Author: Peter T

June 21 2018. St. Cross, Winchester, UK. We have returned from a week and a bit in the ancient City of Winchester, south-central England, where a lovely cousin gave us the key to her home in a particularly old and richly textured part of the city. This was not a birding trip, it was more of a spontaneous getaway, but I’m an early riser and usually spent the hours before the household was awake exploring the marked and unmarked footpaths in the water-meadows of the River Itchen.

It doesn’t take long to realize that birding is much easier in Canada than it is in Britain and Europe. Our American birds are far easier to see and study, far more approachable, I assume this is so because they aren’t the evolutionary product of hundreds, if not thousands, of years of persecution. European birds have evolved, I think, to take urgent flight at the approach of a person, however distant. Despite the challenges of seeing birds well and more especially photographing them, those early morning walks were also an opportunity to feel the place before the day’s rush hour frenzy and try to imagine how the contemporaries of Chaucer had lived in that same geography. Some things have not changed: Winchester Cathedral was there in Chaucer’s day, the water meadows were pasture then as they are now, and the plague pits (sites of) were recent and raw evidence of things gone horribly wrong; and the site of that mass burial is noted on modern maps of Winchester.

Some of my bird sightings set me recalling and inventing collective nouns: a Clatter of Jackdaws came to mind easily and is, it turns out, not in the slightest bit original; a Flapping of Wood Pigeons may be new to literature while a Charm of Goldfinches is pretty conventional. I was reminded too of a couple of traditional folk names: Yaffle for Green Woodpecker, onomatopoeic because of its rather crazy-laughter call (Similar to but faster than the Pileated Woodpecker’s ringing call,- if that’s helpful.) and Throstle for Song Thrush, also onomatopoeic.

For a while I was mentally collecting rooftop birds: Wood Pigeons, Jackdaws, and Swifts, but it was a short list and not all that interesting after a bit.

So where is My Bird of the Day in all of this? Well other than the Skylark of our trip to Stonehenge, I was hard pressed because every day held many possibilities. Almost nothing was absolutely new to me with the possible exception of a few Red Kites seen soaring and swooping over the motorway near Oxford, they are a fairly new breeding bird to the UK having been successfully reintroduced some decades ago. Long-tailed Tits were scarce in my recalled childhood but I noted one in a pollarded willow one morning; similarly Bullfinches, I encountered a pair of them not far from those ancient plague pits; and Grey Wagtails sometimes seen but rarely more than a glimpse until I found a pair busy carrying food to their nestlings. (Those formative years of bird study were without binoculars, an inconceivable expense at that time. Much of our youthful study, education and enjoyment revolved around finding birds’ nests and collecting eggs.)

It sort of came to me on our last day that if there was a Bird of the Day, perhaps it was the Magpie I had been photographing some distance from me inside a walled garden. Not just because Magpies are splendid, if not always welcome, birds but because it was apparent that there was more than one Magpie, I think in the end there might have been six, a family group, out teaching the kids how to find a feast in a vegetable garden bursting with goodness. And somehow it all fitted together, an English garden on a gentle summer day, Magpies raiding ripe strawberries and no-one around to say no.

June 15 2018.  Stonehenge, Wiltshire, UK. I took family members to Stonehenge today, I grew up about thirty miles to the south and have admired it several times over the years, usually just in passing, it was one of those places that happened to be on the way. Familiarity does not breed contempt, I still consider it a thought provoking privilege to see Stonehenge.  It’s a grand place, despite all that goes along with being a checklist-destination.

It is difficult to find a way to describe the sight and feel of those pillars without trotting out one or more of a handful of now exhaustively overworked adjectives: timeless, awesome and iconic would be among them.  Perhaps the nineteenth century, Wessex author Thomas Hardy hit the nail on the head best, describing it concisely as “…older than the centuries.” And so it is, immovable, silent and utterly disinterested in our opinions of it.

Stonehenge stands in a windswept, hedgerow-partitioned landscape of different greens, dotted with equally ancient burial-mound outliers. As we walked up a gently sloping grassy footpath I listened to an ascendent Skylark in full song. The male Skylark defines his territory with an accumulative song building a several-minutes-long succession of liquid notes, whistles and trills, it only ends once he’s touched the undersides of the summer clouds and dropped back to somewhere near his mate’s nest. It’s a stepping-stone song that is as much a part of this open landscape as Stonehenge, Skylarks were most likely here hundreds of years before the stones arrived. However those early people contrived to move and erect those massive stones it is likely that they would have listened to a Skylark’s song just as I did today.

