Author: Peter T

September 16 2012, Reykjavik, Iceland.  I never imagined that I might one day see a Black-headed Gull as anything much more than just a seagull; something to throw dry sandwich crusts to.  Where I grew up the Black-headed Gull was the default seagull. I really didn’t know much about other gulls except for an awareness of the existence of the Great Black-backed Gull and Herring Gull.  Several years ago a friend asked me if I’d be interested in going to Niagara Falls to see a reported Black-headed Gull, Without really thinking I replied that I wouldn’t cross the street to see one.  Rather glib I suppose, but  not being one to chase species for the sake of a year-list, that’s how I felt about them.

But today I found a group of Black-headed Gulls loafing beside a duck pond.  In Iceland this bird is pretty commonplace but I took a quick for-the record picture of one and was later struck by how stunningly elegant this little bird really is.  While various field guides talk of reddish legs and bill, I think they fall short.  This one has the most gorgeous full crimson-red legs and bill which perfectly compliment the pure white and pearl grey of it’s body and wings.

By the way, neither the Black-headed Gull nor its North American look-alike, the Bonaparte’s Gull, has a black head at this time of year, just two pretty little smudges of sootiness over and behind the eye, the black head is a breeding affectation.

September 17 2012, Reykjavik, Iceland.  I had never seen a Whooper Swan before today, so when I caught sight of a small group of them in a gravelly river valley it was something of a triumph. They could well have been my Bird of the Day on their own merits but they happened to be almost the only bird of any note seen today,

We’re in Iceland and I had expected to be enthralled by lots of new birds here, but it turns out that while Iceland is a good place for seabirds and shorebirds in the summer, it is somewhat low on passerines all year, and even the seabirds and shorebirds are few and far between now that summer’s over.  We spent the day well inland and other than a solitary Common Raven and the cluster of Whooper Swans, I didn’t see any birds until we returned to coastal Reykjavik this evening.

Whooper Swans are closely related to North America’s Tundra and Trumpeter Swans, indeed they’re the Eurasian equivalent of the Trumpeter and some consider them to be the same species.  However the Whooper has a mostly yellow bill while the Trumpeter’s bill is all black. 

September 12 2012. Ruthven Park, Cayuga ON. This may be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but today’s birding while quite varied and done in beautiful weather, was not really all that memorable. I went to the bird observatory early, early enough to be there before the mist nets were all open and with the door to the banding lab still locked.

As is usually the case, around mid-morning I did the daily census but was quite surprised at how quiet the grounds and woods were, in fact I only found 24 species; usually at this time of year I’d get more like 35 to 40 .  I couldn’t even find a single Song Sparrow, Killdeer or Red-winged Blackbird.  There was an Osprey fishing along the river and I was lucky enough to see it rise from the waters carrying a nice sized something-or-other. There were flocks of Cedar Waxwings working over a couple of Red Cedars trees picking berries and occasionally sallying out for an insect meal, and a Red–bellied Woodpecker was noisily scratching for a living from the top branches of a Shagbark Hickory.

The river has a small gravel bar in the middle, which has been uncovered long enough this year to be quite well vegetated, mostly with Pink Knotweed.   I scanned the length of it and the nearby shallows hoping for some ducks or shorebirds, at first there was nothing, but then a pair of Lesser Yellowlegs appeared from behind the Knotweed and as I watched a Spotted Sandpiperjoined them.  They were a welcome addition to an otherwise quiet census round, and Lesser Yellowlegs always seem to add charm to a shoreline, enough to be today’s Bird of the Day. I managed to get a couple of long-shot photos, here’s one of them withe Spotted Sandpiper, like one of those funny mid-blink, looking-the-wrong-way holiday snaps.

September 11 2012. Cootes Paradise, Hamilton ON.  As a follow-up to yesterday’s note about the flood of Broad-winged Hawks, at a hawk-watch some 100 miles to our west they counted 5,575 of them! Today, by comparison, despite constant monitoring I saw only one Broad-winged Hawk in the air.  Perhaps the brisk southwest wind made all the difference, because in all other respects the weather was a copy of yesterday.  Or maybe they’ve all gone, save for a few stragglers.

I spent an hour or two this afternoon at a raised platform overlooking a broad marsh, I was hoping for a change in shorebird numbers and species mix, but it was pretty quiet.  A dozen or so Greater Yellowlegs were stalking along the water’s edge and way off in the distance I watched two Red–necked Phalaropes swimming around furiously stirring up food.

The day’s drama came as I was getting ready to leave when I spotted a Red–tailed Hawk flying acrobatically in swoops and plunges, apparently taking advantage of the breeze.  I realized that it was either chasing or displaying to something, spiraling up and then plunge-diving down into to the treetops with wings folded back and all but closed.  Soon there were two interacting Red-tailed Hawks in the air and it looked like the sort of territorial display flight that you’d see in the spring; and maybe it was a bit of for-the-record pair-bonding. Finally a third one joined in though not for long, it carried on through, heading westward and out of sight, perhaps it’d just blundered through someone else’s territory. To top it off and perhaps as a final mark of approval of the aerobatic displays, an adult Bald Eagle took a slow ‘just-so-you-know-I’m-watching-you’ turn past the Red-tails.

September 10 2012. I live just a couple of hundred meters from the north shore of Lake Ontario, it’s a very strategic location at this time of year.  Many (and there would be millions) of the fall migrants draining southwards out of the land to the east and north of the Great Lakes, find their way south blocked by Lakes Ontario and Erie, so they turn to the southwest following the shorelines until eventually they stream out of south-western Ontario into Michigan and Ohio. Anywhere along this pathway, especially along those major shorelines can produce some very busy birding days.

There are a few days in the year when Broad-winged Hawks put on a show: a week or two in mid-April and a day or two or three, in September.  Today was one of them.  After weeks of solid summer weather things have changed, the hot still days have given way to pure-bred September with cold starts, clear days and small cumulus clouds hanging against a blue sky.  It’s this sort of change in the weather that sets the Broad-winged Hawks heading south, and they do it in massed flights.

I started the day with a beautiful morning at the bird observatory.  On the daily census I found two Yellow-billed Cuckoos high in a Black Locust tree, surprised a single Carolina Wren working its way through a thicket of old grapevines, and enjoyed the identification challenges of Swainson’s and Gray-cheeked Thrushes. 

Around midday I returned home to find a message that the Broad-winged Hawks were on the move. Binoculars in hand I went back outside and looked up to the undersides of puffy cumulus clouds, and after a few moments of scanning around found a group of 6 or 7 Broad-wings sailing by but moving very quickly out of sight.  Minutes later a single bird picked up the lift from a nearby column of rising air, it was wheeling around and sometimes skidding sideways fighting the breeze. Seen like this you can often make out the wide tail bands and light patches at the ends of their wings and when they settle into a glide they’ll sometimes show a bow-fronted profile. Twenty minutes later, way up beyond the stretch of the naked-eye, I found a stream of perhaps 50 or 60 Broad-winged Hawks gliding along an invisible westbound highway, changing lanes and making room for merging traffic as they went.

For every Broad-winged Hawk there were perhaps a dozen large dragonflies, mostly Common Green Darners and Black Saddlebags, also migrating, but they were much lower and not quite as dreamily in flight, just skimming busily along at rooftop height.