Author: Peter T

June 1 2013.  Flamborough, ON.  I’m still scouting ahead for the dawn chorus trip a week from now, and I’m starting to wonder what has happened to dawn-choruses?  These scouting trips make good quick-fire birding, but there’s hardly a symphony of bird song.  Maybe the best is past – or maybe it’s yet to come.  I do hear birds when I listen for them, but not the dawn choruses that I remember.  I’ve certainly heard sensational dawn choruses here in Southern Ontario.  Just not this year, not yet, and not where I’m listening it seems.

In my childhood, my dad & I took early morning bike rides looking for mushrooms and listening for bird song.  I have memories of bird-song all around: blackbirds, thrushes, and finches.  The bike riding wasn’t for exercise, it was the only mode of transportation we had and I recall that many of those excursions were knuckle-stiffening cold, but they were truly memorable for bird-song as well as for the fresh field mushrooms fried up later for breakfast.

One of my stops today was at the edge of a large hay field, in fact there were open fields on both sides of the road.  The grass is far from full grown so hasn’t been cut yet, which is as well because it holds a fairly large population of nesting Bobolinks and sparrows.  I was delighted to hear four sparrow species around me: a distant Field Sparrow calling just as all the texts describe it like a ping-pong ball bouncing ever faster to a stop “ Pee…pee…pe… pe..pe..pe..pe.p.p”. And a Savannah Sparrow, also distinctive with its dry “tsit-tsit-tsit-tsit- seee-ss“, the “Chp chp chp chp chp chp” of a Chipping Sparrow and the electric “B-zzzzzz” of a Grasshopper Sparrow. Actually I didn’t see any of them, these were all auditory ‘sightings’, which is often the way it goes with sparrows. And since they’re such uniformly little brown flitting birds it’s just as well that their songs are distinctive.

Taken together with an earlier White-throated Sparrow singing deep inside in a dense forest, sparrows were collectively my birds of the day.  I hope they perform for me next weekend. Here’s a few of those birds, photos taken at different times and places of course.

May 29 2013.  Flamborough, ON.  In a few days I will be co-leading a morning-chorus birding walk.  I dreamt up the idea back last winter nurturing visions of beautiful bright green, song-filled mornings exploring some of my favourite birding haunts.  Well those days are here: it’s bright green sure enough, the birds are on territory, they’re singing; now all I need to do is scout out where to take the group to get the best performances. So this morning, starting at 5.30, I visited six or seven different good spots and while I didn’t ever find myself surrounded by song from all sides it was a good and productive few hours.  In a few days I’ll retrace my route but in reverse because what may have been active at 6.00 may not be at 8.30, and vice versa; and things change anyway.

At 6.05 I was at a boggy area which produced several tree-top singing Alder Flycatchers, a White-throated Sparrow and a Gray Catbird, all good songsters, but the few Cedar Waxwings I saw won’t add much to the musical interlude if they’re there next time.

Three stops and an hour later I pulled up at the edge of a beautiful open hay field and heard Grasshopper Sparrow, Field Sparrow and an Eastern Meadowlark.  Nice to see and hear but not quite the musical interlude stuff I dreamed of six months ago.

My last stop is a favourite birding destination of mine.  It starts atop a gravelly hill with a long and commanding view across fields and woods. Here were Brown Thrasher, Warbling Vireo, Bobolink, Gray Catbird and Savannah Sparrow all in full song.  I followed the path down into a swamp where swarms of mosquitoes ambushed me and took blood at will while I listened to Canada Warblers, Northern Waterthrushes and Veerys.  Provided my dawn-chorus tour group is prepared to deal with biting insects I think they’ll like this place.

Returning to my car I found this Bobolink singing, first from the top of a cherry tree and then a Crab Apple and while he loudly proclaimed his ownership of the lands all around, a female Red-winged Blackbird came up behind him.  She waited until he paused for breath then took a swing at him perhaps to point out that she belonged there too. Together they were my Birds of the Day.

26 May 2013. Ruthven Park, Cayuga ON. The Tyrant Flycatchers, or Tyrannidae, is a large New World family of some 425 species of mostly insectivorous birds.  Many of them are maddeningly difficult to tell apart although here in southern Ontario we have relatively few members of the family so not too many lookalikes.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of the Tyrannidae this year including the Scissor-tail Flycatcher, Great Kiskadee and Vermillion Flycatcher in Mexico, and Tropical Kingbird and Masked Tityra in El Salvador.  I have to admire Tyrant Flycatchers when I see them, even if I’m sometimes (often) stumped trying to decide which of Least, Willow and Alder Flycatcher I’m looking at.

