Author: Peter T

Burlington ON. May 27^th.2021. As the days of transects wind down so the work of the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas (OBBA) starts to pick up. I have summer bird-work to do: exploring new-to-me places, meeting land-owners, moving quietly, slowly, looking and listening. Quiet birding . For a refresher on the OBBA follow this link.

Today I stepped away from a familiar trail into a once-flooded open area dotted with still-standing, but dead, ash trees, a place offering the distinct risk of wet feet. I hadn’t gone many yards when I heard the familiar chattering ‘speek’ of a Hairy Woodpecker. A common enough bird but always worth following up upon hearing one, my reward was this fledgling, who I’m sure, was just out of the nest.

It was clinging to the skeletal remains of an ash tree and calling repeatedly for its parents’ attention,  ‘I’m here-feed me please.’ An adult swept past it to land not far away at the top of another dead tree and peered into a hole. Putting the pieces together, I think the pleading youngster had very recently, perhaps within the hour, left the nest under the watchful eye of its parents. They knew where it was and were expecting, waiting and urging the rest of the brood to follow.

This was a welcome surprise and propelled Hairy Woodpecker into the ‘Confirmed ‘ category of the atlas.; as did this sighting a little later…

…as I drove up a driveway through a semi-manicured orchard.  I was travelling slowly and saw something scamper in front of me. I braked and stopped. The kind of sudden, tenth-of-a-second, stop that propels everything: binoculars, camera, notebooks, pencils, pens, and all the usual car-clutter onto the floor. My mind caught up, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘That was a baby Killdeer you nearly ran over’. Well, I hadn’t, although it was a close-run thing.

I backed up slowly: to my left a mother Killdeer was plaintively piping something like, “What did I tell you kids about traffic?” In front of my car was a tiny, day-old Killdeer chick, the size of a golf ball on long legs, and following it, its nest-mate brother or sister.  They hastened to their mother who, after a bit of ‘there there’ reassurance, pulled them in close beneath her to settle down.

Pinetum, Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton ON. May 23^rd.^.2021. With a transect commitment to fulfill, my companion and I met well before 7 a.m. to make the most of the near-dawn freshness and avoid the inevitable press of weekend hikers. You can count on the last half of May for good birding and it was everything we could have hoped for.  

With most trees now in full leaf, we had to rely heavily on bird song to tell us who’s who and where; quite a challenge and close to impossible at times. The ringing songs of Baltimore Orioles were all around overlapping the flat and rather measured tones of Rose– Breasted Grosbeaks and newly arrived Scarlet Tanagers.  Picking among all of those songs we knew there were many Great Crested Flycatchers, they are a late migrant so I suspect many of them had arrived overnight.

It seemed as though Red–eyed Vireos had consolidated control of the tree tops. Always keeping a decent distance between themselves, they sing endlessly: a rhythmic pattern delivered as they make their way up and down the canopy, rather like the Grand Old Duke’s ten-thousand men.  Old familiars: robins, cardinals and jays added to the tangle of song, and through it all we picked up the faint sound of a Yellow–billed Cuckoo.

It always takes me a minute or two to sort out which of our two cuckoo species I am hearing: Yellow–billed or Black–billed. They look much alike and their songs, while quite different once you get the hang of them, are confusable. After little bit of research, we decided that we’d heard a Yellow–billed Cuckoo and in time we heard two or three more.  They were (and always are) something of a thrill although not a huge surprise because they always show up about now.

The old-world Common Cuckoo (of cuckoo clock association) is well-known as a nest parasite.  Our two, the Yellow-billed, and the Black-billed, are usually conscientious parents, building a nest and raising a brood, but both species are known to sometimes practice brood parasitism, although it is discretionary and science has yet to figure out what triggers the parasitic urge.  Typical breeding is apparently correlated with an abundant local food supply and once started, the breeding cycle is extremely rapid, and requires only 17 days from egg-laying to fledging of young. Incredibly, almost explosive feather sheaths allow nestlings to become fully feathered within two hours.

We didn’t see any of the today’s cuckoos; I’m quite content with just hearing them. It’s something of a personal toss up whether a heard-only bird counts for the day or whether a sighting is essential. Hearing is good, I have seen many and have enough photos to keep me going through the winter.

And speaking of photos, here are a couple of a Blue Jay we disturbed from his morning bath. It could have My Bird of the Day but not with Yellow-billed Cuckoos as competition.  

Morgan’s Point Conservation Area, ON. May 20^th.2021. My calendar was open and invited me to squander a day in spring birding.  I had some ideas where good birding was to be found so made my way to the south shore of Lake Erie. At this time of year, Morgan’s Point can be a very good place to watch for northbound migrants; it’s a landing spot for birds that have dared to fly across the lake rather than take the longer way around. But birding Morgan’s Point can be hit and miss and today might have been a miss had it not been for two good sightings.

The first was totally unexpected. I was staring at a forested hillside, not seeing much at all, and had scanned far and wide including past a large lump high up by the trunk of a tall pine. I didn’t quite see as much as sense something. Could it be that something primeval had tapped me on the shoulder, or was it just experience? Whatever the reason I was looking at an owl looking at me, the Great Horned Owl in the photo above. It set me speculating on whether momentary eye-contact somehow makes a connection, even between species so distant.

