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28 September 2014. Burlington ON.  I wonder when Indian Summer will become an inappropriate phrase.  Can’t be long!  As it is right now, my only concern about these glorious early fall days is the easy birding. It’s hard to beat T-shirt weather and a steady flow of interesting migrants.

This morning, I led a small group looking for birds in some interesting and varied habitat. We started out walking down into a wooded valley, spent some time watching over a large, cattail encircled pond and ended up strolling a creek-side trail. It was all very nice.

My Bird of the Day came early, it may in fact have been the very first bird seen, a Blue-headed Vireo. Those who follows my postings (is there anyone that compulsive?) will perhaps remember that I speak highly of vireos in general. We see five vireo species in Ontario, all of them summer visitors, only here to breed. Red-eyed, Warbling and Yellow-throated Vireos breed around here but not the Blue-headed or the Philadelphia Vireos, they both prefer the coniferous forests further north. I don’t ever recall enjoying lingering looks at a free-flying Blue-headed Vireo, they always seem to be on the move; today’s was like that. It first caught my attention when I heard its unfamiliar song, I was certainly puzzled, but with a bit of persistence tracing the song we found the bird and were allowed a couple of ‘now you see me now you don’t’ looks, enough to make an identification. Then it was gone. Most of our group missed it and it was probably only my excitement that was memorable. These photos shows how handsome Blue-headed Vireos are (at least I think so).

Also for your enjoyment, a couple of shots of other vireo species: A Yellow-throated and a Philadelphia. The spectacles on the yellow-throated making it look a little like the Blue-headed. Note the business-like tip of its beak.

The rest of our walk turned up several interesting birds: A single Sharp-shinned Hawk apparently consorting amiably with a small flock of Blue Jays; We heard but couldn’t find an Eastern Towhee and were amused by a deranged female Wood Duck which seems to have learned to beg food from passers-by. Perhaps its formative months were spent at a marina or urban park where the lines between humans and wildlife sometimes blur; I wonder how and where it will spend the winter and how dependant it is on hand-outs.

And finally, while it’s often hard to have much good to say about European Starlings, these two in their new feathers look quite fetching. The light tips of the feathers will wear off over winter; after which they’ll be just starlings again.

26 September 2014. Cayuga ON. For reasons that will likely remain a mystery, the beautiful, Indian Summer weather of the past 24 hours resulted on a paltry collection of bird species, yet two days ago, under the same weather conditions, the birding was exceptional. Doing the daily census today, I found a scant fifteen species; two days ago thirty-four. All part of the mystery that makes this such an interesting study I suppose.

Far and away the best sighting of the morning was enormous flocks of blackbirds; they seemed to comprise equal numbers of Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles, but it is quite possible there were a few European Starlings or some Rusty Blackbirds mixed in; it was impossible to tell. I came upon the flocks while doing the census, I heard their racket long before I saw the birds. Racket, din or cacophony, any of those would fit, it’s not that the volume was high, it was just the overwhelming sensation of a sky-high wall of chatter. How many birds were there I have no idea, I wrote down 2,000 Red-winged Blackbirds and 2,000 Common Grackles, but it could quite posibly have been twice that number; or just as easily half. They filled the branches of several large riverside oak and hackberry trees, gossiping, sallying out for a quick fly-around or just slipping over to visit friends until, for who knows what reason, they decided it was time to move on. In my diary I wrote: “They left in chattering streams heading over the mansion and away. They seemed to suck all the life out of the census round”. They were Birds of the Day; sheer numbers have it.

Had I not encountered the blackbirds I think a young male Northern Parula that we banded would have stolen my heart. Parulas have an appeal built on downright prettiness, it’s not that they’re rare, not especially anyway. But seeing one is always a rare treat. And then again, the first White-throated Sparrows of fall are quite captivating too, and we saw and banded several. Again, it’s not that they’re rare, they pass through each spring and fall, heading to cooler boggy areas in which to breed. (In fact, there are a few breeding pairs just 50 Km. north of the bird observatory but in dark bogs and swampy woodlands; almost a world away.) White-throated Sparrows have an appeal built on their, at times, elusive nature poking around in the understory but then a quite compliant, almost resigned, attitude once caught in a mist net and banded. Pretty too. Here’s a couple of photos of White-throated Sparrows from previous encounters.

