamilton. ON. May 12, 2024. I witnessed something altogether new to me today, bird behaviour I’d never seen before. I had just started a transect on a very busy and birdy May morning and was making my way along the woodland edge of a wide grassy park. I was struggling to sort out the almost overwhelming variety of bird song and sound when I caught sight of different movement. I’d read about it before so immediately knew I was seeing the courtship flight of a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird.
Male hummingbirds of many species perform dive-displays for their females. The displays usually start with the male hovering close to his mate before climbing high then diving steeply in a pattern which is distinctive to his species. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds do relatively shallow U-shaped dives, other species’ dive tighter and steeper. Today’s bird’s dives were perhaps 3 or 4 meters wide and deep, after a few swings he retired to a perch to see whether she was impressed. Here he is, My Bird of the Day in a day full of birds.
There was much more to stop me in my tracks this morning. A Yellow Warbler who had found his territory for the summer and was patrolling it from post to post. Two Eastern Kingbirds, evidently a pair, were busy assessing trees along the shoreline seeking a nest site I assume and close to a pair of Warbling Vireos who had already started construction of their nest, a masterpiece of woven grasses suspended from forks of horizontal twigs.
Had it not been for the display behaviour of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, I think the day would have belonged to a vocal Scarlet Tanager. It is a strikingly handsome summer visitor (the male anyway) and almost common in the hardwood forests around here. I hardly ever see them because they hang around high in the canopy level of those woodlands. But I do remember my first sighting of one when I was birding a trail along the top edge of a deep and narrow valley. From that angle I looked down upon treetops and out of the May greenery popped a male tanager, I could hardly believe the intensity of scarlet; an intensity that today’s more modest digital cameras sometimes have trouble rendering properly.
It was a challenging day to be a birder, almost too much to see, hear and process and I’m told there will be a couple more big migration nights ahead.