September 17 2016. RBG Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. You can’t go on birding living on memories of foreign places; there’s things to be done, censuses to complete. Today I picked up where I left off three weeks ago and completed a census walk around one of our nicest, leafiest and birdiest valleys. For some reason it was extremely quiet, few birds and no family groups or dog-walkers, perhaps because rain was threatening.
A secretive (as always) Swainson’s Thrush watched me carefully and busy groups of Gray Catbirds darted between thick bushes. In and around the ponds were small groups of Wood Ducks, a distant Great Egret shining white through the haze and a sole Trumpeter Swan.
Birds of the Day were a migratory band of Northern Flickers moving deliberately westward but stopping to fuel up as they went. I watched two, then three until eventually it became a group of ten or twelve working over a tangle of Virginia Creeper that was heavy with fruit. Here’s a couple of photos.