22 September 2014. Cayuga ON. It’s a pet peeve of mine that ‘people’ talk about the “official’ beginning or end of a season. According to these pedants, yesterday the 21st of September, was the end of summer and today the official start of fall; such hogwash! Firstly, in my book, summer is when the weather is nice and warm, winter when it’s cold, spring is when things start to grow again and autumn is when it turns cold and the leaves drop. Secondly, here in the mid latitudes (we’re at 43 degrees north) the seasons can, I admit, reasonably be parceled into 3-month blocks lying between the defined solstice and equinox dates; but if you live in Reykjavik, Louisiana, or Tokyo for that matter, it’s a different matter.

Well, while that was all a rant of little consequence, it’s worth noting that the birds migrate when the time is right. Whether they respond to daylight length, the presence or absence of a certain food or the first snow squalls, who really knows. At the bird observatory we see many species pass through in determinable sequential waves and they never seem to pay any heed to anyone’s official dates, they have their own rhythms.

In the past few days, we’ve seen the odd Broad-winged Hawk pass overhead, the stragglers of a wave of perhaps a quarter of a million that surged through southern Ontario ten days ago, effectively a concentrated wave passing through and now gone south for the winter. Today I encountered the first few White-throated Sparrows of fall, a female Ruby-crowned Kinglet and a Slate-coloured Junco, each the advance guard of waves yet to come and go. It’s all a bit like the water draining out of a bath.

I don’t mean to sound dreary even though today’s Bird of the Day, a young Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, was well, drab. Funny thing about sapsuckers is their rather shambolic dress. Whoever dresses them needs to pay more attention to style, coordination and colour accents. As it is, they look rather like a down-on-his-luck widower who’s never sure where he keeps his shirts or socks. Still, despite having no clothes sense, and tending towards reclusiveness they are pretty wonderful birds. I mean, a large part of their diet comprises insects drawn to the sticky secretions of sap around holes that the birds themselves make in the bark of trees; how clever. I got to handle and band today’s young sapsucker and it was, I think, something of a privilege. It certainly knows how to use its feet to hold on tight, and that beak means business. Here area few photos of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers taken at different times and places.

18 September 2014. Burlington ON. Through an organization to which I belong, I recently offered to lead birding trips for anyone interested. I know there are many who’d like to learn more about birds, but getting started seems to be daunting.

Today I had just one person join me on a pleasant walk around; we had a very rewarding three hours. The splendour of a male Northern Cardinal or Wood Duck never lessens but it’s nice to share the appreciation with someone who’s really seeing it for the first time. I suspect my discussions on the finer points of Trumpeter Swans (versus Tundra and Mute Swans) and the key identification points on a Gray Catbird or Green-winged Teal in eclipse plumage (as against nearby Mallards) may need revisiting; but never mind, we both enjoyed it. I noted that we saw about thirty species including a pair of adult Bald Eagles passing overhead and a Green Heron stalking minnows.

We stopped along a boardwalk where birds suddenly started popping up. I have to admit that many of those fleeting glimpses left me mumbling ‘Not sure.” But I captured a lucky and actually very nice photo of one, which had caused me quite a bit of head-scratching. I’m not ashamed to acknowledge that my first quick-glance impression was that it was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet; except that the overall colour was wrong and it’s a little early to see them on their fall migration, October is a better time.

But my lucky photo (above) was a dignity-saver. It is a hatch-year, female Chestnut-sided Warbler. The vivid yellow-green on its back is diagnostic and if you compare it to the youngish male below, photographed in May 2012, it’s a bit of a stretch to tie the two together as the same species.  (The male was probably in its first spring, the chestnut extends further down the flanks in older birds.)

I remember seeing and being puzzled by a young female Chestnut-sided some years ago, but while there’s always something to learn, it’s also too easily forgotten.

I have just posted an account of my birding experiences earlier this month in Spain.  I am still working on some of the identification challenges; it’s one thing, in the heat of the moment, to photograph a bird and quite another to remember what it was afterwards.  Anyway, click on this link for the almost-full story.