Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON. August 30, 2024. Today marked the start of two months of interesting and sometimes intense birding. A team of us will be undertaking transect walks on four roughly circular routes on lands of Canada’s Royal Botanical Gardens. Our task each time is to record all bird species seen and heard, and to estimate abundance. Our four transects are quite different and variously make their way through woodlands, river valleys, grasslands and other natural areas. We undertake to collectively complete at least three transects per route, per week. That’s a lot of happy birding: four routes, nine weeks, three times per week.
On this comfortable late summer morning I was half expecting to find a lot of birds, but it was relatively quiet; just yesterday colleagues on other transect routes were challenged with good counts and good variety including many migrant fall warblers. The warm comfort of late summer was enjoyment enough even though the birding was thin. There were dozens (I suspect) of Blue Jays, calling, socializing and building relationships to carry them south in weeks ahead.
It was all a bit routine until I reached a turning point when I caught a glimpse of two Least Flycatchers. There’s nothing particularly head-turning about a Least Flycatcher, they are grey drab, a little reclusive and not at all musical. Perhaps appropriately they have a humble Think-what-you-like-eating-flies-is-what-I-do -attitude. Anyway I was pleased to see them but unable to get an in-focus photo. The shot above is from a spring morning a decade or so ago.
I was still feeling a bit of a glow from the flycatchers when I got my binoculars focused on a little trailside activity, and there was a lovely little Philadelphia Vireo. I like all vireos for their sometimes-pugnacious air. This little Philly was just getting on with life, making its way south to Central America in due course, no hurry. It had a bright sulphur yellow breast to cement itself in my books as My Bird of the Day.
What a lovely shot of the Vireo and what a fun birding assignment. I’m betting you find an interesting migrant every time. Thank you for sharing.
Flycatchers are my second most favorite group of birds. What will you do with a transact walk data that you are collecting? Good times. The Blue Jays are molting here in Pennsylvania and upstate New York. They come flying in with her brash little attitudes sporting their little pencil necks. LOL
We have been gathering this data for nearly ten years and we pass it on to Royal Botanical gardens for their use. They use it for some decision making but it is pretty granular. But they have identified some trends but nothing earth-shattering (including a decline in Yellow warbler numbers) . I often think that the data would/should be very useful to university students if offered to them. I may be a touch off base when I observe that for the dozen or so of us, it gives additional meaning to a nice morning birding.