Author: Peter T

18 June 2013.  Norfolk Co. ON.  Today was Hooded Warbler Day, they have eluded me for the past couple of years.  I’ve heard them on a few occaisions and some good people have told me where I could see them and even pointed out where one was just a minute earlier.  I’ve seen Hooded Warblers in mist nets and in the hands of a bird bander (those don’t count) and most frustratingly, as a flash of vanishing yellow in a tangle of exuberant shrubbery, but I’d never really clapped eyes on one to my full satisfaction. My growing awareness of this lapse was sooner or later bound to collide with the increasing population of Hooded Warblers in Ontario, and today it all came together.

A friend and I were visiting a favourite old-growth woodland in preparation for leading a Ferns and Birds field trip next weekend.  Focusing mostly on ferns, we kept out heads down trying to unravel the many fern identification mysteries that entangle us (and that will surely make sharing our limited knowledge even harder).  It’s not really relevant to a bird blog, but there are many subtle differences between members of the dryopteris family of ferns in Ontario, and the dryopteris are a notoriously libertine bunch producing many apparent hybrids with oddball characteristics; a bit like the royal families of Europe. Anyway as we peered at fern sori, pinnae and pinules we were moderately aware of bird song around us and every now and then one of us would mutter “Veery”, “Ovenbird” or “Rose-breasted Grosbeak”, they were the background sounds of the forest today.

But there was another song that wandered around us, “Weeet- a weeet- a weetoo”. After some head-scratching debate we thought we knew it: Hooded Warbler!, worth getting up off our knees for!  And not to drag this drama on needlessly, I’ll just say that over the next hour or so we found a couple of brilliant, singing males as well as a female carrying food for her brood tucked somewhere in the undergrowth around us.

My day’s notes tell that we studied 14 species of fern and paid attention to 26 species of bird including three high-impact birds in quick succession: Scarlet Tanager, Black-throated Green Warbler and a nervous looking Veery . A Pileated Woodpecker swooped between old trees giving us only fleeting glimpses and we were surprised by a Chestnut-sided Warbler appearing from some roadside willows, but none of these could upstage the Hooded Warblers; it feels like we’ve finally been introduced.

16 June 2013. Bruce Peninsula, ON.  We spent two days intensively birding Ontario’s beautiful and sometimes rugged Bruce Peninsula; “The Bruce” they call it.  This is the same piece of Ontario geography where I spent much of mid-May (click any of these for various May blog posts). Despite many jaw-dropping rivals the Bird of both Days was an Upland Sandpiper.

Upland Sandpiper despite: a tiny, diminutive Piping Plover on its nest (listed as ‘threatened’ or ‘endangered’ almost everywhere); Sandhill Cranes with their young, rusty-downy ‘colts’; and a pair of Brewer’s Blackbirds, a species which to the best of my recollection, I’d never seen before.

Upland Sandpiper despite a singing Cerulean Warbler neck-scrunchingly high in the tops of some Sugar Maples; despite a male Scarlet Tanager seen from above by looking over the edge of a precipice to where it was on cedar treetops, shockingly scarlet against the palette of greens; and despite a glorious orange and black, female Blackburnian Warbler gathering food for her nestlings.

Despite all of the distractions the Upland Sandpiper was Bird of the Day for me.  They are grassland divas; really rather un-dramatic in plumage, but it’s their way of making themselves known that captivates.  First you hear the aerial wolf-whistle, a long, rising ‘Wheeeeeet’ followed by a leisurely and falling “weeoooooo”.  That gets my attention I can tell you.  Then I usually spot them flying quickly across the fields, usually heading to a fence post where they alight and then, as if to acknowledge thunderous applause, they hold high their wings, tips together and showing dark under-wings for a second or two.  After settling, they stand quietly on the post, beady eyed, watching attentively over the open fields, perhaps on the lookout for trouble.  So elegant, so ballerina-ish, so Bird of the Weekend.

I had many more breath-drawing gasps this weekend and to list too many would be tiresome, but there were: Blue-headed Vireos singing their exaggerated songs, Black Terns swooping over marshes and a Grasshopper Sparrow doing what they do best: sounding like a grasshopper in the grass.  Among warblers, in the ‘heard but not seen’ category were: Ovenbird, Mourning, Nashville, Black-throated Green and Black and White Warbler.  Definitely seen and enjoyed included were Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Yellow, and Yellow-rumped Warblers.  The list is not endless of course but our two birding days turned up a cast of just over a hundred species.

