Eastern Bluebirds

Ancaster, ON. 25 October 2014.  Baby-sitting three pre-school boys for a weekend doesn’t leave much room for birding; none really. But I managed to find a couple of hours, having previously agreed to join a group examining a tract of land which has recently become a restoration project.

Well, when we arrived, a southwest wind was blowing a gale and rain was threatening. With every gust, another branch was stripped clean and the air filled with tumbling leaves. A sky full of leaves is a betrayal, things airborne being the stock in trade of most birders.

We traipsed around the field, which the owner, a university, had forgotten it owned until just a few years ago. In the half-century or so that have elapsed since the land was acquired (and forgotten), this one-time farm fell victim to the march of European Buckthorn, an invasive species. Using undergraduate labour, the university is trying to restore the land to its original post-glacial, pre-contact state; chainsaws and bonfires are blunt but effective starts to the process.

We saw precious little in the way of bird life; everything with wings seemed to be staying out of the wind. But our day brightened considerably when we came upon a mixed-age flock of Eastern Bluebirds gathered in a sheltered valley; they were deservedly my Birds of the Day.Eastern Bluebird (male) RP

Eastern Bluebirds are widespread across the eastern half of the continent and are year round residents everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. But we are well north of that line and our bluebirds are migratory, most of them anyway; a few sometimes overwinter. We often see these mixed flocks at this time of year and usually they’re loose, rambling groups. Just when you think there’s a dozen birds, more appear and then more again.

The sight and sound (they have a charming fluting call) of the bluebirds certainly brightened up a rather dreary outing, which was otherwise only punctuated by a wind-tossed Turkey Vulture, a solitary Red-bellied Woodpecker and a few robins and goldfinches.Eastern bluebird May 29 2011