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17 May 2015, East Point, New Jersey.  As if Cape May weren’t special enough as a place to go and watch any and all birds in spring and fall, it is also a destination to witness the spectacular spring assembly of migrating Red Knots, today’s incontestable Bird of the Day. The Red Knot is a strikingly colourful and compact shorebird with a story, some of it jaw-dropping and some of it hand wringing. On the jaw-dropping side is the bird’s breeding biology, notably the almost incomprehensible 10,000 mile semi-annual migration between the far reaches of South America and its breeding ground shores of Canada’s Arctic Ocean; a journey made in three or four stages with non-stop flights between each refuelling stop. Such a journey would not be possible without reliably abundant food at all of those refuelling stops.

You would not for one moment suppose that the Horseshoe Crab matters a whole lot to Red Knots. Horseshoe Crabs have been around since the dawn   of time, they don’t prey on Red Knots and mind their own business crawling around the shallow sea-floors; they seem to have been doing little else for millions of years. But each year in May, Horseshoe Crabs in tens of thousands make their way to the Delaware Bay shores of Cape May to mate and lay eggs; it is quite a spectacle as dozens of what look like upside-down frying pans, wash, tumble and crawl ashore, clawing their way over rocks and each other to mate and lay thousands of pearl blue eggs in the surfy tideline. Those collective billions of eggs are what make the Delaware Bay a critical refuelling stop for Red Knots, they may not feed again before completing the next 3,000 mile flight to their high Arctic breeding grounds. It’s hard to comprehend that this, you wouldn’t call it a ritual, perhaps cycle would be better, has been happening every spring for millions of years. They were definitely here before any of our Homo erectus ancestors even thought of leaving Africa for greener pastures.

The problem is that 20th Century man, Homo sapien, decided Horseshoe Crabs could be harvested and pulverized for fertilizer. After all, the reasoning went, they’re ugly, no use to anyone and we might as well do something useful with them. Cataclysmic over-harvesting of Horseshoe Crabs meant fewer eggs to feed Red Knots, less food led to lower (or failed) breeding success and in the last decades of the twentieth century the knot population crashed by something like ninety percent.
It is still possible to see Red Knots in breathtakingly huge numbers here on the western shores of Cape May, but it is sobering to contemplate what this might have looked like a century ago when the population was vastly greater and what has since been lost.
My companion and I were witness to this drama today: thousands of Horseshoe Crabs hauling ashore to multiply, and hundreds upon thousands of shorebirds, particularly Red Knots, Least sandpipers, Sanderlings, Semi-palmated Sandpipers and Laughing Gulls waiting to feast on the eggs. I for one was utterly speechless watching perhaps one of the world’s greatest bird spectacles.

11 May 2015. Paletta Park, Burlington, ON. This was a day of astonishing contrasts for me. I spent the morning at the bird observatory where the weather was warm (around 25 deg C) and dry, and birds were plentiful and varied,- if sometimes a little hard to find. On my return home shortly after midday, (here I should digress to explain that the geography and weather of this part of Ontario is dominated by two factors: An abrupt escarpment which elevates much of the Lake Ontario hinterland some 100M above lake level; The presence of Lake Ontario itself.) I found that the lake plain was shivering under a blanket of cold air and accompanying fogs; the temperature at my home was 12 deg C.

Stepping out of my car, I heard a song that I didn’t recognise, I grabbed my binoculars and was soon looking as a beautiful Cape May Warbler, and then a Canada Warbler, a Blackburnian, a Chestnut-sided, a Tennessee and a Yellow Warbler all in my neighbour’s little tree. Then the penny dropped: this sweep of cold air, this fog, had forced last night’s migrating birds to the ground.

I ate a hasty lunch and headed to a leafy park at the lake’s edge where I was rewarded with one of those magical May days, surrounded by colourful little warblers and vireos wherever I looked. It seemed for a while, as if every one of them was perfect as if lifted from a field guide illustration. The list was long, nearly twenty warbler species, tediously long if I were to name them all here, but it includes several sparkling Canada and Magnolia Warblers, Northern Parulas and the always engaging Wilson’s Warblers. There were vireos too: Blue-headed, Red-eyed and Warbling Vireos and they, along with excellent sightings of Yellow-throated Vireos at the bird observatory, they made for a vireo-rich day.

Bird of the Day was a Mourning Warbler seen skulking through some thick undergrowth. Skulking is what they do best; well maybe not best, they are good at it but are interesting singers and disarmingly handsome. The male is generally yellow to greenish-yellow all over except for his head and shoulders, which are hooded slate grey shading to speckled coal black under the chin. I gasped and ooh-ed and ahh-ed like a wide-mouthed innocent at a circus act.

The day did produce some good photo opportunities, some at the bird observatory, and some at warbler park. Here are a few.

5 May 2015. Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. One of my favourite stream-side walks is a reliably good spot to find breeding pairs of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and Green Herons. In fact, with a full-bodied, almost a river, stream on one side and a large marshy pond on the other it’s good for many birds at almost all times of the year. It is also along the route of one of my census walks.

