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13 June 2015. Flamborough ON. I started early and just couldn’t stop birding this morning, in fact morning was just a distant memory by the time I headed home. If May is the month when you have to be out there to see who’s just arrived, a sort of migratory rush hour, then June is when open-for-business begins. For the birder, mid-June is the perfect time to linger, listen and to see who’s where and doing what.

My day started while the air was still fresh. I parked atop a grassy hill with sweeping views. Around me were Brown Thrashers, Gray Catbirds, Song Sparrows, American Goldfinches and Bobolinks, all singing. A few Turkey Vultures sat quietly in a naked elm waiting for warmer airs to set them sailing for the day. This place would be delicious enough as is, but at some not-too-long-ago time, a thoughtful service club stationed a park bench at one of the most strategic of resting spots, silent of people and noisy of birds.

Nice as it was, I wasn’t there to write Victorian poetry, this was the starting point of a plan to walk several long trails. All of them in a township dotted with cool swamps and dark woods. I stuck to trails and roadsides that cut through mosquito-rich habitat with rivulets, brooks and creeks weaving through dense forest. Those common elements of running water and thick vegetation produced many of the same species at each stop, but that was quite okay.

Today’s Birds of the Day and probably the commonest, were Northern Waterthrushes. Their habitat of choice is dense, dark and wet woodlands and, were they not so vocal and demonstrative, you could easily overlook them. They and their close relative the Louisiana Waterthrush, are nominally members of the warbler family but are not nearly as colourful as some of their supposed cousins. They make up for it with a spirited song that penetrates the swampy thickets and when in the slightest bit agitated, if for example they see you as threateningly close to their hungry nestlings, they flit overhead and around you, frantically chipping and bobbing their tail. One anxious waterthrush parent is never enough, before long the other parent will appear and then others apparently to lend noisy support to the protest. Other than the challenge of keeping up with them, it wasn’t too hard to get some good photos. But being obliging to the camera was in contrast to a handful of Canada Warblers who were also heard but only fleetingly glimpsed in those same wet brushy areas.

My field notes from these areas of darkness and wet included Great Crested Flycatcher, Eastern Wood Peewee, Veery, Common Yellowthroat, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow and even a Green Heron. There’s nothing in the species list that would turn heads, it was more a case of you had to be there.

 

12 June 2015. Normandale ON. It takes an hour and twenty minutes to drive to one of my favourite forests. I was going to say favourite birding spots, but it’s much more than that; it’s a nature sanctuary, a wonderful and virtually untouched mixed forest, with towering American Beech, Sugar Maple and Eastern Hemlock, a thick understory of Flowering and Round-leaved Dogwoods, Mountain Maple and Leatherwood and masses of ferns of many species; the birding is pretty good too.

I went there in hopes that I might find an Acadian Flycatcher or perhaps see a Hooded Warbler and, as much as anything, to enjoy the place. In reverse order, there was much to enjoy, I heard, but didn’t see a Hooded Warbler but there was no sign of an Acadian Flycatcher. Not finding an Acadian Flycatcher was no surprise, they are at best an occasional nester in Ontario; this particular woods was home to a breeding pair in 2012 but they’ve not seen here since.

I actually felt a little disappointment by the sense that other species I’d seen here a couple of years ago were either not present today or were in much reduced numbers. I think it was because two years ago the Eastern Hemlock grove seemed to support several singing Black-throated Green Warblers, while today I heard only one. But my notes from almost this date in 2013 shows a close parallel today’s encounters, so perhaps all is as it should be.

My Bird of the Day was a young male Canada Warbler, probably one year old. I could hear it singing as it patrolled up and down the course of a fast-running cold-water creek and, with a bit of patience, I was able to draw it closer to me. Canada Warblers, like many other warblers, won’t stay still for very long. I’ve had almost no luck photographing them and today my shot is a nice one of its back; one of these days it’ll all fall into place.

A little later I spent a long time trying to get a good look at a singing Black-throated Blue Warbler. It too was doing a circuit of what I assume is its territory, but it was neck-crackingly high overhead and I was lucky to get just one long enough glimpse of it to be sure of what I was hearing.

After four enjoyable hours exploring and searching I had had enough of black flies and mosquitoes around my head and called it a day. I paused at the roadside to watch a couple of Veerys and a vividly coloured Rose-breasted Grosbeak. I rinsed insect repellant off my hands, got into my car and pulled away as the skies darkened and moments later dropped a heavy summer downpour.

11 June 2015. Hamilton Burlington ship canal, ON. I’ve probably said it before, because goodness knows I’ve celebrated Peregrine Falcons as Bird of the Day often enough, but any Peregrine Falcon is automatically Bird of the Day-worthy.

Today I set out to watch over a trio of Peregrine Falcon chicks who have just taken wing. Peregrines are supposed to be masters of the air but evidently not right away, these youngsters have been a involved in a couple of crash-landings and this busy highway and bridge site is not the place for a grounded chick.

