Author: Peter T

3 February 2014. Burlington Ontario. Although really nothing more than tabulating the rhythm of the Earth, flipping over the January page of the calendar seemed to have made all the difference.  Bright sun, a blanket of snow and barely noticeable cold was all that the birds and I needed to enjoy each other’s company today.

I walked around a favourite valley not far from home, a place of sheltered trails, a meandering river and a winter bird population that knows and loves people and the food they usually bring with them.  I pocketed a small bag of mixed birdseed and went to see what photography opportunities would pop up.

It was, as I expected, all about the usual avian suspects and they provided lots of opportunity.  There was little sense in looking for rarities, just enjoy a beautiful winter morning. The birds obliged nicely and the gallery below is a reflection of my morning’s walk.

My Wow! moment came almost as an afterthought.  Completely satisfied with my morning of photo-op birds, I decided to drive around a nearby cemetery where a Screech Owl can sometimes be seen, particularly if the sun shines. He was there right on cue and since the sun shone so brightly I was spurred on to check another owl spot, where to my astonishment these two Screech Owls were sitting sunning themselves.

To help you interpret the picture of these two birds, I need to quote a local authority, Bob Curry, from his excellent book Birds of Hamilton and Surrounding Areas (Pub’ Hamilton Naturalists’ Club 2006): “The Eastern Screech Owls occurs in three colour morphs: grey, brown and red.  Grey Screech Owls are by far the commonest in southern Ontario, these include the similar brown morphs that are seldom distinguished in the field or in museum collections. ….Red morph birds are less well adapted to cold and are commoner in the United States.  Based on specimens in the Royal Ontario Museum….red morphs comprise about 19% of the Ontario population.

Quite apart from the sheer pleasure of seeing them, what made these birds so special was to find the brown and grey morphs together and apparently a bonded pair, a sign of spring if ever there was.

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31 January 2014. Haldimand ON. Thank goodness, a thaw.  With temperatures just a shade above freezing for a change, I saw several noteworthy species today: Three Wild Turkeys picking through snow-encrusted corn stubble; a lone male Northern Harrier quartering wind-blown farm fields; a Rough-legged Hawk keeping watch atop a large oak;  Tumbling squalls of Snow Buntings; A scattering of Horned Larks and, Bird of the Day, two or three Lapland Longspurs.

Let me put it all into context. I returned to that same quiet, windswept, country road to continue our work banding Snow Buntings. A couple of days of fierce winds had exposed wide expanses of farmland stripping the soil and blowing it onto roadside snow-drifts, turning them coffee coloured.

Without a covering of snow, birds find it easier to forage for more traditional sources of food so our baited ground traps were far less effective.  Still, we banded twenty-two Snow Buntings and one Lapland Longspur.

Snow Buntings, they are so aptly named, move in very large rolling flocks that barrel across the landscape like a loose-leafed snow squall. Horned Larks and Lapland Longspurs seem to get caught up in the excitement of the buntings’ wanderings and we’ll usually see a few of them, and maybe band a handful. (Click on any photo below to really appreciate their cuteness.)

Horned Larks are probably one of our most under-noticed birds, they prefer open farm fields, the rougher, bleaker and more disturbed the better and while winter is still tossing around late snow and ice, Horned Larks start nesting, often tucking a nest in a crevice between clumps of old grasses and weeds.  We saw a score of Horned Larks today but none that wanted to settle for us to enjoy them for long.

Lapland Longspurs are smaller and have a diminutive charm of their own.  Like the buntings, they nest in tundra far above the tree line but spend the winter foraging over open fields in southern Canada and much of the U.S.  It’s a privilege to see them after they’ve gone to all that effort to visit us.  Few birders notice them because they can be so hard to find in those large flocks of Snow Buntings.  The one that surrendered itself for banding was much admired, enough to be Bird of the Day.

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29 January 2014. Haldimand ON. You know how you hear about extreme sports and how (other) people push the limits of endurance and safety purely for fun?  I think I understand why they do it, at least until they reach the point of foolhardy, life-endangering participation.  Well, today I think maybe we pushed the rational limits on birding, and for a while I wondered just how serious my resulting frostbite might be.  But I’m typing this and all digits are working fine; but still…

I joined a couple of other bird observatory friends to band a few Snow Buntings.  Consider the setting: we work in an unheated mini-van, minus 17 Celsius outside (1.4 deg. F), flat open farmland and a buffeting westerly wind blowing spumes of ice-crystals off the tops of snow-banks.  We had three ground traps baited with cracked corn (ground traps work like a lobster trap, the birds walk in and but can’t find their way out).  Clouds of Snow Buntings, in hundreds, whirled around drawn by the corn, some of it scattered around, but most of it inside the traps. They were hungry, and when Matt and I arrived on site Nancy had just collected thirty or so birds and popped them into cloth bags.  We took them to the van for banding, ageing, sexing, weighing and release.