This morning at the bird observatory we had a Least Flycatcher, Eastern Phoebe, Great-crested Flycatcher and Eastern Wood Peewee whilst doing the census and banded an Eastern Kingbird a little later; a five tyrant morning.

Two of us did the census starting early around 6.45 when there was still a touch of frost on the ground (!).  We spent well over two hours scouring the grounds, woods and river valley, determined to see everything possible. In the end we did reasonably well although there were some conspicuous absences, but we were pleased with a careening and wheeling family group of ten Chimney Swifts, several Orchard Orioles, countless Baltimore Orioles and with finding a Rose-breasted Grosbeak at her flimsy, twig-platform nest.

Last year whilst birding with a visitor from Quebec I learned that the French name for the Eastern Kingbird is Tyran Tritri, an onomatopoeic nod to its tin-can-rattle  “tri-tri-tri” call of indignation. I’m hard put to choose between the Eastern Kingbird and the Great-crested Flycatcher as today’s Bird of the Day, they’re both birds with attitude.  Here they are.

May 22 2013. Hendrie Valley RBG Burlington ON. I had the pleasure of showing two visitors from the U.K around one of my favourite birding spots today.  We’d never met before today but through the Birdingpal website , an excellent way to find local birding help when you’re travelling, we arranged to share some good Ontario birding.  I’ll admit that I harboured some minor concerns that the valley and trails I’d pre-selected might not live up to expectations but I needn’t have worried, indeed it would be pretty hard to fail at this time of year with so many migrants around.  The local birds were in full feather and voice and we enjoyed a good three hours and compiled a tally of about 40 birds.

The chosen trail is always popular with visitors, especially families, because Black-capped Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches and sometimes Hairy Woodpeckers will happily and greedily take sunflower seeds from your open hand. This experience is always a showstopper and it can take half an hour or more to cover the first leg of the trail.  We enjoyed the chickadees and nuthatches for a while and then reveled in close encounters with a Red-bellied Woodpecker, a singing Common Yellowthroat and an inquisitive Baltimore Oriole.

Moving along a woodland trail, we encountered a lone female American Redstart bouncing around in some bordering dogwood bushes, searched tree-tops for a singing Warbling Vireo and watched an Eastern Phoebe sallying out for flying insect food and proclaiming territorial ownership with its wet-throated ‘wee-bee’ call.

We found a Green Heron standing motionless in an about-to-strike pose on the edge of a woodland-edge pond and a trio of Wood Ducks, a female and two handsome males, perched warily on a downed tree limb.

The Bird of the Day, for me anyway, was a Scarlet Tanager found as we were winding up our morning’s birding.  It’s been a while, but as soon as I heard the tanager’s distinctive “chik-brrr…….. chik-brrr”, I knew we had a very special sighting to close the day with.  It took a while to find him, he was high up in a Red Oak and cussedly determined to stay just out of sight. A Scarlet Tanager is always a winner for me because of the red-hot intensity of the breeding male’s plumage.  This photo was taken last year before it was possible to hide.

20 May 2013. Cabot Head ON. Our licensed bander was unavailable this final morning of my days at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory so we kept the mist nets closed and instead spent the morning watching for and keeping track of species seen.

It was quite foggy until mid morning when finally the sun managed to break through.  When flight conditions are poor for one reason or another, and fog is definitely one, birds are forced to drop down and wait out the weather conditions.  While there weren’t tons of birds, certainly nothing like yesterday’s fall-out, the mix of species was quite changed.  Lots of Black-throated Blue Warblers and American Redstarts and, for a change, several and various woodpeckers.  A Hairy Woodpecker or two hung around and I counted three Northern Flickers either seen or heard.  I noted a Blue Jay (one of hundreds) alight on the tip of a nearby old and decaying spruce tree, it was immediately joined by a second one – or so I thought at first.  But it looked a little different, paler if anything so warranted a second look; to my amazement, astonishment and exaltation this second Jay turned out to be a Red-headed Woodpecker.

I grabbed a few quick camera shots then stumbled off to tell the others, but it was gone, only the camera to validate the moment.

A Red-headed Woodpecker would be Bird of the Day any time, any place.  They are SO handsome and so well, increasingly rare.  It was a nice note on which to wrap up my days at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory.  Here are a couple of  shots of enjoyable sightings.