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11 March 2013. Tundra Swans, a touch repetitive I know, after all they were my Bird of the Day a couple of weeks ago.  But today was a landmark day, the swans’ return.

These elegant and seemingly gentle birds breed in Alaska and Canada’s far north, and winter (most of them) in their hundreds of thousands along the Atlantic coast and around Chesapeake Bay.  Somehow in very early March they know that the ice is retreating, so in what must be an amazing spectacle, the wintering flocks lift off en masse and head north-west.  The non-stop, first leg of their flight takes them about 500 miles to the Lower Great Lakes, Lake Erie in particular, with many of them passing right overhead; over my head that is.

I had been expecting them for a couple of days now and this morning, reading the newspaper with coffee in hand, I thought I heard the faint call of swans! I was too slow and there was no sign of them by the time I scrambled outside.  An hour or so later, as I left the house to go to the gym, right overhead was a large V formation of perhaps 120 Tundra Swans, I couldn’t have asked for more, although it got better because another two large Vs were following close behind.

Now, what’s special about this is the drama and beauty (in the eye of the beholder admittedly) of the moment, the confirmation that spring is upon us, the undulation and flashing white of the flock and the music of their characteristic whistling  “whoo… whoo” as they go.  Several more times during this cloudy and often rainy day, more skeins of Tundra Swans passed over, each group as arresting as the first sighting.

Worth noting, but hopelessly overshadowed by the swans, was hearing and seeing the first male Red-winged Blackbirds of the year standing sentinel around a wetland.   I was intrigued by the fact that they were not yet down in the cattails as they will be before long; rather they were posted high around the perimeter of the wetland as if overseeing it from afar.  As more males arrive I expect to see them move in to establish the boundaries of their piece of paradise.  They’ll squabble over boundaries, reworking the shape of their jigsaw of territories and then they’ll have something to offer the females who’ll follow in a few weeks.

March 9 2013. Cootes Paradise, Hamilton ON. I was heartened today to hear Song Sparrows singing.  That may well be the last time I’ll feel that way for the rest of the year, they become so ubiquitous, so much part of the background clutter.  But when you’ve just come out the other side of a traditional no-holds-barred winter, bird song on a warmish day, even that of a Song Sparrow, gives you a lift, enough to make Bird of the Day.  Two of them were chasing each other around the dried spikes of a marsh full of cattails, singing, chasing, squabbling or maybe courting, I wasn’t sure which and it didn’t matter.  They were singing spring.

As I sat on a bench enjoying a sunshine moment I became aware of other friends who have probably been holding their breath waiting for a break in the weather. A White-breasted Nuthatch, a Red-bellied Woodpecker and a couple of White-throated Sparrows came close in hopes that I was bringing food.  In the hazy distance I could make out the white head of a Bald Eagle on its nest.

A little later I heard another what I concluded to be a Song Sparrow trying out its song although with limited success.  At first I thought I was hearing a dyspeptic  Marsh Wren, which would have been unusually early by about 2 months.  I’m inclined to revisit the same spot and listen again, but for now I favour the song of a young or early season Song Sparrow.

March 8 2013.  Stoney Creek, ON. Taking advantage of what was probably our first day of real spring promise, I drove to rural area of heavy soils and poor drainage, and hence wet fields, in hopes of finding a few early spring migrants.  I was pushing it I know, but managed to find a handful of Tundra Swans along with several dozen Mallards in one sodden, snow marbled field.  Whether these were really hardcore migrants or opportunistic wanderers is impossible to tell, but a solitary, if disconsolate looking, Killdeer was an encouraging sight and just slightly more likely to be migrant.

Moving on to an area known as a hot spot for Short-eared Owls, Northern Harriers and other oddities, I fancied that I caught the song of an Eastern Meadowlark.  It was plausible but something of a stretch, so I moved in the general direction from whence it came in hopes of catching a glimpse. No sign of one but there was a large flock of Starlings picking through the exposed but snow flattened grass of a rough pasture. And then I caught a thin two-toned whistle again, the one I’d taken for a meadowlark and realized that it was the Starlings I was hearing.  Fair enough; the meadowlarks will come when they’re good and ready.  But it brought to mind one I’d heard six weeks ago in southern Mexico, it was in an area of hot dry fields, cactus and mesquite scrub; a far far cry from these soggy tracts.

Despite hearing some Horned Larks and brief sightings of a Northern Harrier, American Kestrel and Northern Mockingbird, the European Starlings kind of made the day, I suppose for cautioning me against getting ahead of myself.

And….I think it’s worth saying that despite the European Starling’s dreary reputation, in fall after the adults have gone through their annual molt and are wearing new plumage, they can be quite impressive.  This picture was taken 18 months ago in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and you just might see why, at the time, it had me baffled for a few moments, but it’s a Starling.

March 3 2013.  Burlington ON. One of the most damaged bits of real estate around here is a stretch of land that today we call the Beach Strip but which historically was a natural sand bar that separated a marshy inlet from the open waters of Lake Ontario.  When the marshy inlet became a harbour serving an industrial city the sand bar was a mixed blessing, it provided shelter but was a navigational obstacle.  Today the now sliced-through sandbar is the foundation for a six lane highway with two massive bridges, high voltage transmission lines and the rail-bed of an abandoned railway line.  There are also houses, a sewage treatment plant and a deep water canal with a heavy duty lift bridge for the local roads. There may be remnants somewhere of the sandbar’s original structure, and there may even be a few of the native animal or plant species around, but they’d be hard to find.

