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Valley Inn, Hamilton. ON. February 6 2023.   It’s a mental landmark of mine that the third week of January holds our the coldest days. I think that’s a bit too pedantic, more realistically any day within two weeks either side of the end of January is when we’ll hit the deepest freeze. Indeed, two days ago, February 4^th, has been the coldest so far this winter, cold enough to get most news networks excited. We dipped to -18.6 C., more than enough to turn all open water to a sheet of ice you’d think.

Still nursing that the third-week-of-January fixation and alert for any faint sign that the worst is behind us, I set out to hike some trails today. A singing Northern Cardinal was some encouragement, but then I once heard one, a false prophet, many years ago on a late November day, so I try not to attribute too much to a cardinal’s early song.

Woodland trails were very icy. For a while, I followed an undulating and ice-encrusted stream-side trail, choosing my footing carefully until I reached a point where the climb became steeper, the ice wider and thicker and the drop-off steeper.  The chance of slipping, falling, landing hard and tumbling over that edge, seemed discouragingly high so I turned back and left for tamer territory.

Back on much safer ground by a river mouth, I was very surprised to hear the distinctive rattling call of a Belted Kingfisher.  He was on top of an old utility pole by a bridge and immediately became My Bird of the Day.

On odd occasions I’ve been asked whether kingfishers migrate or stay around all winter. It’s a good question. After all you’d think they must migrate since creeks, lakes and ponds freeze over. But, drawing on the experience of having once seen a Kingfisher on a very frigid New Year’s Day 2014 (the one in the header, above), I’ve generally given the rather tentative answer that the fish don’t leave so, as long as there’s open water, there’s a chance some kingfishers stay around, although undoubtedly most head south.

Today’s kingfisher then is vague proof of those vague responses . Lakes and ponds are indeed locked under a thick layer of smooth ice, but there’s open water in places like the midstream of creeks and rivers or around seeps and springs where groundwater emerge.  As if to confirm my conjecture he plunged to an unseen spot and returned to his perch with a decent sized fish.

Belted Kingfishers are quick to take flight if people approach so when a photographer tried to move in closer, the bird left moving away from him – to a post lower and closer to me so, I was able to get the photo above.

A better kingfisher photo is this one above from last June when I came upon four Belted Kingfisher fledglings. The warmer day story about them is here.

Niagara River. ON. February 2 2023.   The Niagara River in winter is probably the birdiest place anywhere within day’s drive of home; alive now with thousands of ducks, geese and gulls.   The river connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, a conduit really, just one lake desperate to reach the next. I’m sure some folk would swim in it where they find a quiet backwater on a hot summer day. But in winter it hurries choppily carrying chunks of ice – too dangerous for mortals but okay for ducks, geese and swans.

I drove a stretch of the Niagara River this morning.  It took about an hour just to get to my starting point and going against the grain a bit because I’ve come to view such long birding drives as a rather luxurious waste of time and fuel; a legacy of the two-year Covid shutdown perhaps.

As my riverside journey progressed I could see how different stretches of river suited some species over others, showing clearly how different birds are adapted to forage under different conditions (current, depth, turbidity etc.). At the top end, where Lake Erie crowds itself into the outflowing river channel and where the water was frighteningly choppy on this very windy day, there were thousands of Buffleheads diving for food. There seemed to be an endless upstream flight, hundreds at a time skimming low then crash-landing in to dive for food.  I suppose that as they were swept downstream they lost access to whatever particular food it was they were finding in those rough waters and so had to take flight, head back upstream and start again.

Somewhat downstream from the Buffleheads, and against the far bank, a large and concentrated gathering of Bonaparte’s Gulls were wheeling and dipping for something. And then, as the waters smoothed out, there were many Common and Red-breasted Mergansers.

I watched this Herring Gull thrash a catfish senseless until it was able to tip it down its throat.

There were several large flotillas of Canvasbacks drifting where the river ran quieter. One or two of these flotillas were huge, several hundreds of birds I’m sure. They are a large and elegant duck whose unhappy disadvantage is that they are considered the best eating by those who like to shoot them.  I couldn’t help wondering how these numbers today compared to the Canvasback flocks a few hundred years ago, I’ll wager they wintered here in their millions.

To my mind Canvasbacks are aristocrats among ducks and for that reason alone they were my Bird of the Day.