And in a real flight of fancy: Is it possible that in fact the stones were hauled hundreds of miles and so arranged to somehow acoustically provide a central spot where people could gather on a summer day and listen to Skylarks? Bird of the Day any day.

June 8 2018, Churchill Park, Hamilton, ON. I should have taken my camera this morning. I remember as I was leaving home at 4.30, in the last shades of night, I paused as my hand reached for my camera. Should I?  I thought. No, we’ll be too busy and they expect my undivided attention to focus on our task; I should have taken it.

Three of us had six forest-edge stations to visit as part of a breeding bird study. Our task was to listen and look (as leaf conditions allowed) for breeding birds. Each station was a short, if rugged, hike in and for a couple of hours my body and mind were dragging. It wasn’t until the third or fourth station visit that all the bits were in harmony, and then I was only hungry.

The first couple of stops were unremarkable except for our collective not-yet-awake bone weariness and distaste at the prospect of picking up a tick or two as we brushed through the forest grasses. Our bird list included among others Carolina Wrens, Eastern Wood Peewees, Red-eyed Vireos, American Robins and Song Sparrows; pretty much what we’d expected .

At our third forested station, not far from a large playing field where early- risers ran dogs of all sizes, we settled for five minutes quiet time before starting our listening. A Red-eyed Vireo came close enough for us to admire its elegance and we could see it was carrying something in its beak, at first I thought it must be food for nestlings, but then it ducked into a cluster of overlaying hickory leaves and started to apply whatever it was to a half-constructed nest. It all came back to me: Red-eyed Vireos make a pendulous nest slung between the branches of a forked twig. Working out from the narrowest part of the fork the nest is anchored with supports glued to the twigs with spiderweb silk. The nest is carried on the supports like a small basket and is smoothed and decorated. It was our privilege to be watching a stage in its construction. I have a soft spot for vireos at any time and this was special enough to make it Bird of the Day, camera or no camera.

Well some more good stuff was yet to come. As we completed our ten minutes of listening at this station a pair of Great-crested Flycatchers flew in to investigate an old decaying tree looking for a suitable nest cavity. Again we were close witnesses to an important part of the bird’s reproductive cycle.

A little later at the head of a trail leading to our next stop, we heard the soft and repetitive gulping coos of a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. One of my colleagues commented that they’d heard one here a few days earlier but had had no luck seeing it. Actually her words were something like, “It could be anywhere. Where do they hang out?” “Right there!” I replied, pointing. It had fluttered out to an exposed branch and moved around in full view for a couple of minutes. Cuckoos have a way of moving, almost snake-like, ducking and relocating without seeming to move. They are an elegant, rather elongated bird, grayish brown above and white below. Not the sort of bird to look away from once you get it in your binocular view, you can never be sure you’ll see one again.

Our mornings work continued with three more stops and included Yellow-throated Vireos, a Tufted Titmouse or two and a possible Orchard Oriole. But by the time of the oriole we’d done enough and were happy to make our way to a local coffee shop. Then, for me it was time to go home and catch up on my sleep deficit, for the other two they had a workday to complete but expected to be heading home in the early afternoon.

May 23 2018, Belleplain Forest, NJ. We decided to spend the freshness of morning listening and looking for woodland birds. Belleplain Forest is rich, lush and green with fast flowing creeks and occaisional areas of standing water. I’m sure it has all been logged at one time, maybe several times; as virgin forest it must have been towering cathedral of a place.

We started early and made really good progress hearing very vocal Red-eyed Vireos, Great-crested Flycatchers and Ovenbirds as we drove. And when we did stop my companion Lyn picked up the zzzzziPPP of a Northern Parula. I couldn’t catch on to it however much I tried, there’s a puzzling gap in my hearing because I could hear other species she assumed I’d miss.

