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19 – 21 August 2013, Haliburton ON. I’m writing this to the background of a Red-eyed Vireo singing in the forest canopy above. I think it’s late in the year for bird song, but for reasons best known to the vireos at least some of them are still tracing calls through the late summer air.

We are privileged to be enjoying a few days at some friends’ summer cottage on the shore of a beautiful northern lake. Ontario has thousands of square miles of lakes and forest country, most of it inaccessible.  But a few hundred square miles of such countryside all within a three or four hour drive from our major urban areas is known affectionately as Up North, cottage country.  It’s a countryside of often heart-stopping beauty, dramatic rounded hills clothed in forests of maples, birch, oak, aspen and beech punctuated by bold evergreens and interlaced with glassy reflecting lakes. At any time of year it is, as my cousin put it, superb.

The bird life here is captivating if not hugely diverse.  I’ve noted about 20 species in the couple of days we’ve been here: I’ve heard Common Ravens rolling their hollow croaks, a Pileated Woodpecker’s laugh, round and ringing, and now a Blue Jay or two are shrieking to each other some way off to the right.

But the signature bird sounds of this cottage are the buzzing flights of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, like the thumb-flipped pages of a book, and the occasional two and three syllable phrases of Red-eyed Vireos.

Both species hang around faithfully all day.  The hummingbirds come to an overhead feeder for a sip of syrup every three or four minutes.  There’s at least three birds and I’m not sure whether they love or hate each other. Presumably they are related, young siblings perhaps, but whatever their connection there’s never more than one at the feeder even though you’d think there’s plenty of room at for a dozen or more.  They don’t tolerate interlopers and there always seems to be one that wants to muscle in on another’s nectar stop, so we watch little high-speed hummingbird dramas, chaser and chased, They chase and weave like mini Star Wars fighters, one lightning strike following the other barely centimeters behind, swerving and careening in tight-turning arcs, zipping through glimpses of daylight between overlapping branches with microns to spare.  And yet for all of that rarely does the chase last more than three or four seconds when all is forgiven until the next trespass.

 

Half a dozen times an hour, a couple of young Red-eyed Vireos emerge from the security of a thick cedar hedge to gulp ripe berries from the scarlet panicles of an Alternate-leaved Dogwood.  They don’t stay long, a handful of mouthfuls then they dash back into cover.  Their priorities are: Not fall prey to a hungry Sharp-shinned Hawk; Build up muscle mass and fat reserves and; Complete growth of flight and body feathers.  Their eyes show a brownish rather than red iris, which I believe indicates they are juvenile birds.  One of them is still quite rough looking as it finishes growing its flight and body feathers that must take it through the next six to eight months.  In the picture you can see that some of its head feathers are still emerging and its greater and lesser coverts (wings feathers) have not yet grown in evenly.

The pleasure of watching the hummingbirds and vireos, learning and anticipating their routines and trying for the perfect photo made any ambitions for finding more species irrelevant.  I have my book, my coffee and my birds of the days right in front of me.

Slideshow pictures above of the vireos and hummingbirds are only visible if you’re logged onto the my Bird of the Day site, not if you’re reading this as an email.

14 August 2013. Burlington ON. In the past 24 hours a strong cold front swept down from the north giving us our first hint of the leaf-drop months ahead.  It’s not that it’s suddenly turned cold, it’s just relatively colder than the past month or two, cool enough that I bring my pots of orchids indoors for the night.  As these cold fronts sweep through, starting now as summer wanes and continuing into November, they trigger a surge of birds, as if they’ve been cued that it’s time to clear out.  I noticed the first responders yesterday afternoon, I stepped out of the house to investigate the loud shrieking of a Merlin, an unusual bird here at any time, and looking up saw swirls of southwestward bound Chimney Swifts swooping and tumbling in the buffeting winds.

One of the best spots to see fall migrants around here is a certain lakeside resting-place called Woodland Cemetery.  For many the chance will surely come to spend a lot of time in a cemetery and I’m not trying to rush anyone into it, but in late summer and fall a quiet hour or two here will reward you with some good birding. I went there this morning.

I saw singles of Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Yellow Warbler and Red-eyed Vireo, any of which could just as easily have been local birds, not migrants.  I could hear a bit of commotion and soon came across a couple of family groups: three or four Baltimore Orioles, mostly juveniles although one of the group was still trying to sing so perhaps it was an adult male, and as many as five Northern Flickers.  I managed to get these photographs, (click to enlarge) both of youngsters I think: the oriole is probably a female, determined by the orangey wash being very light across its middle and strongest on its upper breast, and also its scapular (or shoulder) feathers are brownish-grey with dark centres;  The young male flicker has still not developed all of his flight feathers, some of them are still a little truncate and his red patch in the back of his head is rather muted. The malar stripe (moustache) makes it a male.

