Author: Peter T

3 September 2013. Ruthven Park, Cayuga ON.  Eastern Wood Peewee, the unsung hero of the woodland. Well, maybe not unsung, but overlooked certainly; they’re late to arrive, reliable, melodic and now leaving in large numbers; my Bird of the Day today.

I was at the Ruthven Park Bird Observatory today, fall migration monitoring has restarted and it’s nice to be involved. The day’s work starts just before dawn (although rarely do I get there then, I have to drive for 45 minutes first) when the mist-nets are opened, and doesn’t stop until around lunchtime, or when six hours of monitoring has elapsed.  I will usually undertake the daily census, a walk around a prescribed route recording everything (avian) seen and heard; it’s an interesting challenge to see how many species we encounter as the seasons change, today it was 27, yesterday (a gloomy and thunderous day) just 21, and the day before that, it was 37.

There were few surprises on today’s census walk-around.  I know that many many birds go unseen and unheard on the census because on my return to the banding lab they’ll often ask me if I saw the Nashville Warbler, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo or the Curve-billed Thrasher, because they did; but only because the poor thing flew into a mist-net trying to sneak past in the understory. Today’s tally included a nice Least Flycatcher who came to see what all the noise was about, two Ospreys sitting sentinel in riverside trees hundreds of yards from each other, and a Ruby-throated Hummingbird on a wire.

But as I started out by saying, the birds of the day were Eastern Wood Peewees.  In one well-treed area I counted about 15 of them, although in truth I really couldn’t count them with much certainty, they were everywhere calling to each other: Pee-ee? – Pee-ur.  If it wasn’t for their song you’d hardly know they were there, they’re so modestly attired.  Perhaps they wanted to be seen today, a kind of farewell serenade.

A little bit like the Red-eyed Vireo, their repetitive song is one of the hallmarks of a broadleaf forest summer day.  Peewees prefer high look-out perches at woodland edges or near clearings and will sit waiting for a small meal to fly by when they’ll sally out, snatch it in mid-air and return to (usually) the same commanding perch.  Peewees can be hard to separate visually from Least, Willow or Alder Flycatchers and Eastern Phoebes, but these others don’t go for that sort of woodland habitat and the Peewee’s two and three syllable signature “Pee-ur-wee?  Pee –ur.” song is unmistakable.

As these photos from earlier days suggest, the peewee is most happy when its back is turned to the camera.  It will never achieve stardom that way.  Never mind here’s a cameo shot, it’s all I could manage today.

 

30 August 2013.  Lake Erie ON. Faced with a day with no seriously limiting commitments I opted to explore the north shore of Lake Erie to look for shorebirds and other birds of passage.  I made my way along several miles of sometimes rocky shore which, had it not been for a decent lake breeze, might have been uncomfortably hot.  For shorebirds now is the time to fly south and for the hordes that head straight down the middle of the continent sooner or later they find the Great Lakes, not blocking their way as they might seem to do for land birds, but actually providing an essential resting and refueling opportunity.

Much of the Lake Erie shore has, over decades past, been appropriated for summer cottages, which makes access for bird-watching tricky at times.  Frankly I don’t think many of the cottagers were having a whole lot of fun this week because a recent on-shore storm had tossed a wide expanse of weed and algae onto the sands and rocky shelves leaving it to decay in deep festering mats like a long, wide cow-pat in both appearance and odour. But not all is lost because with decay comes flies and other invertebrate agents of decomposition and, while you and I might not relish them, the shorebirds gorge on this vast storehouse of protein, rich fuel for the next stage of the migration.

Ignoring the rankness of the situation I found two or three good places to sit quietly and let the birds come to me.  I had plenty of time, at the best site an assorted flock scattered with my arrival, but betting that they’d return I sat quietly and in time they came back.  First a couple of Semi-palmated Plovers flew in, then a small squad of Least Sandpipers hiked over whereupon they all mingled together. The plovers, being of a nervous tribe, were always on the look out for trouble, they’d pick, look up, then run a few paces, look up, then pick again.  A Spotted Sandpiper flew low over the open water to join in the feast and it fed greedily using its somewhat longer bill to slide in to the morass as horizontally as possible; perhaps it knew something the others didn’t.