At this time of year the menu-specials change daily. For several weeks it’s been a sure place to see a succession of waterfowl starting early in April with: Hooded Mergansers, Bufflehead and Wood Ducks, then later progressing through the brief appearances of Blue-winged Teal and Gadwall. By the time it’s all over, I am sure the area will be home to families of: Red-winged Blackbirds, Trumpeter Swans, Canada Geese, Wood Ducks, Mallards, Belted Kingfishers, Tree Swallows, Yellow Warblers, Green Herons, Warbling Vireos and Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, to name but a few.

I have been anticipating the return of the Green Herons for a while and today, as I walked the trail, a trio of them flew over, banking low and looking for home. They are quite distinctive in every way: visually they’re elaborately unmistakable, and in flight they’re buoyant, even bouncy. Like most herons they’re vocal croakers when alarmed or in flight, in the case of the Green Herons theirs’ is a sharp coughing bark with an almost metallic ring.

The fly-past group didn’t go very much farther and later as I was on the return leg of the census I spotted two of them in a Manitoba Maple. Two’s company and three’s a crowd, as we know and here were two engaged in either some pair-bonding or territorial squabbling, I’m not sure which. Think back to your own youth, those modes of posturing can be hard to tell apart. The gallery below is of the few photos I was able to get through the trees.

Heard, but not seen, along the walk was a Northern Waterthrush. It’s a reminder to get exploring some of my other favourite spots. But for now in this, the early days of the cascade of new spring arrivals, the Green Herons made an already fulfilling morning extra colourful; Birds of the Day.

4 May 2015 Cayuga ON. There were lots of first-of-the-years at the bird observatory today: the warm southerly breeze kept on delivering them. At first light a Whip-poor-will called from some distance away and by around 7.30 we could hear the noisy calls of Baltimore Orioles and they were all around us before long. As we watched a group of half a dozen Yellow-rumped Warblers gleaning insects in a budding Northern Hackberry (tree) we found a Tennessee Warbler.   On the census we watched small groups of Western Palm Warblers foraging low along woodland edges. My best birds of the day for a while were Yellow-throated Vireos calling raspily, but three Chimney Swifts wheeling and chasing high overhead, Warbling Vireos singing their tumbling scatter of notes from high in the treetops or a beautifully marked Black and White Warbler kept pressing to be Bird of the Day.

But the Bird of the Day was came as I prowled a stretch of rich woodland. I was enjoying a gloriously flame-faced Blackburnian Warbler as it worked its way around the newly opening buds of a Manitoba Maple, when I found that I was looking at a male Cerulean Warbler. This species is so uncommon that it took me a while to understand what I was seeing. Prior to today I have only knowingly seen one (perhaps two) Cerulean Warblers.

The species is being assailed from all sides, its best breeding grounds in North America have disappeared to make way for farmland and their wintering grounds in the Andes have been cleared for the cultivation of coca. This little bird is in trouble; it is listed as Endangered in Canada and Indiana and Threatened in Illinois and Wisconsin.

The beauty of today’s sighting was not only in the thrill of its rarity but also that it stayed around long enough for three of us to study it at length. My initial doubts and puzzlement vanished as it moved around, showing me all sides and at times turning its gloriously blue head and back to best effect. Such consideration allowed me to mentally eliminate any possible confusion with other species. Getting a photograph was a real challenge as it was always on the move and back-lit by a bright sky; still I managed a couple of reasonable shots; here they are.

The day didn’t stop delivering. Before we closed up around noon we had banded an Indigo Bunting, Magnolia Warbler and Ovenbird and seen a Great-crested Flycatcher; all great birds – all day.

3 May 2015. Hamilton ON.  I think today was the day of the Yellow Warbler; they’re back and, I hope, ushering in the warblers of May. In a week or two, Yellow Warblers will be too numerous to count, they’ll be just a part of the background noise. But today I was greeted by the first of the year; and standing in one spot, I could distinguish four, maybe five, all singing their hurried ‘Sweet sweet shredded wheat” song. I think they were all males, bright buttercup yellow with chestnut streaks down the breast. My Birds of the Day for being here.

I started the day really early by taking my daughter’s dog for a walk; something I used to do frequently. The sun was still lingering below the horizon as we walked a couple of kilometers along a power-line right-of-way, a wide expanse of grassland flanked by scrubby forest. About every one-hundred metres along the edges, a Field Sparrow was singing its territorial heart out, for every four Field Sparrows there was an Eastern Towhee, also in full song and in the distance a singing Brown Thrasher. It reminded me of my formative days in England when my dad and I would cycle around the dew-sparkling countryside listening to the exuberant dawn chorus of Blackbirds, Song Thrushes and Skylarks; these are vivid memories.

The Yellow Warblers showed up later in the morning up on one of my census walks. They, along with a single Western Palm Warbler, a pair of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers and a singing Warbling Vireo (another first) made going without breakfast worthwhile. I counted a couple of dozen Common Terns swooping over the lake waters and a handful of their cousins, Caspian Terns, loafing on a shingle shoreline.