There will be many more days trying to get glimpses of departing birds, the bird population is at its highest right now with the young of the year included.  But the long journey south, predators along the way and for some the winter scarcity of food will weed out many of them before next year’s breeding season.

12 August 2013.  Morriston ON.  My only foray into the woods today drew a blank.  I think I heard distant Black-capped Chickadees and Great-crested Flycatchers, but that’s about it.  There were tons of mosquitoes though and even a liberal (for me) application of bug repellent achieved only partial protection.  As a precaution I pulled on an old white business shirt that I keep in my car for going into biting-insect territory, light colours supposedly helps minimize your mosquito-appeal and it’s also a bit of recognition that I have no further use for business shirts; retirement’s revenge.

Leaving all of that behind I set off to a country clothing outfitters in search of some really good wet-weather boots. My 45 year-old wellies, while still rugged and perfectly watertight, are absolute murder on my aging feet.  Heading west and driving along a quiet country road, I spotted a large pond surrounded in large part by pasture land and flanked on one side by a rather comfortable looking home. Those homeowners have set up a rather nice little dock at the pond’s edge with a larger sitting area at its end together with a couple of comfortable chairs and a canoe tied alongside. Just offshore a fountain of considerable capacity spews an unending plume of water.  I suspect that such a continuous aeration of the pond has significantly changed the ecology of the pond and whether it’s for the better or not probably depends on whether you ask pre- or post-fountain organisms.  But it looks pretty, there are sparkling white water lilies scattered here and there and the pond’s perimeter is defined with tall cattails.

Scanning across the pond I watched a Great Blue Heron beating the living daylights out of a small catfish. I learned how to prepare a catfish lunch, here’s what you do: shake it hard, smack it against a log a couple of times, drop it and watch for movement, lunge and stab again, shake a bit more and finally a couple more whacks seems to do the trick. Serve immediately.

Just along from the Great Blue Heron was a Green Heron, I was startled by the size difference.  It’s not that I always thought of Green Herons as big birds, it’s just that’s seeing them side by side really emphasized how small the Green Heron is.

Then in the middle of the pond I found a couple of Pied-billed Grebes, an adult and a juvenile; they really made my day.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Pied-billed Grebe; they become quite hard to find, even elusive while breeding, seeking out ponds and small lakes with dense emergent vegetation like cattails. They are an odd duck (to coin a phrase), unlike most grebes they score pretty low on the elegance quotient, they sit in the water with a rather hump-backed look and are coloured from the drab end of the palette.  Almost all authors are at pains to draw attention to their bill, perhaps it’s the most notable thing about them for it’s so strikingly chicken-like and, as the bird’s name suggests, it’s pied.

But for all that they’re neat birds.  They are the hallmark of a small lake or pond and have the ability to sink without effort until there’s just a periscope poking above water.  You can see the difference in the pictures below. It’s almost as if it has pulled out the drain plug.  That’s almost what’s happened, in fact by compressing its body feathers it has squeezed out the air and reduced its buoyancy; a clever trick.

Two pictures above will probably not be visible if you’re reading this as an email.  Go to the site to see them in all their glory

8 August 2013. Port Maitland ON. The Short-billed and the Long-billed Dowitchers are closely related, almost identical shorebirds, so alike that it takes pages of the best references to tease out the fine distinguishing details. I have a 1905 field guide which includes a footnote to the Dowitcher which reads: “Long-billed Dowitcher is found in western N.A.  The bill is supposed to be longer, but the plumage is identical and the birds probably are’. So somewhere along the way the two were declared to be separate species, which leaves us trying to figure out which is which.

Distinguishing those differences in the field is a tough go for most birders, especially when you’re looking across a mudflat to the distant far side where most shorebirds hang out.  Geography helps a bit, exactly where you are in North America in relation to the species’ distribution and migratory patterns sometimes helps; it so happens that we’re in an area where Short-billed Dowitchers are the default species.  In other parts of the continent it’s not so cut and dried and to complicate matters there are distinct sub-species of the Short-billed Dowitcher. At risk of belabouring the whole matter I quote from Pete Dunne’s analysis, “The degree of difference between Short-billed and Long-billed also varies between subspecies.  The Atlantic form of Short-billed is most unlike Long-billed in size, shape and breeding plumage; the prairie form most closely resembles Long-billed in breeding plumage and the pacific form comes closest to long-billed in size.”  Does that help?