After a while a pair of Killdeer wandered over to see what was going on and I realized I had a rare opportunity in front of me to get pictures of multiple shorebird species and for a moment I framed all four species in one shot (although it wasn’t a keeper.) The Semi-palmated Plovers made my day, there’s a delicate, almost breakable, look about them; perhaps it’s the porcelain whiteness of their breasts that does it.  This has surely been the week of the plover what with Black-bellied, American Golden and now Semi-palmated taking centre stage.

Somewhat later at a brief stop to look at a 4th-year Bald Eagle that I’d spotted sitting just offshore on a rock (and who promptly flew away as soon as I raised my binoculars) a couple of Pectoral Sandpipers had me baffled for a minute or two.  I’d become so fixated on my earlier study of small birds that it took a while to put a name to these two handsome but strikingly larger sandpipers.  The Pectoral Sandpipers’ give away is their bold dark bib that ends at an abrupt demarcation across their pectoral muscles.

Although it was very much a sandpipers and plovers day I had many good sightings of engaging and dramatic birds.  It made me think that if I’d taken a foreign visitor along with me with the promise of a good day’s birding, I would have deserved a hefty tip. Among these other successes were: three Bald Eagles including a spectacular adult atop a willow tree, several Great Egrets, Green Herons, Great Blue Herons, and a group of five Sandhill Cranes.

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27 August 2013.  Caledonia ON.  As a child growing up in post-war England my sole birding reference was the Observers Book of Birds.  Just 200 breast-pocket sized pages with usually one species per page, a beautiful watercolour illustration by the likes of Archibald Thorburn and a brief written description, it was the bible of British birds.  Even though there was a Peterson Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe published in 1954, I wasn’t aware of it and it wasn’t until well into the sixties that anything like today’s really useful and comprehensive field guides came to my attention.  By then it was too late, my mental images of British birds were fixed; perhaps it’s as well that I left home to start all over again with new birds in Canada.

Among those fixed images is the Golden Plover, it figures a rather pensive looking bird gazing at a couple of uncurling fern fronds.  The ensuing description includes this captivating element, “The summer dress of this plover is remarkable. It wears a spotted hood and cloak of gold and black with a white border.”

Today I made a deliberate excursion to look for American Golden Plovers, which are to all intents and purposes identical to the basic European species referred to above. I stopped along a rural roadside to see if any were feeding on the wide expanses of a sod farm.  They seek out wide-open spaces on their migration, golf courses and sod farms included, which, while it may seem a little odd, is I suppose a good example of adaptation.

Anyway here on one of the world’s largest lawns there was a lot of activity; a practiced crew of sun-crisped men were harvesting long peels of turf grass and piling it in tidy stacks.  Watching them carefully were lines of Ring-billed Gulls, and scatterings of Killdeers and American Golden Plovers all hoping to snatch a squirming meal from the freshly exposed earth.  The gulls were generally indifferent to the men’s noisy activities and stayed close to them at all times, the Killdeers were a little more inclined to fly off as machinery approached and the Golden Plovers were so baffled by it all that they moved quite a long way away until the workers took a coffee break, then they came closer where I enjoyed lingering views of them.

Golden plovers are moulting at this time of year, their gold spangling and expansive black underparts give way to an overall beige and brown flecking and non-descriptness, so today’s birds were part way through that process and not quite the pot of gold I might have wished for, still they’re beautiful (as are their cousins the Black-bellied Plovers-see previous entry). They struck me as quite large birds, yet, according to all references, they’re just about the same as a Killdeer in overall length; but here posture and carriage make a big difference, the American Golden Plover’s more upright, on-the-lookout-for-trouble demeanour gives an impression of greater size.

I managed to get a few for-the-record photos, the distance was too great for much detail to be evident, still here’s one, although I think the watercolour illustration at the top is better.

25 August 2013.  Hamilton ON. From the sublime to the ridiculous: early this week we draped ourselves in the tranquility of cottage country; today I was back to the fringes of the industrial harbour, a monochromatic manufacturing landscape with grubby and scratchy places for bird watching.  But some birds, mostly shorebirds, don’t care about scenery provided there are plenty of wriggly invertebrates to eat.

I went out early, before breakfast, while the sun was behind me rather than glowering overhead, to see what might be probing the muddy reaches.  It was pleasant enough under the circumstance although my first notable sighting was a Norway Rat tumbling into a broad waterway apparently having caused considerable anxiety to an on-looking, tail-bobbing and still-peeping Spotted Sandpiper.