I remembered a provocative experience a month or so ago when I was examining with binoculars a sprawly nest quite high overhead. I had reason to think it was a Cooper’s Hawk’s and knew that if it was at home it might very well be low in the bowl and impossible to see. I looked long and hard but could only see the twiggy nest structure. After a long while I’d had enough, stopped looking and let my binoculars drop, and at that very instant of stopping, some mechanism deep in my brain yelled, ‘Being watched!.’  I looked up again and yes, there was an eye looking at me, the Cooper’s Hawk was at home. Uncanny? Maybe.  Take a look at the photo below and find the eye that caught my eye.

Today’s Great Horned Owl watched me warily. It was going nowhere; daylight hours are their quiet time.  I took several long-shot photos and left it alone.

I knew that Red-headed Woodpeckers like the Morgan’s Point area, I’ve seen them here a couple of time before. Red-headed Woodpeckers are always a wonderful sight, dressed in bold bands of crimson, white and black and showing flashy, bright white wing panels in flight. Today a pair was engaged in some kind of courtship around the trunks of towering Cottonwood trees. Courtship that consisted of long periods of ‘don’t come near me’, ‘let me help you pick out that grub’ and two-second, wham-bam, copulations.

The woodpeckers and the owl made the excursion very worthwhile and were my Birds of the Day, rescuing a journey whose only other notables were a handful of Semi-palmated Plovers. But a nice place and I’ll go back.

Hickory Valley, Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton ON. May 19^th.2021. On this morning’s early transect I was a little surprised to find several shorebird species picking for food on some mudflats. Specifically: one Greater and two Lesser Yellowlegs, five Least Sandpipers, a Semi–palmated Plover, two Dunlins and four Killdeer.  Killdeer are common enough, they’re a breeding summer resident so not a surprise,  but the other five species were all worth several minutes study and enjoyment. Digging a little deeper, the Least Sandpipers, Semi-palmated Plover and Dunlin were kind of special; not rare but uncommon, especially now, in spring, when they have a great urge to make haste to their Arctic breeding grounds. Most northbound shorebirds like these follow a flightpath somewhat closer to the Atlantic Ocean, we are a little bit too far west to suit the goal of the vast majority.

Among today’s visitors, the Dunlins with their black bellies are perhaps the most striking, they reminded me of past visits to Cape May in coastal New Jersey where the spring migration of shorebirds is an almost intoxicating spectacle.

You’ll see Dunlins and a variety of other shorebird species in the accompanying photos from those Cape May trips.  The glory of those days makes our helping of spring shorebirds seem meagre but made today’s Dunlins my Birds of the Day.

Our house, Burlington, ON. May 16^th.  2021.  We have a retreat corner in our back yard. It’s a quiet spot in the shade of a small dogwood and is becoming increasingly obscure behind Virginia Bluebells and emerging ferns. It’s not the sort of place for a party, too makeshift in many ways and far too cramped. But it’s exactly the sort of place I might seek out if I was birding.  Some of my best birding experiences have come from sitting quietly in places like this. (As this Winter Wren encounter details.)

So, while sitting there this afternoon, a small sparrow popped into view at the edge of our flagstone patio just a few yards in front of me, from there it ran like stink, right to left, and disappeared into the thick cover of a flanking perennial bed. Surprisingly the same thing happened the next day under the same circumstances except that this time it was a pair of birds who did exactly the same sprint-run-and-dive for cover. It all happened so quickly, barely time enough to comprehend what I was seeing.  But despite the fleetingness of the experiences, they could only have been one of two things, either Lincoln’s Sparrows or, at a pinch, Song Sparrows.

What complicates the choice is that Lincoln’s Sparrows are just about the most unlikely bird to see in an urban back yard. They are an elusive just-passing-through migrant that prefers to skulk in thickish undergrowth.  In appearance they are maddeningly easy to confuse with the ubiquitous Song Sparrow, perhaps for that reason they were a nemesis bird of mine for many decades.

Pete Dunne, in his excellent book Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion, makes this summary point, “…some dark alchemy blends this sparrow’s traits into a bland uniformity that even discerning eyes skip over; as a result, this species is often overlooked. There is no trick that could be offered here for making this identification. Only mindfulness will work.”

I think I managed no more than a total of five seconds looking at the birds, so identification is left to mindfulness. My line of reasoning was something like: They looked like Song Sparrows, but were trimmer and had finely streaked breasts (correct for Lincoln’s Sparrows) ; They ran fast and without pausing, just as a fearful rodents might (a recognized trait of Lincoln’s Sparrows); Song Sparrows don’t run and hide, and in any case, being a common resident species would almost certainly be a vocal and conspicuous part of my daily back yard, avifauna. They must have been Lincoln’s Sparrows.

Well, all of that is rather esoteric but it enlivened a couple of otherwise dreamy spring hours for me. And while I have no photo evidence of these particular birds, I have included some Lincoln’s Sparrows from other encounters, I doubt you will see what the excitement is about. Each to their own, they were Birds of the Day for me.