I watched for a couple of hours and in that time saw the male parent smack a Tree Swallow down into the lake and from the surface it delicately retrieved and carried it back to the hungry horde. At one time we had all five birds, parents and three chicks, in view but there was a lot of coming and going and it was sometimes hard to know who was who.

Above (in a gallery visible only on the website, not if you’re reading this as an email) are some photos from the morning’s watch: one of the mother and several more of the only female in the brood stretching her wings and working at mastering balance.

6 June 2015. My post of a couple of weeks ago (May 17^th) celebrated the Red Knot, a beautiful and resourceful shorebird that flies from one end of the world to the other in order to breed. My post didn’t dwell at length on their migration route but it’s worth repeating that many of the spring migrant Red Knots we see on the east coast, have flown from Tierra del Fuego, (about as far south as you can go in South America) and are heading to Baffin Island, (ditto North). This long distance journey and its numerous perils so fascinate the ornithology world that many studies are underway to learn more.

Avian studies often include the capture and banding of birds, shorebirds can be effectively marked with an easily-read-from-a-distance flag on their leg. My many photos taken along the shoreline of the Delaware Bay include some of those flagged birds, mostly Red Knots but also one or two Semi-palmated Sandpipers. I didn’t see the flags at first but on closer scrutiny I found half a dozen. Well this is exciting, because by reporting my sightings I have learned that one or two have indeed travelled some long distances. This of course is not a surprise, I mean we know they do these journeys, but to actually be able to see a bird which was captured, tagged and handled at least once before in Argentina or French Guiana, is something of a thrill. Here are a few photos (click on them to enlarge) of flagged or banded birds, one of them with observations from http://bandedbirds.org/

 

The Red Knot above has an easy to read green flag inscribed 7P5.  I believe that means it was originally trapped and flagged on the shore of Delaware Bay in May 2013.

 

The above Red Knot on the right has an orange flag plus an “ additional blue band…this bird was banded in French Guiana.”

 

 

Above Semi-palmated Sandpiper on the left has a green flag.  It’s almost but not quite readable. So far I have no further information as to where this bird was first caught and flagged.

In this picture above, on the right at the water-line and just above the gull’s head are two Red Knots each with a different colour flag.

 

 

 

 

3 June 2015. Kirkfield ON.  Three of us spent half the day scouring open grasslands for birds. We were looking for Loggerhead Shrikes; but without luck as it turned out. We weren’t unduly disappointed though because grasslands are really delightful spring birding places; open pastures attract some to the most vocal songbirds.

Our day turned up some nice sightings: Wilson’s Snipe, Willow Flycatcher and Brown Thrasher included. The various songsters of the day find their own best spots from which to sing. Among those we saw were: bright yellow-breasted Eastern Meadowlarks who prefer a high wide-vista spot, roadside utility wires do the trick; Bobolinks who like deep grass cover so tend to stay hidden until the handsome black, white and yellow males emerge like a Jack-in-the box to fly a short looping and fluttering territorial flight to let everyone know who’s in charge; Savannah Sparrows who like fence posts while Grasshopper Sparrows apparently don’t need to broadcast their faint, short-burst, buzz song all that far, they are content with a modestly prominent grass stalk as long as it will take their weight.

After dutifully completing our Shrike-watch rounds we headed home but made a long detour to inspect more open fields. And it was here that we found our Upland Sandpipers. It was really promising countryside for Upland Sandpipers: wide fields, dry-ish but punctuated by low wet spots, decrepit hedges and occasional thickets of hawthorn.

We had stopped and were straining to admire something to our left, an Eastern Kingbird I think, when I heard –or at least thought I heard – the ululating whistle of an Upland Sandpiper to our right. We scrambled to the other side of the car and scanned the deep grasses and soon found one, then two, three and eventually four of them about a hundred feet away moving across in their jerking, stop-go way of stalking with precautionary safety stops to peer around. Upland Sandpipers stand about ten inches tall and have a preference for eight inches high grass, many times, all you see is their rather disproportionately small head bobbing around.

I’ve posted about Upland Sandpipers several times before, simply because I like them so much; they’ll rise to the top of any day of birding. Almost everything about them: the incongruity of a sandpiper making a living in dry fields (they are typically species of puddles and shorelines) : their funny, little, chicken-like heads; their wolf-whistle of a song (described cleverly by Pete Dunne in his excellent Essential Field Guide Companion as “..a plaintive, rising-and-falling, slurred whistle: “woooolEE WEEurr.”); and especially for their innocent and engaging ‘Who me?” expression.

For one of my companions, the Upland Sandpiper was a lifer bird; I know the excitement of that feeling: you’ve read about them; you’ve heard about them and others tell you where they just saw one – but too late; then one day, sometimes without warning, the final piece of the puzzle drops into place. Here’s her picture of that lifer.