Category: Uncategorized

26 July 2013. Burlington ON. As if I needed it, today I got a reminder of the value of sitting down.  Not the sitting down you do to watch t.v, or even sitting down because some officious functionary tells you to, but sitting patiently in silence to watch, wait and listen; to see what pops up.

I was exploring a new-to-me woodland, following a well defined but little used path.  The woodland was open, sun-flecked and dry, mostly Sugar Maples overhead and some interesting ferns in the rocky edges.  There were family groups of American Robins and Northern Flickers around,  the robins clucked nervously and milled around, the flickers were quite vocal, chuckling and calling whilst playing improve-your-flight-for-better-fitness games. Interestingly, though not ground-breakingly so, I saw four kinds of woodpecker there, the aforementioned flickers, then Downy, Hairy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers, all in the same general area. And speaking of that general area, it was a rather open expanse that sloped away towards denser cover, I found a convenient log and sat quietly for a long time watching over a wide expanse of forest.  There was lots more activity including many Black-capped Chickadees, a couple of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, an Eastern Wood Peewee, Red-eyed Vireos and far away, a singing Winter Wren.

I had to listen hard to be sure it was a Winter Wren, such a faint, tiny and thread-like song.  I sat quietly waiting to see if it would come closer, and over the period of twenty minutes or so it did indeed seem to move in my direction.  In time it grew much louder until to my delight, it came close enough to be able to see.  Despite the lateness of the season, I conjecture that it was staking out the boundary of its territory just as some traditionalist villagers do to this day in England.  Many years ago my cousin participated in the ancient Beating of the Bounds of the City of Southampton; it would doubtless be a long walk but perhaps it ended at a pub.

The delight of the day was when the Winter Wren ended up on a branch over my head, singing its heart out.  For a bird the size of a baby’s fist it packs a powerful song.  I managed to get loads of pictures and even make a decent movie of it in full song.  I have posted it on YouTube, click here and let me know what you think. It was so obliging! I’ve rarely been able to get more than a glimpse of a Winter Wren, they usually creep around among the darkest roots and lowest branches, rarely emerging, and even then only to fly quickly away to the next dark and impossible recess. This Winter Wren did everything possible to be my Bird of the Day.

Much later I stopped at a bridge that crossed a quiet slow moving river where the tinny chittering of a family of Eastern Kingbirds filled the air.  In the bright sunlight I was able to get some nice photos of one of them, rewarding because you don’t often get to look down on them like this, another obliging bird. A good day to be out.

22 July 2013.  Flamborough ON. I know that I go on a lot commenting on the change in seasons.  I can’t help it, it’s unavoidable when you’re studying the natural world and birds in particular.  The middle of July is the time when the many birds (passerines in particular) turn off their more active territorial behaviours. It makes the birding experience quite different.  Without the obvious evidence of song the woods and field seem empty, although of course they’re not; in fact quite the opposite because now we have the young of the year supplementing the bird populations.

The suffocating heat of last week kept me indoors for too long so now that temperatures are normal or almost chilly, I was eager to get out and look for ferns and birds. I set out to some of my favourite places.

My first stop was to follow the course of a clear stream through a dense and mostly quiet Eastern White Cedar forest.  It was a bit of a Hans Christian Andersen setting: burbling brook, the occasional cawing of a crow and deep, shady elf-groves – very peaceful; not many birds, but plenty of challenging ferns.

Emerging at a quiet country road I made my way back to my car and then the bird list grew a bit.  In several places, pairs of Common Yellowthroats were feeding young and chipping loudly to assure them that food’s coming.  A couple of treetop Great Crested Flycatchers called out and a distant Winter Wren was singing its tumbling unwinding song from somewhere impossible to get to unless you’re the size of a wren.

My Bird of the Day was a Pileated Woodpecker that I first heard calling from a way back in the swampy woods, it grew closer and for a while I wondered if there was more than one: fledglings maybe.  Eventually an adult flew out, crossing the road overhead in its heavy flap-and-swoop flight.  I tried to re-find it where I believed it had landed but as soon as it saw me it took off again.  Pileated Woodpeckers are neat birds, big and loud but usually shy.  The ‘pileated’ part of its name is derived from the word pileaus or cap, a reference to its conspicuous crest. The term pileus is often used in the study of mushrooms where the cap is properly called the pileus.

When I headed home I felt I’d recharged my batteries, all that was left to do was report the marijuana grow-op I’d found; I didn’t mention that did I?  Well, that’s another story.

20 July 2013.  Burlington ON. I remember two of my earliest encounters with the Carolina Wren, on both occasions I heard the bird and it baffled me.  At Point Pelee sometime in the early eighties  I heard a lound ringing ‘weedly weedly weedly” from high in the hardwood canopy .  I had absolutely no idea what I was hearing but I stored the song away for another day.  Similarly and many years later I was driving along a residential stretch of the lakeshore , an area of mature homes and generous tree cover, I caught a few moments of a clear multi-syllable song echoing in the parklike gardens.  Again, I had no idea, and again I tucked the memory away for another day. It was not until many years later, as Carolina Wrens became more common and I more experienced, that I put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Today I was doing a drive-around to inspect a number of residential properties in preparation for a meeting a couple of days hence.  I was back in that same neighbourhood of mature homes and generous tree cover referred to above.  I was neither surprised nor puzzled this time to hear Carolina Wren song but what was notable was that there were two  birds singing and it seemed pretty evident that each was making quite clear to the other that they had better not come any closer.  Their song is distinctive in its full-bodied and rounded tones and the phrasing, while variable, is unmistakable. The two birds today were singing slightly different songs, one an emphatic and challenging “Sh-beedle, sh-beedle, sh-beedle” and the other was pitched a little lower and had more of a resigned exhaling quality: ‘chew-lee chew-lee chew lee.”