I can’t close without acknowledging the company of endlessly singing Red-eyed Vireos, both Eastern Meadowlarks and Bobolinks fluttering like large wind-caught leaves over the hay fields and a vocally responsive but hidden Sora. And there were the butterflies, dragonflies, ferns and hundreds of flowering Yellow Lady Slipper orchids too. Almost too much for one weekend. Here are a few photos from the weekend: a Cedar Waxwing, the Grasshopper Sparrow, the Scarlet Tanager, a Male Fern and some Yellow Lady Slipper orchids.

14 June 2013. Today I joined a team of biologists looking to confirm the presence of Acadian Flycatchers in an area where they’ve been found, at least one has – maybe there’s a pair. Let’s hope.  Acadian Flycatchers are rare in Ontario but really widespread across the eastern half of the U.S.A.  Southern Ontario is at the northern limit of the Acadian Flycatchers’ range and that makes it rare and worth paying attention to.   At this particular site we had a decent expectation of spotting one and were in luck. One approached us close enough to get a couple of decent shots in the gloom.  Here it is, unquestionably Bird of the Day.

The rest of our morning was pleasant if largely uneventful. For a while we listened to a Scarlet Tanager and discussed the difference between its song and that of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak.  They are confusable, yet if you hear them both more or less together, they’re easy to tell apart.  Various authors describe the Scarlet Tanager’s song as like a robin with a sore throat, which is a fair description, and to that I would add that it sounds somewhat bored.  The tired sounding song has a pendulum rhythm, sort of, “o–kay, if – I must, I’ll – sing, hows –that”.  The Grosbeak too has a bit of back and forth, yet not as rhythmically, its notes are purer, more rounded and often seem disconnected from each other.

 

9 June 2013.  Flamborough ON.  This was the day of the Dawn Chorus bird outing.  Dawn arrived okay and so did the birds, but very few people seemed to want to haul themselves out of bed for a 05.20 start; so our numbers were thin. Still it turned out to be a blockbuster morning, not just for birds but also for turtles, snakes, ferns and orchids.

We enjoyed the songs of grassland birds from the scenic top of a drumlin (an abrupt teardrop-shaped hill left as a pile of glacial till by the receding ice sheet). It was a bit early and even the birds seemed to find it hard going, but there were a few Bobolinks in the air, singing and fluttering over their hayfield nest sites. A distant Brown Thrasher was singing from atop a skeletal old elm tree. We wandered down the trail dabbing insect repellant as we entered the boggy realm of singing Canada Warblers, Northern Waterthrushes and Great-crested Flycatchers.  I tallied about 30 species before we moved a couple of kilometers  to see what we could find along the roadside between a swampy creek and some powerlines that cut across the road.  This kept us busy for a long time and was really productive, there were Alder Flycatchers calling a brisk yet buzzy “Free– bee o”, White-throated Sparrows singing far off and a Warbling Vireo getting started on a non-stop day-long rendition of its dreamy, rambling song: “ If I sees ya I will seize an I’ll squeeze ya till ya hurt.”

Bird of the Day was a Veery seen singing from the heights of a dead maple.  Veerys aren’t often seen, they’re delicate, subtle and elegant but there’s not much in the way of visual fireworks about them, it’s mostly about their song, they seem to prefer the depths of a forest to sing their “Veer-veer-veer-vv tktktkt” song.  It starts emphatically and quickly fades and tapers as if, really, it’s a secret.  It has a rolling cadence that makes you think it might be trickling down a long, cast-iron drainpipe; it’s obviously hard to describe.  I used the adjective ethereal, one that every writer seems to fall back on; nothing else quite captures the breathless will-o-the-wisp essence of this song – a song that can stop me dead in my tracks.

Dawn chorus was now well under way, everything from Swamp Sparrows to Great-crested Flycatchers, Blue Jays to American Redstarts was in full song.  We watched a large lugubrious Snapping Turtle laying eggs in the roadside gravel and admired Yellow Ladyslipper Orchids almost lost in the coarse sedges beside a small watercourse.

