Peter T – Page 60 – My Bird of the Day

Southern Ground-hornbill

February 10 2019. Enonkishu Conservancy, Kenya. It is easy to recall the strangest birds seen or heard on any day, my encounter with Southern Ground-hornbill was one of those strange ones. Here it is.

Southern Ground-hornbills belong in the Ground Hornbill family, distinct from the more numerous Forest Hornbills crowd. The Ground Hornbill family has just two member species, this and the Abyssinian Ground-hornbill; almost indistinguishable. I’d seen Forest Hornbills before, a handful in Uganda including: Black and White Casqued Hornbill, Crowned Hornbill, and Black Casqued Wattled Hornbill, and they’re usually anywhere from a little to seriously odd-looking birds in some way. That oddness is not their fault but, as is sadly the case in nature, it has its downsides; one species, the Helmeted Hornbill of south-east Asia, is being poached to extinction for its elongated, ivory-like rostrum or casque (the elaborate ornament on their upper mandible).

This Southern Ground-hornbill was hard to miss. As the field guide, Birds of East Africa, says of the Ground Hornbill family, “..atypical pedestrian hornbills adapted to ground dwelling and some of Africa’s most engaging birds….Walk over large distances to feed and only taking to trees in defence and to roost or breed..” It goes on to describe today’s as ”A very large shaggy looking black bird with bare, bright red eye and throat wattles.” Well, that just about says it all. It is a big bird, turkey size and not in the slightest concerned by our presence. I saw a small group, probably the same individuals several times in the month I spent here.

There is a footnote to this story though. Every morning while still dark and as I made my way to the ablutions block, I thought I could hear owls calling: two long and hollow notes, both very low frequency hoots, one slightly higher than the other but following in quick sucession; “WHOOOT – whooot”. Seeing owls is chancy enough at home but the odds of following an owl call to its source in Africa seemed very long indeed. It turns out that what I was hearing was almost certainly these Southern Ground-hornbills. I refer back to the field guide for the last word, “…often calls at dawn when the air is cool and still and calls can carry over long distances, a very deep reverberant booming gump-gump-rumrumrump.”

My Bird of the Day and Bird of the Morning.

Secretary Bird

February 11 2019. Enonkishu Conservancy, Kenya. Although it’s just a figure of speech, to say that I found myself here, in Kenya’s Maasai Mara would be an exaggeration; I didn’t find myself here, I planned it all long in advance. I am one of a group of volunteers doing field work for a scientist evaluating mammal populations in this Great Rift Valley corner of the world. My, or I should say Our, focus is on mammals: all species including common stuff like Impala and Zebra, and the not so common like Lion and Leopard. It’s fascinating work bouncing around in the back of an open four-wheel-drive Toyota scanning for and counting wildlife; more, the full story, will come later. This post is about birds, more particularly the Secretary Bird, My Bird of the Day.

Our routine transect started early, right after breakfast just as it was getting light. The first bit of the transect took us through scattered shrub grassland where we usually expect handfuls of Thomson’s Gazelles, Zebras and maybe White- bearded Wildebeests. The scrub gave way to more open grassland and there stalking methodically for their breakfasts were two Secretary Birds, yet another species from my childhood I-don’t-suppose-I’ll-ever-see-one-of-those list. The Secretary Bird is a sensational creature, a raptor with stilts for legs, it is built for open grassland where it hunts for insects, small rodents and famously for snakes which it apparently dispatches by stamping them to death with hardened pads. (It’s probably worth noting that I didn’t see any sign of snakes where we were working; too many White-tailed Mongooses our ranger companions told us.) Secretary Bird is a raptor, in a group of its own but related to Kites and Eagles.

Truly a picture is worth a thousand words and my photos should amply illustrate what an elegant fowl the Secretary Bird is, with its black pantaloons adding a certain seriousness to their demeanour and the long quill-like crown of feathers from which it gets its name. (Although another suggestion is that secretary is derived from the Arabic saqr-et-tair meaning hunter bird.)

Two Barred Owls.

January 26 2019. Newmarket, ON. My occasional volunteering for the Owl Foundation took a new turn today; I was asked to take and release a Barred Owl. It had been found in an urban area north and east of Toronto, grounded and suffering some relatively minor head and eye damage; I don’t know all the details except that with some treatment it had recovered and was ready to go back to where it belonged.

We were asked to make the release around dusk and to stay well away from the intensive urbanisation where it was found. I asked a couple of birder-friends to join me, it meant a lot of driving: 60 kilometres one way to get the owl; 130 in almost the opposite direction to its release point, and then home.