I’m not particularly well versed on the subject and subtleties of bird song, but I recently read that while competing individual chickadee songs may sound superficially identical to us, changes in pitch affect the responses of different birds and their apparent perception of relative dominance.  Were these two slightly different wren songs nothing more than two neighbours with different voices maintaining property lines or was there an infinitely more complex interaction going on?

We have just emerged from of a a week of punishing heat and humidity that ended abruptly in a night of loud and destructive thunderstorms.  I don’t how birds made out, but I stayed indoors and attended to some long postponed chores in the basement, the coolest place in the house.  If ever there was confirmation that I’m a fair-weather birder that was it.  On my rounds today I stopped at a couple of places along the shoreline of Lake Ontario to gaze across its flat expanse.  I saw a long line of Double Crested Cormorants flying low over the waters and took a couple of quick pictures although I hardly expected they’d be keepers. On closer examination I was struck by the abstract effect the heat haze and atmospheric distortion made upon the pictures.  For what it’s worth, here they are.  (You’ll need to log on to the website to see these. They don’t or won’t work within an email, if that’s how you’re reading me.)

12 July 2013. Cabot Head, ON.  This place is nice, especially if you’re okay with Poison Ivy and rattlesnakes.  There are lots of the former and very few of the latter; I think that would be about the right relative proportions. Poison Ivy, while abundant and nastily toxic, is fairly easy to see and avoid and doesn’t lie quietly invisible against the background, harmless one minute and potentially problematic the next.

Today was, for a couple of reasons, a day of serpents because we managed to find and inspect quite closely a smallish Massasauga Rattlesnake and a couple of Northern Water Snakes.  When we spotted the rattlesnake in the middle of the quiet country road, we got out of the car for a closer look, we kept a respectful distance knowing that it preferred to move away quickly rather than stand its ground; it nevertheless buzzed softly at us as it slid away.  (A day later we stopped to allow a much larger one cross a busier road and it made a distinctively loud buzzing rattle as it hastened into the forest edge.) Sadly we also saw twice as many dead rattlesnakes along the road this week as we saw live ones. Not everyone feels all that serene about venomous snakes, but our little Massasauga Rattlesnakes are not aggressive, they’re defensive (& they’ll bite if cornered or harassed); I’d much prefer car drivers run over Poison Ivy.

Anyway, all of this is to set the scene for today’s Bird of the Day.  Wanting to get underneath the canopy from where I could hear American Redstarts, Black & White Warblers, Nashville Warblers and Red-eyed Vireos singing, I picked my way through drifts of Poison Ivy into a cedar and spruce forest.  I soon startled a family of Ruffed Grouse, parents and young brood I can only assume.  The thing about Ruffed Grouse is that when you startle a bunch of them, they’ll startle you back by exploding away in all directions.  You’re so confused by the whirring and noisy flapping of wings and the urgent scampering that it’s hard to know which bird to focus on.  I managed to follow one as it flew low to about 100 meters ahead where it promptly vanished into the Poison Ivy undergrowth.  I followed after it, and it did the same again; there was no way I’d get much closer, I had to satisfy myself with fleeting views.

11 July 2013. Cabot Head, ON. After yesterday’s storm the world is now all about tranquil summer again.  We took an exploratory trip looking for ferns, wildflowers (orchids especially) and such birds as would oblige us.  We had not expected to come across a Black Bear though, but as we headed along a little-travelled and gravelly country road we spotted one just over the crest of the next rise. We drove closer to where he was plodding along, but as soon as he saw the car he turned sharply and headed into the bush.  I think he may well have cut across someone’s back yard but that’s probably commonplace around here.  We did find ferns, a beautiful array of Maidenhair Spleenwort and Bulblet Fern growing from a mossy rock crevice, and we also found wonderful displays of wildflowers and orchids: Pitcher Plant, Rose Pogonia and Grass Pink among them.

(By the way, we’ve learned that many of these multi-photo gallery uploads will only display on the blog website, not if you’re opening this from an email.)

But my Bird of the Day was found before the day had really got started for most people. I’d taken a pre-breakfast birding walk and spent several minutes watching and admiring a Merlin that had arrived atop a nearby Jack Pine.  I hastened to get a long-distance photo then moved a few steps closer before taking another, then few more steps more and so on until eventually I was quite close, every time getting a better photo.  Still it stayed where it was, calling to its mate or nestlings before eventually flying off towards them.  It was only after I took a closer look at the photos that I saw that it was apparently carrying food, it’s hard to tell quite what but its colour suggests a Cedar Waxwing.