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23 June 2013.  Norfolk Co. ON.  Today was my day to lead a naturalists’ club hike studying birds and ferns; the latter being a newish interest of mine.  There are about 75 species of fern in the province so I believe competency at identifying of 20-30 of the commoner ones is within reach.  However this morning’s guided walk started in the humid aftermath of a night of thunderstorms, the temperature was soaring by 8.00 a.m. and the mosquito population was up early in anticipation of a fruitful day.

As we waited for the rest of the group to arrive, I explored the forest growth along the roadside.  It was instantly rewarding, I could hear a Gray Catbird buried in the cedars, a not-far-away Veery, tree-top Red-Eyed Vireos and a busy-body Yellow Warbler, all singing lustily, apparently happy with a day that promised plenty of insect food for their young broods.  I thought I could hear a Black and White Warbler a little further away and went looking for it, it eventually showed itself quite openly and as if to join in the action, a male Magnolia Warbler popped out to take a look at me.  Now Magnolia Warblers are birds that we usually see on spring and fall migrations only, they’re a species that breeds much farther north, it was certainly unexpected at this time and place.  Perhaps it was a very late migrant (it happens) or a bird that had lost its compass and ended up in the wrong part of Ontario.  Either way it was Bird of the Day, not only for it’s unusualness, but also for it’s dramatic beauty.  Few birds match an adult male Magnolia Warbler for dramatic splendour and I’m including a photograph to prove that point.  I’ll add my apology for its blurriness, it’s not up to the standard I have set myself, my excuse is unfamiliarity with a new camera.

The day produced about 40 different species of birds including a surprising number of warblers; in addition to three already noted we found Ovenbird, Black-throated Green, Chestnut-sided, and Pine Warblers too.

And the ferns? Well they can be baffling but, as is often the case with the focused study of a new subject, the blurs are slowly giving way to distinctions, I can almost distinguish between young Cinnamon and Interrupted Ferns, and I know a Hay-scented Fern when I see it.  And if all of this sounds obscure and a touch so-what-ish, well that’s the way it goes studying ferns.

18 June 2013.  Norfolk Co. ON.  Today was Hooded Warbler Day, they have eluded me for the past couple of years.  I’ve heard them on a few occaisions and some good people have told me where I could see them and even pointed out where one was just a minute earlier.  I’ve seen Hooded Warblers in mist nets and in the hands of a bird bander (those don’t count) and most frustratingly, as a flash of vanishing yellow in a tangle of exuberant shrubbery, but I’d never really clapped eyes on one to my full satisfaction. My growing awareness of this lapse was sooner or later bound to collide with the increasing population of Hooded Warblers in Ontario, and today it all came together.

A friend and I were visiting a favourite old-growth woodland in preparation for leading a Ferns and Birds field trip next weekend.  Focusing mostly on ferns, we kept out heads down trying to unravel the many fern identification mysteries that entangle us (and that will surely make sharing our limited knowledge even harder).  It’s not really relevant to a bird blog, but there are many subtle differences between members of the dryopteris family of ferns in Ontario, and the dryopteris are a notoriously libertine bunch producing many apparent hybrids with oddball characteristics; a bit like the royal families of Europe. Anyway as we peered at fern sori, pinnae and pinules we were moderately aware of bird song around us and every now and then one of us would mutter “Veery”, “Ovenbird” or “Rose-breasted Grosbeak”, they were the background sounds of the forest today.

But there was another song that wandered around us, “Weeet- a weeet- a weetoo”. After some head-scratching debate we thought we knew it: Hooded Warbler!, worth getting up off our knees for!  And not to drag this drama on needlessly, I’ll just say that over the next hour or so we found a couple of brilliant, singing males as well as a female carrying food for her brood tucked somewhere in the undergrowth around us.

My day’s notes tell that we studied 14 species of fern and paid attention to 26 species of bird including three high-impact birds in quick succession: Scarlet Tanager, Black-throated Green Warbler and a nervous looking Veery . A Pileated Woodpecker swooped between old trees giving us only fleeting glimpses and we were surprised by a Chestnut-sided Warbler appearing from some roadside willows, but none of these could upstage the Hooded Warblers; it feels like we’ve finally been introduced.

16 June 2013. Bruce Peninsula, ON.  We spent two days intensively birding Ontario’s beautiful and sometimes rugged Bruce Peninsula; “The Bruce” they call it.  This is the same piece of Ontario geography where I spent much of mid-May (click any of these for various May blog posts). Despite many jaw-dropping rivals the Bird of both Days was an Upland Sandpiper.

Upland Sandpiper despite: a tiny, diminutive Piping Plover on its nest (listed as ‘threatened’ or ‘endangered’ almost everywhere); Sandhill Cranes with their young, rusty-downy ‘colts’; and a pair of Brewer’s Blackbirds, a species which to the best of my recollection, I’d never seen before.

Upland Sandpiper despite a singing Cerulean Warbler neck-scrunchingly high in the tops of some Sugar Maples; despite a male Scarlet Tanager seen from above by looking over the edge of a precipice to where it was on cedar treetops, shockingly scarlet against the palette of greens; and despite a glorious orange and black, female Blackburnian Warbler gathering food for her nestlings.

Despite all of the distractions the Upland Sandpiper was Bird of the Day for me.  They are grassland divas; really rather un-dramatic in plumage, but it’s their way of making themselves known that captivates.  First you hear the aerial wolf-whistle, a long, rising ‘Wheeeeeet’ followed by a leisurely and falling “weeoooooo”.  That gets my attention I can tell you.  Then I usually spot them flying quickly across the fields, usually heading to a fence post where they alight and then, as if to acknowledge thunderous applause, they hold high their wings, tips together and showing dark under-wings for a second or two.  After settling, they stand quietly on the post, beady eyed, watching attentively over the open fields, perhaps on the lookout for trouble.  So elegant, so ballerina-ish, so Bird of the Weekend.