It was all very simple; the owl was placed gently into a cat carrier which was covered with a light sheet. With the help of Google Maps I selected a roadside release spot close to thick woodland with few houses anywhere around. We made the long drive arriving, appropriately, around 4.30, pulled off the road, set down the carrier and opened it. The owl walked out hesitantly, liked what it saw and flew to a nearby tree. It looked at us for a several minutes, then turned and flew further into the forest.

It was a very quiet road but a car passed us as we were doing the release. It stopped, turned around and the family of three sat mesmerized just looking at our Barred owl, something few people get to enjoy. I think they became converts to owl rescue, thanking us over and over.

All of that was straightforward enough. Our biggest surprise though came a few minutes and a couple of kilometers earlier, before arriving at the release spot, when another Barred Owl flew across the road in front of us. It landed on a roadside tree to our left where, despite our travelling speed, we were able to see it clearly.

Two Barred Owls – two Birds of the Day.

Cackling Goose

January 20 2019. LaSalle Park, Burlington, ON. A decent snowfall yesterday really changed things. Days of dire warnings kept most people at home but we emerged today to a new world, six inches or so of clean light snow under a bright blue sky and temperatures down at -15° C (5° F). It was tempting to stay indoors but there was snow shovelling to do and I wondered how our resident birds were coping.

I walked along a shoreline trail of a small lakeside park, it’s a pleasant and well-used path enjoyed by many dog walkers and casual bird-photographers.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, you never know what a radical change in weather conditions might produce. Two surprises in the end: first a Brown Creeper making its close way up and around trunks of several trees. The snow made no apparent difference to its day, there must be little invertebrates and eggs to be found in the cracks and crevices at any time of year. But Brown Creepers exploring tree-trunks in an upward spiral and are inclined to switch trees without warning, they’re always a photography challenge. Here it is.

The second surprise was to find what I am pretty sure are Cackling Geese mingling with a large aggregation of Canada Geese, Trumpeter Swans and Mallards. A Cackling Goose looks for all the world like a Canada Goose, indeed until recently it was considered a Canada Goose subspecies. It is a, perhaps needlessly, complicated story, but essentially, the Canada Goose varies considerably in size and plumage tone across its North American range and science once recognized fifteen subspecies. But there were enough differences identified within the smaller statured birds that the Cackling Goose was split out and accorded its own species status. Now, as if life wasn’t complicated enough, ornithologists recognize eleven subspecies of Canada Goose and four subspecies of the breakaway Cackling Goose. As the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of North America website puts it so succinctly, “Complex morphological and genetic variation.” Okay, enough. The Cackling Goose is for all the world just like a small, rather cute Canada Goose, with a relatively shorter and thicker neck and a rather petite bill. I believe this is one.

It’s possible this is the first time I have knowingly seen or studied a Cackling Goose, and it’s also quite possible I’ve got it wrong, but I’ll go with it as Bird of the Day today.

Valley birds on a mild day

January 7 2019. Hendrie valley, Burlington, ON. Winter has not yet wrapped its arms around us in a full embrace; warmth slipped in today, mild enough that I walked the length of my favourite valley hatless, gloveless and with coat unbuttoned, I was enjoying the birds who are the mainstay species of the valley: Mallards, Trumpeter Swans, Carolina and Winter Wrens, White-throated, Song and American Tree Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, Hairy, Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, White-breasted Nuthatches, a Belted Kingfisher and Black-capped Chickadees. Just the local gang hanging out and making the most of easy-to-find food.

There was no Bird of the Day, just plenty to see and enjoy. A single Winter Wren chattering quietly to itself and creeping along parallel to a well-travelled, creekside, path but managing to stay out of sight in the thick waterside tangles. Several Carolina Wrens singing, some more forcefully than others, but none as determined to establish his territorial claim as this one.

I think it was a couple of pairs of woodpeckers that were most interesting to watch. They had found an apparently easy supply of grubs in the folds and flakes of the bark of American Sycamore trees. This female Hairy Woodpecker..

..and this male Red-bellied Woodpecker revealing, albeit coyly, why the species is called red-bellied and not red-headed. You can just make out the blush of red on its underside.

In all likelihood the ‘red-bellied’ descriptor was applied by a nineteenth century zoologist holding in his hand a specimen collected by shooting, and in any case, perhaps ‘red-headed’ had already been taken.