Northern Parula

November 7 2018. Sedgewick Park Oakville, ON  Today taking a break from some mundane mid-week chores, I visited a pocket of woodland in a neighbouring city and there found a Northern Parula, plain as day. It’s very late for a parula to still be around but not unheard of as I’ll discuss later.

This woodland wraps around three sides of a large municipal sewage treatment plant which, in the normal run of things, would be unremarkable, if distasteful. The plant with its frothing ponds, digesters and settling tanks creates its own micro climate because all that waste from thousands of homes enters the plant as warmish water. Understandably, as the days grow cold, this little island of warm humidity supports a population of various insects that would normally have perished and, taking advantage of this source of protein-rich food, insectivorous birds too.

The woodlands surrounding the plant are dense with undergrowth, thick tangles and some boggy hollows. In the same immediate area as the parula were Ruby–crowned Kinglets, Yellow–rumped Warblers, a Blue–headed Vireo and White–throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos. The sparrows and juncos were no surprise but the other three were an unexpected pleasure and probably there for the insects still to be found.

I don’t visit this place very often, perhaps once or twice a year, although, because it’s a good place to find seriously out of season birds, many avid listers drop by regularly.  Without unduly dwelling on the point, I’ll just observe that there are worse places to hang around than along the margins of a sewage treatment plant, but not many.  Looking back, I see that I was there in early December 2014 and late October 2016.  On both occasions I saw (as anticipated) some nice lingering warblers. It’s reasonable to conclude that the micro-climate and abundance of food is why these late birds are there (fatal though it may turn out to be).

But here’s the funny thing about it, on all of these late dates I saw a Northern Parula (and managed some really nice photos at times); not the same bird I’m sure of that. But to add to the coincidence of these repeated encounters, on both of the most recent occasions (today and October 2016) the parulas exhibited unusual behavior, with their lower mandibles oddly open. The 2016 bird’s bill was exaggeratedly agape and rarely closed, it seemed to be possessed with the urge to yawn. Something is awry; but what? I have no explanation.

Anomalies aside, Northern Parulas are stunningly pretty birds and for that and the surprise element it was my Bird of the Day.