Author: Peter T

22 July 2013.  Flamborough ON. I know that I go on a lot commenting on the change in seasons.  I can’t help it, it’s unavoidable when you’re studying the natural world and birds in particular.  The middle of July is the time when the many birds (passerines in particular) turn off their more active territorial behaviours. It makes the birding experience quite different.  Without the obvious evidence of song the woods and field seem empty, although of course they’re not; in fact quite the opposite because now we have the young of the year supplementing the bird populations.

The suffocating heat of last week kept me indoors for too long so now that temperatures are normal or almost chilly, I was eager to get out and look for ferns and birds. I set out to some of my favourite places.

My first stop was to follow the course of a clear stream through a dense and mostly quiet Eastern White Cedar forest.  It was a bit of a Hans Christian Andersen setting: burbling brook, the occasional cawing of a crow and deep, shady elf-groves – very peaceful; not many birds, but plenty of challenging ferns.

Emerging at a quiet country road I made my way back to my car and then the bird list grew a bit.  In several places, pairs of Common Yellowthroats were feeding young and chipping loudly to assure them that food’s coming.  A couple of treetop Great Crested Flycatchers called out and a distant Winter Wren was singing its tumbling unwinding song from somewhere impossible to get to unless you’re the size of a wren.

My Bird of the Day was a Pileated Woodpecker that I first heard calling from a way back in the swampy woods, it grew closer and for a while I wondered if there was more than one: fledglings maybe.  Eventually an adult flew out, crossing the road overhead in its heavy flap-and-swoop flight.  I tried to re-find it where I believed it had landed but as soon as it saw me it took off again.  Pileated Woodpeckers are neat birds, big and loud but usually shy.  The ‘pileated’ part of its name is derived from the word pileaus or cap, a reference to its conspicuous crest. The term pileus is often used in the study of mushrooms where the cap is properly called the pileus.

When I headed home I felt I’d recharged my batteries, all that was left to do was report the marijuana grow-op I’d found; I didn’t mention that did I?  Well, that’s another story.

20 July 2013.  Burlington ON. I remember two of my earliest encounters with the Carolina Wren, on both occasions I heard the bird and it baffled me.  At Point Pelee sometime in the early eighties  I heard a lound ringing ‘weedly weedly weedly” from high in the hardwood canopy .  I had absolutely no idea what I was hearing but I stored the song away for another day.  Similarly and many years later I was driving along a residential stretch of the lakeshore , an area of mature homes and generous tree cover, I caught a few moments of a clear multi-syllable song echoing in the parklike gardens.  Again, I had no idea, and again I tucked the memory away for another day. It was not until many years later, as Carolina Wrens became more common and I more experienced, that I put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Today I was doing a drive-around to inspect a number of residential properties in preparation for a meeting a couple of days hence.  I was back in that same neighbourhood of mature homes and generous tree cover referred to above.  I was neither surprised nor puzzled this time to hear Carolina Wren song but what was notable was that there were two  birds singing and it seemed pretty evident that each was making quite clear to the other that they had better not come any closer.  Their song is distinctive in its full-bodied and rounded tones and the phrasing, while variable, is unmistakable. The two birds today were singing slightly different songs, one an emphatic and challenging “Sh-beedle, sh-beedle, sh-beedle” and the other was pitched a little lower and had more of a resigned exhaling quality: ‘chew-lee chew-lee chew lee.”

I’m not particularly well versed on the subject and subtleties of bird song, but I recently read that while competing individual chickadee songs may sound superficially identical to us, changes in pitch affect the responses of different birds and their apparent perception of relative dominance.  Were these two slightly different wren songs nothing more than two neighbours with different voices maintaining property lines or was there an infinitely more complex interaction going on?

We have just emerged from of a a week of punishing heat and humidity that ended abruptly in a night of loud and destructive thunderstorms.  I don’t how birds made out, but I stayed indoors and attended to some long postponed chores in the basement, the coolest place in the house.  If ever there was confirmation that I’m a fair-weather birder that was it.  On my rounds today I stopped at a couple of places along the shoreline of Lake Ontario to gaze across its flat expanse.  I saw a long line of Double Crested Cormorants flying low over the waters and took a couple of quick pictures although I hardly expected they’d be keepers. On closer examination I was struck by the abstract effect the heat haze and atmospheric distortion made upon the pictures.  For what it’s worth, here they are.  (You’ll need to log on to the website to see these. They don’t or won’t work within an email, if that’s how you’re reading me.)

12 July 2013. Cabot Head, ON.  This place is nice, especially if you’re okay with Poison Ivy and rattlesnakes.  There are lots of the former and very few of the latter; I think that would be about the right relative proportions. Poison Ivy, while abundant and nastily toxic, is fairly easy to see and avoid and doesn’t lie quietly invisible against the background, harmless one minute and potentially problematic the next.