It’s too much for me and I think local birders are on pretty safe ground to call any dowitcher a Short-billed Dowitcher.  That’s what I did today.

But what of the day?  I took a trip to some open mudflats and once I’d made my peace with the affable guardian in the Ford F150 pick-up, I enjoyed some excellent shorebird watching.  

I stopped first at a weed-clogged pond where a hen Wood Duck was shepherding her brood around.  The babes have all grown up, they’re the same size as mum, but obedient nevertheless.  Nearby a family of Eastern Kingbirds and loose groups of Barn Swallows found lots of flying insects to pick from the water lily leaves.

At the mudflats, an adult Bald Eagle flew heavily from left to right and set the shorebirds scattering for a few minutes, but they eventually calmed down, so I set up my telescope.

It was marvelous: lots of beautiful classic Greater Yellowlegs, they were easily distinguished from just as many Lesser Yellowlegs.  A few Pectoral Sandpipers showing their crisp brown bibs, some busy invertebrate-picking Semi-palmated Sandpipers, and a group of five or six Short-billed Dowitchers.  The sight of them made me gasp they were so plump and orangey, so perfectly-shorebirdish, so Bird of the Day.

Then my telescope broke and took the fun  out of it all. Without it I have NO hope of even teasing myself with shorebird i.d.

However all is not lost, there’s always spring birding along the Atlantic coast.  A little over a year ago I was on the New Jersey shore at a place called Stone Harbor, nearby were many other nautical place names like : Carnival Bay and Long Reach and what they all had in common was streets lined with seaside condo-homes and shops stuffed full of gifts, sunglasses and T-shirts.  All of which incidentally was virtually wiped off the map five months later by Hurricane Sandy. But anyway when I was there, Arctic-bound Short-billed Dowitchers were quite abundant and easily approached along the edges of the inner harbour salt marshes.  Here are some photos of various shorebirds from that visit but you’ll only be able to see them if you’re logged on the website, not if viewed as an email.

2 August 2013. Hamilton ON. It’s a jarring paradox that some of our best birding opportunities are found in some of the ugliest of places.  Hamilton Harbour can be a nasty place, sandwiched between a six lane highway and the gritty and grimy edges of a city that prospered from producing steel.  The harbour has many inlets, tributaries, hard edges, wharves and mud banks, but if you turn your back on the industrial sectors, it becomes almost gracious particularly along its west side where it borders quiet, green neighbourhoods where house prices, even with a view of blast furnaces, are chillingly high.

It’s at one of the smellier, squishy ends of the harbour that birders and shorebirds flock in late summer. Shorebirds stop here to refuel on their journey from the Arctic where they nested (or perhaps more accurately failed to nest, which may account for why some appear so early.)  The outflow from the city’s sewage plant discharges into the harbour and in a project designed to ameliorate the worst of conditions and at the same time provide recreational opportunities (!), the city has created a system of impoundments, marshes, islands and settling ponds, it’s these that the birds find so attractive.

Where there’s muck there’s invertebrates, and where there’s invertebrates there’ll be birds to eat them. Chacun a son goût.

This morning before anyone else in the house was about, I went to see what I could find and identify.  Viewed over long distances, shorebirds can be very challenging, there are many lookalikes and subtle colour and size differences are often hard to determine.  Still it was quite rewarding despite the scratchy plants around my ankles, rich odours and traffic roar.  An island in the middle distance is home to a large colony of Common Terns and some are still busy feeding hungry youngsters. Scouring the edges I found several Lesser Yellowlegs, Least Sandpipers and (with some help) a Stilt Sandpiper and two Semi-palmated Plovers.  My best bird, seen briefly and spotted running up the stony banks of the terns’ island was a Ruddy Turnstone.

Two years ago I spent two weeks at a bird observatory at Long Point, Ontario. Ruddy Turnstones were a dime a dozen there. You had to admire them not just for their beauty and approachability, but for their heavy diet of Stable Flies, a nasty biting fly which swarmed in the decaying windrows of wave-tossed aquatic vegetation along the shore.

Today’s bird was still brightly marked in breeding plumage, a lucky sighting because in short order they will moult to a less striking though still elegant plumage for the winter months ahead.  The Ruddy Turnstone is probably the most colourful and dramatically marked shorebird of the northern hemisphere although the American Avocet or Eurasia’s Lapwing might be considered rivals.  You’d wonder why some shorebirds can be so cryptically coloured while others are almost splashy in their finery.  I suspect the answer is that even a dramatic, and to us exuberant, plumage is exactly the right camouflage for a bird on its nest.