At a couple of roadside stops, chosen for no particular reason other than the forest was a bit swampy we also found Prothonotary, Yellow-throated, Pine, Blackpoll, Bay-breasted and Hooded Warblers, Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, Carolina Wren and Brown Thrasher. 

A large public campground with a lake, sports field and scattered open campsites offered a lot of different habitat. We heard, searched for and triumphantly found a Yellow-billed Cuckoo skulking in the lower tangles of Mountain Laurel; a first-ever for Lyn after many years of trying. We were hoping to find a reported Worm-eating Warbler but got distracted by the distant song of a Scarlet Tanager. Like the cuckoo, we listened; we searched and eventually found it. Stunning is an over-used adjective but I think it arguably applies in the case of the Scarlet Tanager; surely the hot scarlet would render senseless someone of a delicate disposition. It was my Bird of the Morning despite some tough competition, here it is.

We’d set aside the morning for the forest birds because they tend to be more active and vocal before noon; it was the right decision. The afternoon was spent at Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge (Drearily re-named the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge) and it was about as different an event as is possible and the birding was every bit as good. It was a sandwich of experiences because you start at the woodsy, dry-land end, make your way slowly around a twelve kilometer loop trail elevated above an expanse of saltmarsh until the last kilometer brings you back through open fields and forest.

I think Brigantine is as much about the setting as the bird life. In the foreground are the silent salt marsh expanses with Dunlin, Short-billed Dowitchers and Ruddy Turnstones picking over the mudflats. In silent contrast, rising from the heat haze far to the south, stands the post-modern skyline of Atlantic City, a geometric wall of shiny glass and steel.

Perhaps our most surprising bird here was a Blackpoll Warbler, which we disturbed on the edge of the road. It sprang from dense undergrowth and hung to the side of a scrubby willow while we tried to understand what on earth we were looking at: a small upside-down and sideways bird, black and white with orange streaks. It sorted itself out and the penny dropped, Blackpoll Warblers are black and white and have orange legs and feet. We followed it for a while as it foraged in the scrubby margins. I still wonder why a Blackpoll Warbler was there; far from the sort of treed cover I assume it needs, Bird of the Afternoon for me but Lyn had better to come, she was on the right side of the car to see a Saltmarsh Sparrow quite clearly.  For my part it was no more than a fast moving little bird flying low from right to left across the road.

Brigantine filled the afternoon with great birds, a sandwich including Willow Flycatcher, Barn Swallows, Snowy Egrets, Glossy Ibises, Black Skimmers, an American Oystercatcher sitting on eggs at the roadside, a Prairie warbler and a Bald Eagle.

June 2 2018, Flamborough, ON. Much as I like doing our regular transect studies, there are other things in life.  I did the final transect of spring this morning and having made an early start had the rest of the morning open. I went back to a couple of favourite spring birding spots to make sure that all was right with the world.

First stop was a long trail that leads down from a grassy hilltop into a swampy woodland. On the hilltop were Barn Swallows, Yellow Warblers and, heard but not seen, a Bobolink or two. The swampy valley is a good place for Veerys (none today), Northern Waterthrushes (yes a few) and sometimes Canada Warblers (no,).  But there were plenty of mosquitoes, a singing Swamp Sparrow and a distant Pileated Woodpecker. Some nice ferns there too but I found they were where mosquitoes hung thickest so kept my distance.

With the thought of Canada Warblers in mind I made my way to a narrow but far too busy country road that slices through thick Tamarack and maple forest.  When first created I think the road must have been a wood-plank track hacked through the forest then subsequently improved as new technologies (gravel and asphalt in this case) and population growth allowed. I think that because in several places bits of wood stick through the thin asphalt, I can’t think why else they would be there.

I was pleased to spot a Purple Finch overseeing his domain from on high, pleased although not completely surprised because I’ve seen them here before. Purple Finches remain in southern Ontario year round although they’re somewhat unusual around here, we don’t have much of the moist coniferous forests they prefer during breeding season.

I caught sight of a Canada Warbler but only briefly, so it scarcely counts, admired a quiet Cedar Waxwing, could hear a White-throated Sparrow singing and a hint of a Veery’s soft veeer whisper-song. All seems to be in order, the birds of summer are back. Among them I think an anxious Northern Waterthrush was Bird of the Day, certainly it was the one that made me think wow! Here it is.