April 17 2019. Near Walmart, Waterdown, ON. The Virginia Rail of a few days ago may have been muddled when it came to habitat choice but there was nothing wrong with its timing. Mid-April is when Virginia Rails make their return journey so, with that in mind, I went to check a few likely wetlands with appropriate habitat.
My first stop was a long-abandoned quarry that has been reworked into a city park. Virginia Rails and Sora are known to breed here in a small marshy area and I had almost immediate success, I heard two rails calling, in time they seemed to draw closer and I glimpsed one when is stood to call out from a raft of old cattail stalks . The contact call is a shortish sequence of low two-sylable click sounds like, kidik-kidik-kidik. Their courtship song is distinctive and sounds like a series of piglet grunts. A friend once smilingly called it a Marsh Pig, the name sticks with me.
Content with my brief Virginia Rail sighting, I moved on to another disused and rehabilitated quarry where I was greeted by the fragments of a Brown Thrasher‘s song from somewhere unseen. In one of the ponds a pair of Ring-necked Ducks kept their distance but unwittingly accepted the far-seeing eye of my camera.
A pair of Caspian Terns wheeled overhead and occasionally swept down to pick at small fish. I was mulling over the memory that Caspian Tern in Russian is Tschegrava, a name that captures its sharp barking call. Then, to push that reflective musing aside, I heard a low clucking sound that became an aquatic burble of song coming from somewhere behind me. It was so odd that I wondered if I’d imagined it. I had no idea who or what it could be, although to add a bit of context, I should note that this old quarry-become-park is gratingly close to the back of Walmart and Home Depot stores, so incongruous sounds were not all that uncommon, although most were clipped and metallic, like ‘Jeff to Housewares’ or something like that.
A dim memory of the maniacal spring ‘song’ of Pied-billed Grebe came to mind, could it be? I felt I was grasping at straws but, to cut a long story short, that is what it was. I searched and soon found a pair that had taken to the pond as if it was their choice of a good place to raise a family.
My presence against the skyline spooked them but when I kept a low profile I was able to watch as they patrolled the neighbourhood. I think they were in an early, relaxed stage of pair bonding rather than the fury of pre-copulatory courtship. They were enjoying each other’s company and sometimes took to attack a solitary Mallard, who was minding his own business.
Put up against its North American grebe cousins the Pied-billed is perhaps the least elegant; more tug boat than Grand Banks schooner. But aside from their strange looks, calls and song, Pied-billed Grebes have some useful defensive techniques: they can compress their body feathers to make themselves sink quietly and completely out of sight, or, if less dire action is needed, descend until only its periscope of a head remains above water to keep an eye on things.
I watched, photographed and enjoyed them for quite a long time, they had shoved aside the rail to become my Birds of the Day.