With our first batch processed and released, we struggled out of the van and back through the snow drifts to the traps which had filled once again.  My gloves were too clumsy so I pulled them off and started gathering and bagging buntings. Within thirty seconds my hands were very cold, at sixty seconds almost numb but still functioning, and shortly after that screaming in pain.  By then I had my bag limit, I could hardly feel anything but managed to pull my gloves back on, then plunged back through the drifts and to the van.  As I closed the door, Matt climbed in behind me exclaiming that his hands seemed to have vanished.  I don’t think we’d been out for more than four minutes, yet examining my hands I could see the top of at least one finger was bone-white, I knew I’d been frostbitten.  It took some ten minutes of hot breathing and arm-pit incubation to get any feeling back.  It was a signal lesson in not removing gloves and how quickly extremities will freeze; it was also very painful.

Still in three hours we banded 80 Snow Buntings and two days from now I’m going again; that’s what extreme sports nuts do I think.  I should have new photos then, these are from 2011

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28 January 2013. Huatulco Mexico. Just a year ago we were in Mexico checking out traditional methods of weaving and dyeing.  The memory of that trip still burns strongly, even more so over this past couple of weeks with the contrasts in mobility, weather and colour so vivid. Our final two or three days were spent in the Pacific coastal town of Huatulco where one of life’s pleasures for everyone is to congregate in the town square, the zocalo, and just people-watch.  I always added bird-watch to the agenda because the large shade trees were lively with vocal Great Kiskadees, Yellow-winged Caiques (cah-hee-KAYs), Great-tailed Grackles and Tropical Kingbirds.

 

 

 

 

On one of those sit-and-watch days, binoculars and camera always close at hand, a black bird settled on the shrubbery opposite where we sat, my first impression was of yet another a grackle but on second look I realized in astonishment that it was a Groove-billed Ani.  I’d never seen one before, but how could I mistake it?  There are three Ani species: Greater, Smooth-billed and Groove-billed. Click on the picture below and take a closer look, this could only be a Groove-billed; to me anyway.

Wikipedia nails it with this brief description. “The Groove-billed Ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris) is an odd-looking tropical bird in the cuckoo family with a long tail and a large, curved beak.”  The Cuckoo family again!  There always seems to be something just a little odd about them.  The Lesser Ground Cuckoo, seen just ten days prior, the Roadrunner, and Eurasia’s Common Cuckoo, an obligate nest parasite, all of them just a little off centre in one way or another.  And now here’s the Groove-billed Ani to confirm and add to the familial eccentricities.  I was thrilled to see this bird, certainly a Wow! moment.  I’d only ever seen illustrations of them before and wonder what possible purpose that oversized, striated bill serves.

A little later I spotted a pair of them.  My attention was caught by the odd posture of one scuttling and scratching around beneath a row of shrubs, it’s that curious looking pose in the photo below.  It turned out to be a courtship strategy, moments later the object of its desires obviously tempted, appeared for a moment of copulation. Birding is full of such surprises.

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6 November 2010. Gilbert Arizona. The first snow of winter is always something of a novelty, but by the umpteenth fall of January snowflakes have little charm. With swirling snow adding to the uneven piles of shoveled snow-turned ice, I opened my photo files for a reminder of livelier days. I found these photos of Black-necked Stilts I’d taken at a reservoir in Gilbert, Arizona. I remember my excitement at seeing these ballerina birds up so close, something virtually unheard of in Ontario; they were my Birds of the Day.

Gilbert is a generally undistinguished suburb of the sprawling metropolis of Phoenix.  I imagine a few decades ago Gilbert to have been a rather quiet, crossroads town, an hour from Phoenix,  that had grown up around a wet spot in an otherwise dry landscape of Saguaro Cactus, Creosote Bush and Prickly Pear. If I’m correct about its early geography, that wet spot is today a large naturalized water recycling plant.  To quote local authority Judy Hedding, “The Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch is a water recycling facility for the Town of Gilbert. Gilbert treats its wastewater, and then pipes it into the basins here where it replenishes the underground water supply. The water can then be pumped out of the ground to support the water needs of the homes and businesses in Gilbert. This system, then, creates an opportunity for habitats for many kinds of wildlife and plant life that you might not see in other desert areas.”

I came to this place because any guide to birding in Phoenix will inevitably point you to it.  It’s easy enough to find as long as you can navigate arrow-straight north-south or east-west roads and don’t get too discouraged by the immense distances between landmarks in metropolitan Phoenix.  The Riparian Preserve is a great birding spot, my full day included sightings of Northern Pintail, Long-billed Dowitcher and many Least Sandpipers. Least Sandpipers are easily confused with Semi-palmated Sandpipers, we often see them together during fall migration back home, but one distinguishing mark is that Leasts have yellowish legs whereas Semi-pals’ legs are black; a distinction that is usually excruciatingly difficult to make out at any distance.  The National Geographic Complete Birds of North America glosses over the colour of the legs a bit but notes, “Beginning birders often emphasize the yellow legs of the Least compared to the darker legs of the other two species (Semi-palmated and Western Sandpipers) but the identifications are sufficiently straightforward to eliminate the need to base an identification on a mark that can be altered by mud, lighting or something else.”  That’s as may be, but sorting the species one from the other is, to me anyway, pretty well always hard going. That said, the Least Sandpipers in the photo below leaves little doubt that they have yellow legs (without being Greater or Lesser Yellowlegs – which is another story altogether.)

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