At our last stop, an elevated boardwalk across a large cattail swamp, we came across an entangled, copulating pair of Northern Water Snakes.  There was a marked size difference, the female (presumably since they are known to be wider and longer) was stout, with a diameter of perhaps three or four centimeters and as much as a meter or so in length, although of course this is only a rough guess as pictures will attest.  The male was half her girth and apparently somewhat shorter. All things being equal, following a gestation period of about three months, the female will bear live young, all of which will immediately be self reliant; she’s had enough of them by then.  This is not a snake to mess with, water snakes are not venomous, but they have a fearsome reputation for putting up a vigorous biting fight and we kept our distance mostly out of respect for their task at hand.

8 June 2013. Norfolk County ON. I wish I could say that I actually saw a Louisiana Waterthrush, I didn’t;  I heard two or maybe three.  It was a day of auditory ‘sightings’ because I was in unfamiliar territory and being shown around some of Ontario’s richest birding areas by an expert who sees and hears birds that most of us miss, a knack, which, I’ve learned, comes with local familiarity and time spent in the field.  I know that I see birds that others don’t simply because I’m half expecting them and am attuned to the nuances of behaviour or song that will give the bird away.  It’s a bit like picking out a friend in a crowd.

This day I had joined a large group of birders on a hike organized by the Ontario Field Ornithologists, we’d been sold on the trip by the near-promise of Cerulean and Prothonotory Warblers, Acadian Flycatcher and Louisiana Waterthrush; all rare, endangered or otherwise long-shot birds.

I left home around 5.15 for a 6.30 start some 120 Km distant.  I joined the group gathered on a large platform overlooking a marsh as our young leader was giving his here’s-what-to-expect briefing.  As we stood listening, I thought for a moment that I heard a Least Bittern but dismissed the idea as improbable, fanciful and overly optimistic; it turned out not to be so improbable for when we returned to base at the end of the day, one was seen stalking around the edge of some cattails, although not by me. I put it down as a ‘heard-but-not-seen’, one of several this day.

We spent most of the morning in a deep, intensely green cathedral of a forest brim-full of Red-eyed Vireos, Great-crested Flycatchers and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks.  We soon found (or at least heard) our first Louisiana Waterthrushes.  I’d never knowingly seen one before so this was a highlight – even Bird of the Day. According to our leader, a young waterthrush brood had fledged here a day or two earlier, we could hear the parents’ tiny ‘chip’ note as they maintained contact with their hungry dependants.  Then as we waited hoping for a glimpse, a Cerulean Warbler started singing close by and we followed its progress through the leafy canopy straining for a sighting, which, alas, never came. But we’d heard it – and the Louisiana Waterthrush, so clearly fortune was smiling on us.

Some hours later we tried to find Prothonotary Warblers, we checked three or four known sites, heard song at two of them but in the end had to be content with song only.  Then to complete the theme of the morning we went to the only known location for Acadian Flycatcher, where again we heard but didn’t see the bird. So there it was, four longed-for birds heard but not seen, the very antithesis of the now dated adage about children: that they should be seen and not heard.

But I perhaps paint a picture of a let-down that is unjustified, for the day produced a longish list of great birds, mostly sightings. On the forest edges we encountered Eastern Towhees, Indigo Buntings, Blue-winged, Yellow, and Pine Warblers. Deep in the leafy, mosquito rich, canyons were foraging Red-bellied Woodpeckers; loud Ovenbirds calling emphatically “teacher Teacher TEACHER“; Scarlet Tanagers singing their raspy song; and Hooded Warblers all around.  Eastern Wood Peewees calling “pee-a weee….pee- uur“, a family of Hairy Woodpeckers objecting loudly to our presence and a Yellow-throated Vireo trying ever so hard to sound as clear as its cousins the Red-eyed Vireos who out-sang him from every quarter.  While we stood waiting and hoping for a Prothonotary Warbler a Northern Waterthrush carrying food for its young and a Yellow-billed Cuckoo calling loudly overhead made up for any waning enthusiasm.

We ended the day at every birders’ favourite, a sewage lagoon.  There we saw a few shorebirds: Killdeer, Semi-palmated Plover, Spotted Sandpiper and a White-rumped Sandpiper; this last bird a distant vision seen through a telescope as it pattered among clumps of Cattails, and had it not been for the experts around me I never would have recognized or interpreted the subtle field marks that distinguished it from a nearby Least Sandpiper.

My field notes for the day recorded 55 species, Our leader tallied 70, adding in all the usual background species like American Crow, Canada Goose and the like but he also noted (among others) Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Green Heron, Orchard Oriole and Wood Duck, none of which I recall seeing.