Author: Peter T

29 December 2013.  Haldimand County. There’s a drive I take almost every winter through the flat farm landscape of Ontario’s Haldimand County down to the shore of Lake Erie.  I don’t care for the dreary and exhausted winter countryside, I don’t like the coating of frozen road grime but I do like the numbers and variety of hawks, owls and eagles seen along the way. But not this year; oh I got the dreary, exhausted winter countryside and the coating of frozen road grime alright, but I didn’t see much in the way of hawks and owls and there were simply no eagles at all.  I am hoping they all had the good sense to go much further south to escape this tough winter (which really has only just started.)

Still, all was not lost. There were a few hopeful roadside American Kestrels, a dozen or so Red-tailed Hawks and a single Sharp-shinned Hawk on the prowl. A few flocks of American Tree Sparrows, a Northern Cardinal or two and the odd Slate-coloured Junco were the only passerines.  I was hoping to see Snow Buntings, but no such luck.  Bird of the Day was a beautiful Snowy Owl perched on a fence post several hundred yards from the road, too far way to photograph but nice through binoculars.  On the lake: Red-breasted Mergansers, Common Goldeneyes, Black Ducks, Buffleheads, Mallards and a rapacious Greater Black-backed Gull that growled menacingly at a Herring Gull who wisely surrendered its meal.

A slim pickings day of birding – the Birds of Winter. Here’s one of them.

If you’ve ever wondered which of all of the birds I’ve celebrated in 2013 was the best, you can find out by clicking 2013 Bird of the Year (above) or follow this link.  The picture below is not a clue, it’s just a cute American Tree Sparrow.

 

25 December 2013. Burlington ON. I scanned the harbour early this morning.  We’d had a cold night and snow was falling steadily; it was Christmas Day quiet.  It seemed the rest of the world was either eating, napping or sleeping it off, whatever the ‘it’ was they’d indulged in.

The water surface as far as I could see was iced over, perhaps just a centimeter or so, for the quiet snow was settling on it rather than melting.  From the warmth and anonymity of my car I made a binocular sweep of gatherings and pockets of waterfowl driven inshore to quiet unfrozen inlets.

No surprises: lots of Mallards, Canada Geese, Trumpeter Swans, Common Goldeneyes, Scaup and a handful of elegant Canvasbacks.  This Christmas Day some people somewhere just may be eating Canvasback, hunters consider them as choice targets.  I prefer them this way as my Birds of Christmas Day. 

22 December 2013. Burlington ON. It might be hard to invent a more trying weather recipe for wildlife than that of the past few days; a foot of snow, followed by a couple of days of rain and topped off with freezing rain.  Trees and power lines are coated in ice, trees split, branches snap and fall, power lines break, flash and short-out, homes are in darkness; Christmas is coming.  We stay warm and dry mostly but all that food for wildlife, seeds and berries, is either buried or wrapped in ice.

Stopping briefly to see how ducks around the harbour were making out, I found this beautiful Northern Mockingbird working hungrily over a reasonably sheltered rose bush.  I’ve taken lots of dreary photographs of mockingbirds in the past; despite their legendary powers as choral performers they dress like litigating lawyers in shades of pearl grey and charcoal.  But there’s something about this one, perhaps it’s the splash of red or maybe just the somber winter background that has elevated it to a higher court. The Honorable Northern Mockingbird – Bird of the Day.

 

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20 December 2013. Burlington ON. In my admittedly distorted view of the seasons, spring starts right after Christmas, right after the winter solstice really; so any day now.  Call it a self-deception if you like, but my arguments for my viewpoint have merit: starting two days from now daylight length starts to increase; with increasing daylight comes more sunshine; with sunshine comes warmth; and with warmth comes spring.  What more convincing do you need?

The forgoing is a digression whose only relevance is to support the observation that today could hardly have been gloomier.  It’s as good as the shortest, lowest-light day of the year, we are under a heavy overcast and a very fine drizzle makes visibility about as poor as it can be.  But notwithstanding the many reasons to bury my head under a cushion, I took a detour along a quiet road looking for birds, and to my delight, came across a frenzied abundance of American Robins feeding on honeysuckle berries. The pleasure of so many robins, some half-heartedly whispering songs, busily feeding among in the colourful branches of the honeysuckle was a delight, almost a Christmas card moment; certainly a Bird of the Day moment.

While it is generally held that Robins leave us for the winter, it’s not quite true.  I’m sure many do make their way into the gentler climes of southern states, but hundreds remain around here.  They retreat into our many sheltered valleys, places where food is relatively plentiful and winter storms merely roar overhead, rather than sweep, scour and glaze the land. And here was a flock of robins, perhaps a hundred strong, they’d found Tartarian Honeysuckle bushes that were covered with masses of scarlet berries.

Conventional wisdom has it that our frugivorous bird species (robins, waxwings and mockingbirds for example) avoid the berries of Tartarian Honeysuckle and European Buckthorn as distasteful and view them as last-resort food. Maybe… or maybe since both are invasive plant species they’re not immediately and instinctively recognized for their food value, especially amid the fruitful abundance of late summer and fall.

Coming back to the matter of the gloom of the day, I took dozens of pictures but in such low light the camera was hard pressed to produce crisp images.  Here’s a couple.

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After the robins I stopped at our nearby waterfowl-rich marina, admired a number of Tundra Swans, Mallards, American Coots, Common Goldeneye, a winter-plumage Horned Grebe and several White-winged Scoters who had ventured too close to shore for their comfort.  Their panic is evident in the photo below.