May 15th 2016. Cootes Paradise, Hamilton ON. Canada is sometimes understood to be a country of ice and snow and log cabins and dark pine trees; a impression richly undeserved. It is a picture that today’s hi-speed, hi-definition world should be able to dispel; but fails to. It doesn’t help that every now and then we get a day like this: cold, wet and with sleet and snow in the air; winter just letting us know it hasn’t forgotten us. It was perhaps the coldest May day in history.
I walked one of our census routes. It was raw but the birds still have to live and many could only find food on the ground; flying insects having either died or hunkered down somewhere. I encountered a flock of Cedar Waxwings, an Eastern Kingbird and a solitary Swainson’s Thrush all foraging low along a well used path. I could hear Nashville Warblers, Warbling Vireos and a Northern Waterthrush, all insectivors and probably struggling.
Along the margins of a large lake, Tree, Barn and Northern Rough-winged Swallows were chasing what few flying insects there were, both low, almost at surface level, and just inland in sheltered coves and along marshy tributaries. It may sound unremarkable but swallows normally fly high, swooping, aerial loops picking flying insect at all levels ; today’s birds had been forced down and concentrated in those marginally warmer corners. Many birds had stopped flying, stopped wasting energy in a fruitless pursuit and chose instead to perch, fluffed up to keep warm; whether they were beyond a fatal point of no return I can only speculate on. I’m sure this turn of events was deadly to many insectivorous birds, particularly hatchlings dependent upon parents delivering an endless supply of food.
Here are a couple of shots of swallows: three Barn Swallow above and a Northern Rough-winged Swallow below, waiting for better times.
