Author: Peter T

June 23 2012. We went out early this morning to continue with one of my volunteer monitoring efforts, this time visiting a marsh.  It was a little disappointing; I had high expectations of this site because last year when the water level was high I’d had little difficulty finding Sora and Marsh Wrens.  Things change, this year the water is two or three feet lower, almost dried out in places and the formerly luxuriant expanse of cattail seems sparse.  We heard as many as four Sora this morning, saw families of Barn Swallows skimming for insects but there were no Marsh Wrens anywhere.

Our fieldwork done we left for a country walk along a dry trail past farmland, a pond or two and into a swampy wood.  It was in the woods that I heard the calls of several Veerys, not their winding, fluty exhalations but simple contact notes: “Swerp”, all around us.  Then, almost out of hearing range, one started to sing:  “Veer Veer veerr ver vr vr”  repeated two or three times.  Others picked up the theme and around us four or five, maybe more, all singing.  We watched one, a smallish thrush with a warm brown back and faded cream breast, come out in the open and briefly sing his part with nervous intensity.

The last time I wrote about the Veery’s song a reader commented that almost all descriptions of it include the word ethereal; and it’s true – few other adjectives fit. Not many people can listen to the Veery without stopping still in their tracks, try this recording on this Music of Nature website and see what you think.  The Veery chorus gave the morning its the wow moment, and earned them Bird of the Day.

I used to think warblers were not for mere mortals, that we’d get a glimpse or two during spring migration, lose them all summer and then be confounded by them in their different fall plumage.  Well I’ve become persuaded otherwise now that I have the time in my life to get out more, go further and look closer.  It’s still the case that many of these spectacular little birds vault right over us in May to breed much further north: Northern Parula, Blackpoll and Palm Warblers for example.  But even this morning’s gentle three-hour outing turned up six warbler species: Northern Waterthrushes singing alongside the Veerys, a trilling Pine Warbler in the tops of a plantation of Austrian Pines, a Common Yellowthroat at the edge of a pond, Yellow warblers popping in and out of low shrubs everywhere, a distant Ovenbird and a Blue–winged Warbler in the scrubby margins of a power line corridor.

We spent a while picking strawberries and then went looking for Butterfly Weed, a close relative of Milkweed, and found a nice patch of it among some scrubby hawthorns and dogwoods, it gave us this brilliant splash of colour to end our morning with.

June 20 2012.  We went back to the same old-growth forest this morning to continue with our study and point counts.  It was very warm at the start and the mosquitoes were happy to see us.  For a while I felt as though I was conducting a one-man study on mosquito attraction.  I know they’re are drawn to carbon dioxide, so for a while I tried not to exhale, but couldn’t keep it up.  Body heat, lactic acid and octenol are also appealing to them and to quote from an on-line source:  “ When people and animals breathe, they exhale a mixture of carbon dioxide and octenol, which is actually a type ofalcohol. Octenol is sometimes described as ‘cow’s breath in a can’, and is a remarkable lure for mosquitoes…. I’m not sure how I feel about that; but comforted that we’re all in it together.

Evidently different mosquito species find different cues more compelling and I was intrigued that a few seemed to believe that my auditory canal was the choicest place to find a meal. Perhaps for them it’s the most obvious point source of body heat; but whatever the reason it’s one thing to swat a mosquito on your jaw-line but banging away on your ear does little except aggravate tinnitus.

Mosquitoes aside, today’s Birds of the Day were Black-throated Green Warblers. Although I couldn’t see any of several territorial males in the forest canopy above, I solved a piece of the endless birding jigsaw puzzle by experiencing how the dense forest affects their song.  In spring migration we listen for the Black-throated Green’s deliberate and buzzy signature song: “Zee zee zee zee Zoo Zee”- with the emphasis on the last two notes.  Today I could quite distinctly make out this song in its entirety – but only when the bird was fairly close.  With distance the softer notes vanished until all I could pick out were the last two, which when isolated from the introduction notes, came out as “doo deet” repeated over and over. This was something of a breakthrough for me as I know I’ve heard that repetitive two-note song many times before, but could never figure out whose it was.  So a minor achievement today.  Here’s a shot of a Black-throated Green Warbler taken just six weeks ago.

June 18 2012. I spent the early daylight hours of today in an old-growth forest preserve near Lake Erie helping a university undergraduate with a research project.  My job was to do point counts which are a widely used technique for research into bird populations.  The point counter’s task is to identify and record all birds seen or heard within a 100M radius and within a limited time period (usually ten minutes).  It can be quite a mental workout to listen, focus, separate one call from another and identify the species. While few birds are visible now that the trees are fully leafed, out many are actively singing to mark the limits of their breeding territories.  Different species’ territories overlap without conflict so there can easily be several different birds close at hand and all singing at once.    Interestingly when I step away from the point count site some songs are quickly absorbed by the forest while others ring loud and clear and carry a long way.

I had four different point counts to do, two at each station.  The list of birds at the first station included the clear songs of: Black-throated Green Warbler, Wood Thrush, Veery, Scarlet Tanager and Ovenbird. But there were many distant fragments, many part songs, clucks and chips.  I was able to clinch a Pine Warbler after a while but could not be sure whether a few soft ‘pips’ belonged to an Acadian Flycatcher; then far off I caught the tight tangle of high pitched trills of a Winter Wren.  I strained, blocking out everything else until I heard it again and then yet again, a little louder each time.