Royal Botanical Gardens. Cootes Paradise, Hamilton. ON. January 23 2023.  Cute is an adjective I try to avoid when it comes to birds. But sometimes, as in the case of Snow Buntings, it slips out. I suppose it depends on your idea of cute and it might have a bit to do with your gender. I prefer to see all birds as descendants of dinosaurs: as exploiters, scavengers and predators, usually wrapped in finery.

A good birding friend views the Tufted Titmouse (titmice?) as excruciatingly cute. He’ll go out of his way to catch the sight of one, or better yet photograph it, he’ll zoom and click for an hour or more or until his camera finally declares ‘Battery Exhausted’.

A week or so ago another birding friend posted on FB that she’d seen a Tufted Titmouse at a certain woodland lookout. It’s an uncommon bird for us, we lie right on the northern edge of the titmouse’s range so it’s a noteworthy sighting.  When I saw the FB post I knew it would cause a stir.

Hiking the trails today I learned that the titmouse was still around, still in the same place and that maybe there were two of them. I did want to see it and found it (or maybe them) soon enough. All you had to do was sit quietly and wait. Others birders and photographers had scattered seed around and Black-capped Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches, and a couple of Red-bellied Woodpeckers had taken advantage of the mid-winter feast – and of course so too the titmouse/mice.

Of my hundred or so photos, 25 are keepers and I’ve included some of the best.  It’s easy to see why some might describe the Tufted Titmouse as cute, but I prefer to keep my distance. It’s a feathered dinosaur, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, pugnacious and bent on two things: survival and reproduction.  Beautiful for being painted in subtle shades of grey, flanked with a rusty-peach wash, and beady black eyes with just a hint of a black eyebrow. Gorgeous and deservedly My Bird of the Day.

Tufted Titmouse is closely related to Bridled, Oak, and Juniper Titmouses of western North America and similarly, but rather less closely, to chickadees and Eurasia’s Great Tits and Blue Tits.

Other noteworthy dinosaur descendants today were a Common Raven who passed low overhead croaking in an appropriately reptilian manner. And this Red-bellied Woodpecker showing clearly for once why it got stuck with red bellied and not, as you might reasonably think, red-headed.

Haldimand County. ON. December 27 2022. The farmland where I had enjoyed watching a couple of Northern Harriers six weeks ago is a clay plain, the left-overs an ancient glacial lake.  It is wide and flat, criss-crossed by a grid of long straight roads: hot and dreamy in August, windswept and cold in January. I went back there today, wanting to see if the harriers were still around in this snow-drifted landscape.

A century or more ago, European settlers, through their land surveyors, were rectangularly methodical in dividing up this new-to-them land. It was parcelled up into townships, concessions and lots with provision for roads in between. Sometimes, where the work of two surveyors met, a clash of straight-line geometry resulted, with roads and fence-lines colliding and bouncing off each other at angles, obtuse and acute.

I was in one of these geometrically-muddled corners and driving slowly along quiet country roads, on the lookout for a harrier.  I drove beneath a large bird perched nervously on top of an old utility pole and assumed it to be a Red-tailed Hawk. I was wrong. About an hour later I had circled around, as much inadvertently as intentionally, when I saw this same large bird but now in flight. This was not a Red-tailed but a Rough-legged Hawk, a horse of quite a different colour – to mix metaphors.

Rough-legged Hawks are an Arctic species with a breeding distribution across the taiga and tundra of the Old and New Worlds. The Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas of 2001-2005 concluded there were fewer than five breeding pairs in the vastness of Ontario.  It is an uncommon winter visitor here, but happily for us birders it seems to like this wide-open country.  It is a treat and a privilege to see one.

I pulled to one side, carefully because sometimes where gravel becomes grass, grass become snow and snow becomes an unseen ditch.  Safe and settled, I soon realized that a Northern Harrier had shown up and was coursing the fields: skimming low on light bouncy wing-strokes, sometimes turning abruptly to drop into the deeper grass for a catch. Meanwhile the Rough-legged Hawk had settled on the top of a lone tree. I watched and admired both for a long time and was lucky enough to get perhaps my best-ever photos of the hawk.

There were other nice birds today including: a small flock of Wild Turkeys, a large flock of Snow Buntings and a solitary adult Bald Eagle. While they all deserve a bit more than footnote status, that’s all they get because the Rough-legged Hawk was unquestionably my Bird of the Day.

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