I had many more breath-drawing gasps this weekend and to list too many would be tiresome, but there were: Blue-headed Vireos singing their exaggerated songs, Black Terns swooping over marshes and a Grasshopper Sparrow doing what they do best: sounding like a grasshopper in the grass.  Among warblers, in the ‘heard but not seen’ category were: Ovenbird, Mourning, Nashville, Black-throated Green and Black and White Warbler.  Definitely seen and enjoyed included were Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Yellow, and Yellow-rumped Warblers.  The list is not endless of course but our two birding days turned up a cast of just over a hundred species.

I can’t close without acknowledging the company of endlessly singing Red-eyed Vireos, both Eastern Meadowlarks and Bobolinks fluttering like large wind-caught leaves over the hay fields and a vocally responsive but hidden Sora. And there were the butterflies, dragonflies, ferns and hundreds of flowering Yellow Lady Slipper orchids too. Almost too much for one weekend. Here are a few photos from the weekend: a Cedar Waxwing, the Grasshopper Sparrow, the Scarlet Tanager, a Male Fern and some Yellow Lady Slipper orchids.

14 June 2013. Today I joined a team of biologists looking to confirm the presence of Acadian Flycatchers in an area where they’ve been found, at least one has – maybe there’s a pair. Let’s hope.  Acadian Flycatchers are rare in Ontario but really widespread across the eastern half of the U.S.A.  Southern Ontario is at the northern limit of the Acadian Flycatchers’ range and that makes it rare and worth paying attention to.   At this particular site we had a decent expectation of spotting one and were in luck. One approached us close enough to get a couple of decent shots in the gloom.  Here it is, unquestionably Bird of the Day.

The rest of our morning was pleasant if largely uneventful. For a while we listened to a Scarlet Tanager and discussed the difference between its song and that of the Rose-breasted Grosbeak.  They are confusable, yet if you hear them both more or less together, they’re easy to tell apart.  Various authors describe the Scarlet Tanager’s song as like a robin with a sore throat, which is a fair description, and to that I would add that it sounds somewhat bored.  The tired sounding song has a pendulum rhythm, sort of, “o–kay, if – I must, I’ll – sing, hows –that”.  The Grosbeak too has a bit of back and forth, yet not as rhythmically, its notes are purer, more rounded and often seem disconnected from each other.

 

9 June 2013.  Flamborough ON.  This was the day of the Dawn Chorus bird outing.  Dawn arrived okay and so did the birds, but very few people seemed to want to haul themselves out of bed for a 05.20 start; so our numbers were thin. Still it turned out to be a blockbuster morning, not just for birds but also for turtles, snakes, ferns and orchids.

We enjoyed the songs of grassland birds from the scenic top of a drumlin (an abrupt teardrop-shaped hill left as a pile of glacial till by the receding ice sheet). It was a bit early and even the birds seemed to find it hard going, but there were a few Bobolinks in the air, singing and fluttering over their hayfield nest sites. A distant Brown Thrasher was singing from atop a skeletal old elm tree. We wandered down the trail dabbing insect repellant as we entered the boggy realm of singing Canada Warblers, Northern Waterthrushes and Great-crested Flycatchers.  I tallied about 30 species before we moved a couple of kilometers  to see what we could find along the roadside between a swampy creek and some powerlines that cut across the road.  This kept us busy for a long time and was really productive, there were Alder Flycatchers calling a brisk yet buzzy “Free– bee o”, White-throated Sparrows singing far off and a Warbling Vireo getting started on a non-stop day-long rendition of its dreamy, rambling song: “ If I sees ya I will seize an I’ll squeeze ya till ya hurt.”

Bird of the Day was a Veery seen singing from the heights of a dead maple.  Veerys aren’t often seen, they’re delicate, subtle and elegant but there’s not much in the way of visual fireworks about them, it’s mostly about their song, they seem to prefer the depths of a forest to sing their “Veer-veer-veer-vv tktktkt” song.  It starts emphatically and quickly fades and tapers as if, really, it’s a secret.  It has a rolling cadence that makes you think it might be trickling down a long, cast-iron drainpipe; it’s obviously hard to describe.  I used the adjective ethereal, one that every writer seems to fall back on; nothing else quite captures the breathless will-o-the-wisp essence of this song – a song that can stop me dead in my tracks.

Dawn chorus was now well under way, everything from Swamp Sparrows to Great-crested Flycatchers, Blue Jays to American Redstarts was in full song.  We watched a large lugubrious Snapping Turtle laying eggs in the roadside gravel and admired Yellow Ladyslipper Orchids almost lost in the coarse sedges beside a small watercourse.

At our last stop, an elevated boardwalk across a large cattail swamp, we came across an entangled, copulating pair of Northern Water Snakes.  There was a marked size difference, the female (presumably since they are known to be wider and longer) was stout, with a diameter of perhaps three or four centimeters and as much as a meter or so in length, although of course this is only a rough guess as pictures will attest.  The male was half her girth and apparently somewhat shorter. All things being equal, following a gestation period of about three months, the female will bear live young, all of which will immediately be self reliant; she’s had enough of them by then.  This is not a snake to mess with, water snakes are not venomous, but they have a fearsome reputation for putting up a vigorous biting fight and we kept our distance mostly out of respect for their task at hand.