Hermit Thrush

Sedgewick Park, Oakville, ON. December 11^th. 2020. A few avian rewards came my way on this bright and warm December day. I had no birding plans but a couple of while-I’m-at-it side trips worked their way into domestic errands.

I made what was supposed to be a quick stop at a pocket-forest adjacent to a sewage treatment plant. The treatment plant with its constant in-flow of domestic left-overs creates a warm and insecty microclimate and is a well known hot-spot (no pun intended) for lingering birds of summer.  I went to follow up on talk of a couple of Northern Parulas reputedly hanging around.  It should be exciting news but it’s happened before:  every December, for six years at least, one or two show up here when they really should be in Central America. I can’t account for why Northern Parulas in particular, sometimes a Yellow-rumped, Orange-crowned or Palm Warbler has lingered here too, but not every year.  Of all the bright spark warblers of our spring and summer, Northern Parulas seem the least likely to brighten a December forest edge. But here is today’s – a bit blurry, but you get the idea of what a splash of colour she makes.

And here’s another, from 2014.

The parula was elusive and I stood for ages hoping to confirm its presence. My knees protested the uneven slope, but as my only complaint it was a small price, because as I waited I watched a Ruby–crowned Kinglet move quietly through the tangles of Riverbank Grape and Virginia Creeper across a tiny rivulet. Kinglets to us, are birds of incessant motion, hard to follow and impossible to photograph.  To see one resting quietly between short bursts of activity illustrated how expensive it is for a bird to use energy when food is scarce and urgent migration is not the order of the day. Winter is for surviving not for the extravagant use of resources.   Its long spells of inactivity made it possible to take many photos, but it was deep in the brush so I ended up deleting most once I got home. Here is one of just three keepers.

My Bird of the Day was a Hermit Thrush skulking around in the same small, wet gully as the parula and kinglet. It was hard to see and almost impossible to follow as it crept around seeking food on the ground deep under the tangles and winter debris. In a sense, I ambushed it for this photo, I made a guess as to where it might make its next brief appearance. And it did as I hoped, just long enough to get two quick shots and then it was gone again.