American Bittern

RBG. Hendrie Valley, Burlington ON. November 23^rd. 2020. This morning the valley reversed a couple of no-shows from my post of just four days ago. I found the elusive American Bittern (who should know better) and a Fox Sparrow happy to be where there was food to be found. Of course, there was more to the morning than those two: countless Dark–eyed Juncos, a handful of White–throated Sparrows, several vocal Red–bellied Woodpeckers and a devoted pair of American Black Ducks all turned my head. But the foxy and the bittern were especially notable, with the American Bittern clearly My Bird of the Day.

Freakish sightings of birds unsettle me and I view the bittern as doubly freakish: first, because it’s still here when it should be long gone, and second because this normally shy bird was so openly visible close to a much-used trail.  We’ve seen other misfits around here over the years: a way-off-course Brown Booby might still today be fishing the waters of Lake Ontario rather than enjoying the relative comforts of the tropical Pacific; goodness only knows why. 

From early April to the end of October the American Bittern is a bona fide member of our avifauna, but now it should be many hundreds of miles south of us, probably in Florida, a place where winter will be less unyielding. It relies for its diet on spear-fishing in open water for frogs, minnows, crayfish and other wriggly things, but the pond where I saw it today will soon freeze hard. Of course, it could be that it’s just taking a breather and any day now will continue on its way south, but somehow, I suspect it believes that this is it, that this is the Gulf of Mexico.

Whatever its fate, whatever the outcome, an American Bittern is a wonder to see at any time. My encounters have been few, I can recall no more than half a dozen in the last ten years. They’re solitary birds, rather secretive and cryptically invisible in their preferred cattail marsh habitat.

Today’s Fox Sparrow was in a small group of House Sparrows picking for food along a much-used trail where families gather to feed the birds. It wasn’t a stop-me-in-my-tracks type of surprise, but because I hadn’t expected it, it was a delight. Various authorities suggest that some Fox Sparrows linger in south-western Ontario all winter so, maybe it was a lesson learned for me. Fox Sparrows are always engaging having an industrious jump-scratch way of uncovering food in the leaf litter and lovely, deep brown, check-marks on the breast. It could easily have been My Deputy Bird of the Day.