Winter Wrens are among my favourite birds. As simply the Wren they were familiar to me in my English childhood, I admired them as small busybodies who would appear and disappear like a mouse. The male builds compact domed nests which we would occaisionally find, sometimes in a crevice among the mass of roots of an upturned tree, in a stream bank or perhaps the corner of an old shed.  The male Winter Wren builds several nests, each tucked carefully and tidily into a compact hiding space and when complete the female is offered her pick from a range of desirable residences.

Until fairly recently Europe’s Wren was considered to be the same species as America’s Winter Wren, both Troglodytes troglodytes; an amusingly Tolkienesque name.  But recent study has led to some splitting of the species; so from T. troglodytes has come T. hiemalis (Winter Wren) and T.pacificus (Pacific Wren); and perhaps more to follow.

At our second station, where we also found a Common Yellowthroat and a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers, a Winter Wren, probably the same bird, came close to us and singing at intervals as he checked his fences lines. I caught sight of him eyeing us cautiously, evidently our point-count site intruded into his territory and with his assertive songs he made sure we knew it.  Winter Wrens are usually considered to nest farther north spreading well into the boreal forest zone, so seeing and hearing one today was both notable and welcome.

June 14 2012.  This morning I led a small group to see what we could find in an area of bogs, swamps and dry fields.  A beautiful June day in every respect with an interesting selection of birds including: Common Yellowthroat, Cedar Waxwings, Eastern Kingbirds, Spotted Sandpipers and Green Herons.  All nice to see but not exceptional.

Two sparrow species stood out as special today, even though we couldn’t see them, only hear them: a White-throated Sparrow was singing deep in a tamarack and spruce bog.  He was special because we are really quite a long way south of the White-throated Sparrows breeding range, but the particular area we were exploring bears many similarities to more northern landscapes, so the white throats are content to stay.  I think he was my Bird of the Day just for being here and entertaining us with his patriotic ‘Oh sweet Canada Canada Canada’ song.  At least that’s what Canadians like to make of the song  while Americans (I think) prefer: ‘Old Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody’.  I started wondering who Sam Peabody is, or was, and found a real live one in New York; and for what it’s worth he’s described as: “.. the scion of an old New England family and husband of the socialite Judy Peabody.”

Several Swamp Sparrows were calling loudly on the edges of small marshes. A decade ago when I was doing survey work for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas, I became very familiar with the range and variation in the song of Swamp Sparrows.  The songs are all basically the same rapid-fire loud chip notes, about a dozen in quick succession fading towards the end, but they vary from a mellow, even discreet trill like an upgraded Chipping Sparrow, to a slower almost shouting, two-note “  Tchinga tchinga tchinga tchinga tchinga tchinga….”.

Probably our best encounter was with a small group of Showy Lady Slippers growing on the opposite side of a small creek.  These orchids are very pretty and consequently they’re often the targets of gardeners who figure they can grow them in their back yard; but rarely if ever succeed.  As victims of their own success they’ve become quite rare, we were privileged to see them .

June 8 2012.  “So what was your Bird of the Day today?” My companion asked as we drove home.  Hmmmm. Well, I kind of liked the female Wood Duck with her two babes, but the Savannah Sparrow was really unusual and showed no fear of us, and the two sparring Spotted Sandpipers were quite a spectacle; and then there was a surprising Purple Finch on the tip of a tamarack.  Hard to decide.

We’d had a long day in the field, most of the morning was spent helping a university student with a project involving bird populations.  It was there that we saw the female Wood Duck. We were watching over a pond when first, a female Mallard with about eight well-grown youngsters erupted out of hiding, quacking and paddling furiously away from the edge of the pond, and then a Wood Duck and two ducklings followed squealing and panicked.  I caught a momentary glimpse of a Red Fox following along the bank; presumably it had tried an ambush.  Female Wood Ducks have eye make-up to rival Cleopatra, long sweeping teardrop lines emphasize their doe-eyes. From this human male’s point of view they are very cute but just a bit too precious at times.

In the afternoon we were exploring an abandoned water-filled quarry and sat for a while to enjoy the sounds and coolness of a fresh water spring.  As we sat quietly, about fifty meters away two Spotted Sandpipers started an elaborate and energetic face to face display.  Spotted Sandpipers are pretty diminutive birds but in an effort to look bigger both raised themselves on tiptoe, puffed up their shoulders and flashed their underwings.  Sometimes it seemed to be a display of aggression and at other times maybe courtship, but the eventual arrival of a third bird into the mix convinced us that we’d been watching two males sparring over one female; and all that goes along with that.  Watching the display reminded me of a similar confrontation I’d seen last year between two male Pectoral Sandpipers, I could never figure out what that scrap was all about since the birds had left their Arctic breeding grounds and were well on their way south; perhaps their ‘she’s mine’ hormones were still at work.

I think though that the Bird of the Day was the Savannah Sparrow that was cooling its feet and drinking in the nearby fresh water spring. It seemed an odd place for a Savannah Sparrow, we usually associate them with the margins of dry field where they perch atop a post or scrubby branch and sing their appropriately dry song: “Tsit Tsit Tsit Tsit Tsit-Seeeeeeeeee -zah.”  This photo shows quite clearly the bold yellow area that runs from the beak back and over the eyes; without that it might easily be taken for a Song Sparrow.