RBG Arboretum, Hamilton. ON. December 21, 2024. I grew up not far from Stonehenge back when it was quietly acknowledged as a reminder of prehistoric Britain and was something to do with priests called druids. If, back then, it drew crowds of winter or summer solstice worshipers they were decidedly low-key events.
The Winter Solstice today is a noteworthy event and has become quite special in the calendar of my birder friends and me. We mark it by doing a Winter Solstice Transect around each of our four transect routes. I dressed defensively this morning because temperatures had dropped sharply overnight and a thin blanket of snow had arrived. I took about 90 minutes to walk around a lakeside transect route, 90 minutes, 220 birds, and17 species; none of them out of the ordinary but all special in their own way.
By far the most numerous were European Starlings, 120 of them in large unsettled flocks, moving, splitting and regrouping. Thirty or 40 American Robins intermingled with a large handful of Cedar Waxwings foraging for leftover berries of fall. There were Dark–eyed Juncos and American Tree Sparrows scratching for seeds along the trailsides and a few Black–capped Chickadees keeping an eye on everyone.
My Bird of the Day was a sole Red–tailed Hawk perched high above everyone and everything, just watching. Bathed in shortest-day-of-the-year sunshine it glowed white and was enough to make me think wow! (Not the one above – but like it.) Happy Christmas.