But for all of the degradation the birding can be good, especially alongside the canal.  Today I went to see if the canal was full of Long-tailed Ducks as it often is at the end of winter.  It wasn’t full, although there were a few as well as some White-winged Scoters and Red-breasted Mergansers too.

But hardly had I sorted out my camera, binoculars, hat and gloves (there was a keen north-westerly wind cutting across the harbour) than I heard the faint ‘cheek cheek cheek’of a Peregrine Falcon.  For several years now a pair has nested here on one of the towers that carry the lift bridge; I’ve mentioned them here before.  I looked up to the customary nesting platform and sure enough saw that one was sitting quietly on it.  Soon I found both birds and fancied I could see a size difference, the female Peregrine is always the larger, some say by as much as 30%.

Apparently it’s not too early for courtship, I watched as the two of them, in turns, took off and flew around for a moment before settling somewhere different, though not too far away.  They were clearly keenly aware of each other.  The clincher came when the male took off, flew out of sight for a few minutes and then returned to copulate briefly with the wind-buffeted female who was balancing on a cable strung far above the canal.  Copulation on a high wire was all I needed to call the Peregrine my Bird of the Day, and I was now sure that I knew which was which. I’d been right earlier; our male is noticeably smaller.

Few birds have attracted as much sentimental and awestruck admiration as has the Peregrine Falcon, well perhaps the Kiwi, Ivory-billed Woodpecker or Peacock have too. But the fact that Peregrine Falcons have recovered from being a critically endangered species to now quite commonly choosing to nest in and around our cities is only half of the story. They are wonderful to watch in flight, the controlled muscular directness is convincing proof of their status as the fastest creature on Earth; although to be fair their top speed of a reputed 200mph is attained in a freefall dive; in flapping flight the White-throated Needletail (an Asian swift) is faster.  Still an’ all, a controlled dive at over 200 mph, or terminal velocity, is quite something as this National Geographic movie clip explains.

February 28 2013.  Yesterday I decided to shake off winter and take a look at the waterfowl along the Niagara River.  It’s a short river; in some ways it’s more of a large spillway than a river. Rushing just 60 Km. to connect Lakes Erie and Ontario, it’s a stocky and frighteningly powerful waterway, not just for its sheer volume but because it includes the precipitous drop over the famed Niagara Falls.  Swans, geese and ducks love it because there’s lots of food and the fast moving water stays open through the most penetratingly cold days of winter.

We started our leisurely riverside drive at Fort Erie and followed the river downstream almost as far as Niagara Falls, which is about half way along the river’s length.  We made frequent stops at the many lookouts and parking lots and almost every stop included wonderful birding.

We saw all three Merganser species: hundreds of Red-breasted and Common Mergansers, a single Hooded Merganser, which seemed a little curious at first, but then they are a species which prefers smaller ponds and quiet backwaters. A Hooded Merg’ up close is quite spectacular, Pete Dunne in his Essential Field Guide Companion, describes it as a “Long, slender, low profiled dart of a duck with a histrionic headpiece…”  and “…The boldly patterned drake, adorned with a crest that opens and closes like a Chinese fan, is hard to overlook…”  For a while I thought it might be my Bird of the Day even though it was rather hard to pick out from among a mass of Buffleheads. However there was much more to come.

For a while we admired a Great Black-backed Gull standing on a rock close to the shore with some Ring-billed and Herring Gulls.  When I raised my camera to snatch a photograph it moved away and shoved a young (second winter) Herring Gull aside from a more secure and distant rock.

Sometimes I’ll spot and celebrate a species for its scarcity then quite soon after discover that it’s really quite abundant.  That happened to me in Mexico when I spotted my first male Vermillion Flycatcher brilliant atop a mesquite bush, I was exultant, but within an hour I’d found dozens more.  Their eye-candy status was not diminished in the least, but it permitted my heart rate to steady a bit.  Yesterday the same happened with Canvasbacks and Tundra Swans.  First we’d find a small cluster and then as we moved on, more and more.  Once, when stepping out of the car we disturbed a near-shore flock of hundreds of Canvasbacks who paddled away nervously and then spontaneously took collective flight in a roaring whoosh.  They flew away, circled, watched us for a while, then settled back not too far away. As the historically most-favoured ‘table duck’ they have good reason to maintain a healthy distance.

We came across a small group of six or seven Tundra Swans loafing by the shore and as I looked them over I could hear many more farther off.  It turned out there must have been something in the order of a hundred or more up and down the mid reaches of the river, just gathering in small groups and cooing gently among themselves to maintain contact.  They were my Birds of the Day, displacing the Hooded Merganser and Great Black-backed Gull, which had both prompted a Wow! response earlier on.

The open water would have been enough to hold this group here all winter, by far the majority of Tundra Swans (hundreds of thousands probably) are wintering along the Atlantic seaboard and around Chesapeake Bay.  But within the next couple of weeks they’ll all take advantage of the first signs of spring to move northwards in long straggling skeins heading for their far-north breeding grounds.

Every glance across the river included dozens and sometimes hundreds of: Common Goldeneye, Buffleheads and Greater Scaup.   These flocks were liberally sprinkled with many Redheads, Mallards and American Black Ducks. On the far opposite bank, a group of Great Blue Herons high up in some willows set us speculating whether they were over-wintering birds or spring arrivals; or maybe some of each.

If waterfowl populations are, as is generally believed, a sad fraction of what they were before Europeans appeared on the scene, then the Niagara River may at one time have been almost solid with wintering ducks, geese and swans.