A careful sweeping survey of the mud flats turned up a distant Short-billed Dowitcher, several Lesser Yellowlegs and a handsome pair of Stilt Sandpipers. I found and enjoyed watching a couple of Semi-palmated Plovers, our only reasonably common small plover, and mentally compared them to the very similar though much paler Piping Plover seen in New Jersey last year and petite Snowy Plovers of El Salvador four months ago.  These three plovers are all members of the Charadrius genus, a group that is distinctive in having a dark breast band or two, our common Killdeer is the most familiar member of the genus to us. Here are a few of my pictures for comparison (viewable only if you are logged in to My Bird of the Day, not if you’re reading this as an email.)

It was a couple of Black-bellied Plovers that stole the show though.  It’s not that they’re better than any of the Charadrius plovers in any way, I mean how can you say any one bird is better than another, it is such a subjective measure.  It’s just that the Black-bellied Plover evoked my Wow!-response, quite why I’m not sure, they just did.  Perhaps it’s the drama of the coal-black belly against the checkered upper parts, it could be their postural uprightness, the pop-up head or well, who knows?  Whatever, I always enjoy soaking up the sight of Black-bellied Plovers whenever I get the privilege. Today was one of those days.

19 – 21 August 2013, Haliburton ON. I’m writing this to the background of a Red-eyed Vireo singing in the forest canopy above. I think it’s late in the year for bird song, but for reasons best known to the vireos at least some of them are still tracing calls through the late summer air.

We are privileged to be enjoying a few days at some friends’ summer cottage on the shore of a beautiful northern lake. Ontario has thousands of square miles of lakes and forest country, most of it inaccessible.  But a few hundred square miles of such countryside all within a three or four hour drive from our major urban areas is known affectionately as Up North, cottage country.  It’s a countryside of often heart-stopping beauty, dramatic rounded hills clothed in forests of maples, birch, oak, aspen and beech punctuated by bold evergreens and interlaced with glassy reflecting lakes. At any time of year it is, as my cousin put it, superb.

The bird life here is captivating if not hugely diverse.  I’ve noted about 20 species in the couple of days we’ve been here: I’ve heard Common Ravens rolling their hollow croaks, a Pileated Woodpecker’s laugh, round and ringing, and now a Blue Jay or two are shrieking to each other some way off to the right.

But the signature bird sounds of this cottage are the buzzing flights of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, like the thumb-flipped pages of a book, and the occasional two and three syllable phrases of Red-eyed Vireos.

Both species hang around faithfully all day.  The hummingbirds come to an overhead feeder for a sip of syrup every three or four minutes.  There’s at least three birds and I’m not sure whether they love or hate each other. Presumably they are related, young siblings perhaps, but whatever their connection there’s never more than one at the feeder even though you’d think there’s plenty of room at for a dozen or more.  They don’t tolerate interlopers and there always seems to be one that wants to muscle in on another’s nectar stop, so we watch little high-speed hummingbird dramas, chaser and chased, They chase and weave like mini Star Wars fighters, one lightning strike following the other barely centimeters behind, swerving and careening in tight-turning arcs, zipping through glimpses of daylight between overlapping branches with microns to spare.  And yet for all of that rarely does the chase last more than three or four seconds when all is forgiven until the next trespass.

 

Half a dozen times an hour, a couple of young Red-eyed Vireos emerge from the security of a thick cedar hedge to gulp ripe berries from the scarlet panicles of an Alternate-leaved Dogwood.  They don’t stay long, a handful of mouthfuls then they dash back into cover.  Their priorities are: Not fall prey to a hungry Sharp-shinned Hawk; Build up muscle mass and fat reserves and; Complete growth of flight and body feathers.  Their eyes show a brownish rather than red iris, which I believe indicates they are juvenile birds.  One of them is still quite rough looking as it finishes growing its flight and body feathers that must take it through the next six to eight months.  In the picture you can see that some of its head feathers are still emerging and its greater and lesser coverts (wings feathers) have not yet grown in evenly.

The pleasure of watching the hummingbirds and vireos, learning and anticipating their routines and trying for the perfect photo made any ambitions for finding more species irrelevant.  I have my book, my coffee and my birds of the days right in front of me.

Slideshow pictures above of the vireos and hummingbirds are only visible if you’re logged onto the my Bird of the Day site, not if you’re reading this as an email.