Today was, for a couple of reasons, a day of serpents because we managed to find and inspect quite closely a smallish Massasauga Rattlesnake and a couple of Northern Water Snakes.  When we spotted the rattlesnake in the middle of the quiet country road, we got out of the car for a closer look, we kept a respectful distance knowing that it preferred to move away quickly rather than stand its ground; it nevertheless buzzed softly at us as it slid away.  (A day later we stopped to allow a much larger one cross a busier road and it made a distinctively loud buzzing rattle as it hastened into the forest edge.) Sadly we also saw twice as many dead rattlesnakes along the road this week as we saw live ones. Not everyone feels all that serene about venomous snakes, but our little Massasauga Rattlesnakes are not aggressive, they’re defensive (& they’ll bite if cornered or harassed); I’d much prefer car drivers run over Poison Ivy.

Anyway, all of this is to set the scene for today’s Bird of the Day.  Wanting to get underneath the canopy from where I could hear American Redstarts, Black & White Warblers, Nashville Warblers and Red-eyed Vireos singing, I picked my way through drifts of Poison Ivy into a cedar and spruce forest.  I soon startled a family of Ruffed Grouse, parents and young brood I can only assume.  The thing about Ruffed Grouse is that when you startle a bunch of them, they’ll startle you back by exploding away in all directions.  You’re so confused by the whirring and noisy flapping of wings and the urgent scampering that it’s hard to know which bird to focus on.  I managed to follow one as it flew low to about 100 meters ahead where it promptly vanished into the Poison Ivy undergrowth.  I followed after it, and it did the same again; there was no way I’d get much closer, I had to satisfy myself with fleeting views.

11 July 2013. Cabot Head, ON. After yesterday’s storm the world is now all about tranquil summer again.  We took an exploratory trip looking for ferns, wildflowers (orchids especially) and such birds as would oblige us.  We had not expected to come across a Black Bear though, but as we headed along a little-travelled and gravelly country road we spotted one just over the crest of the next rise. We drove closer to where he was plodding along, but as soon as he saw the car he turned sharply and headed into the bush.  I think he may well have cut across someone’s back yard but that’s probably commonplace around here.  We did find ferns, a beautiful array of Maidenhair Spleenwort and Bulblet Fern growing from a mossy rock crevice, and we also found wonderful displays of wildflowers and orchids: Pitcher Plant, Rose Pogonia and Grass Pink among them.

(By the way, we’ve learned that many of these multi-photo gallery uploads will only display on the blog website, not if you’re opening this from an email.)

But my Bird of the Day was found before the day had really got started for most people. I’d taken a pre-breakfast birding walk and spent several minutes watching and admiring a Merlin that had arrived atop a nearby Jack Pine.  I hastened to get a long-distance photo then moved a few steps closer before taking another, then few more steps more and so on until eventually I was quite close, every time getting a better photo.  Still it stayed where it was, calling to its mate or nestlings before eventually flying off towards them.  It was only after I took a closer look at the photos that I saw that it was apparently carrying food, it’s hard to tell quite what but its colour suggests a Cedar Waxwing.

 

 

 

10 July 2013. Cabot Head, ON.  This was a violently windy day.  A steady westerly picked up in the middle of night and blew two supposedly anchored sailboats onto the rocky shore, their anchors just not up to the task.  There seemed to be no damage done but I’ll bet it made for an anxious few hours on board before daybreak.  The wind kept birds down low, but there was still plenty to be seen.  I struggled along the lake shoreline exploring while trying to keep away from the wind-driven spray.

I came across a cleft in the cliff face that apparently never sees the sun because it held a colony of Slender Cliffbrake ferns, a notoriously hard-to-find species that thrives only in dampness and full shade.

A picturesque group of Herring Gulls sat loafing on the stony shore but all other waterfowl had taken refuge far from the angry waves.  A Black-billed Cuckoo made a brief fly-past appearance in front of the cottage’s porch.  You could hardly call it slow though, there was always something interesting.  A pair of American Redstarts that made no secret of the presence of their nest, they chipped loudly at me whenever I walked past and fluttered around from branch to branch often within a metre or so of my head.

By evening the wind had died down and I was able to get some interesting photos of a resident Gray Catbird.  Most people (if they know it at all) recognize the catbird as a long tailed, slate grey bird with a black yarmulke.  Its characteristic mewing call gives it its name, but it has a rich and liquid song that we often heard as the last traces of daylight gave up around 9.30. But, little known is that its undertail coverts are a rich brick red colour, you hardly ever see them;  but this bird was close to its nest and anxious to make sure everyone knew who belonged where.  Perhaps the setting sun enhanced the colour but the display is captured in my photos of the catbird, my Bird of the Day.