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January 1 2013.   10,000 Birds is an interesting and lively blog; I check it almost daily. This morning it challenged readers to report their first bird species of 2013.  Living in an urban area means I’ve got a pretty high chance it’ll be something pretty mundane.  And it was, a Ring-billed Gull swooped across the road as we drove out to a new and untried hiking spot; it could have been worse I suppose.  On our cold, but sunny hike through some undulating hardwood forest I heard a Black-capped Chickadee, (number two) and an American Crow (number three). Nowhere to go but up.

I resolved to go out later and follow up on reports of Short-eared Owls. I have seen them at this particular site many times in previous years, but not in the last couple and Short-eared Owls are becoming scarce; rather sad.

About a decade ago when I was doing fieldwork for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas I had a fairly large group of Short-eared Owls hanging around my assigned square.   I first detected them when I spotted one in swooping display flight over some less-intensively farmed fields.  Once I knew where to expect them it became quite commonplace to see one or two sitting quietly on a post or in a tree during daylight hours.  In due course we determined there was at least one breeding pair even though it was just across the boundary in another square.  Not that it mattered where it nested, it was just exhilarating knowing that we had Short-eared Owls breeding here.

But back to today.  I arrived at the reported site around 4.30 as the sun was going down.  I walked a half-mile or so along a snowy track to a vantage point where I thought I might be able to see them, even though a wide drainage ditch stood between me and the birds’ favoured marshy field.

As I waited a pair of Northern Harriers hunted back and forth, one, a blue-grey male with classic wings-dipped-in-ink, passed quite close.  I was content then that the outing, however cold and snowy, was a success, owls or not.  But it got better, for a few moments later I saw, way off in the distance, the beautiful moth-like twisting and dipping flight of a Short-eared Owl. It reminded me of the tumbling, wind-tossed flight of the Northern Lapwing.  The owl paused a couple of times alighting on a fence post, perhaps to feed,  before continuing the hunt.  As it became too dark to watch it any longer I left, satisfied that I’d improved upon the morning’s Ring-billed Gull; this Short-eared Owl was unquestionably Bird of the Day.

December 31 2012.  Om my way home from examining some beaver dams that are ruffling municipal feathers, I stopped to check some clusters of ducks out on the lake.  They were offshore from my city’s most popular park, and from the road I could see there was much more out there than geese and swans.

Well, it turned out that there wasn’t really a whole lot more, just a couple of Mute Swans, a few pairs of Red-breasted Mergansers, dozens of Canada Geese but best of all, many hundreds of Long-tailed Ducks who were entertaining and instructive.  Good enough to be Bird of the Day.

The park has an abrupt seawall and footpath so it’s easy to get close to the water, which slops and surges about two metres below.  Looking down into its murkiness I was somewhere between amused and enchanted to watch many Long-tailed Ducks come bobbing to the surface then, shaking off little rivulets, hurriedly paddle a safe distance away.

I wondered what their instinct tells them about humans? After all they are an Arctic duck, not endlessly persecuted by urban goings-on, and neither are they sport-hunted in Canada. (Perhaps because as P.A Taverner writes in the 1934 book, Birds of Canada, “It is considered nearly worthless as a table bird.”)  It’s not that I expect them to mill around like brainless pigeons in Trafalgar Square or anything like that, but I’m curious to know what they understand as a threat to their safety.  Why does the arrival of a bipedal vertebrate at the shoreline mean trouble? Or does it?  I suspect it’s more a case of ‘That’s odd/sudden/different, lets move away and see what happens’.

As an aside, while I scanned the rafts of Long-tailed Ducks farther off shore, a small group of Canada Geese flew in and landed (watered?) not far away.  I’m always impressed by the landing / watering skills of ducks and swans.  The natural control that enables a fast flying animal to bank, turn and slow, then parachute down at an ambling pace and then skid briefly before settling on the water, and with a couple of wing-tuck ruffles, paddle on; just like that.  I wish I could get afloat so elegantly.

I watched the Long-tailed Ducks, who had evidently concluded that I presented no obvious immediate danger, approach the waters-edge again and resume diving for food.  To call it a dive is really to overstate it because the transition from rubber-duck-floating-position to submerged is so apparently effortless.  It’s as if by looking down they’re drawn under, as easy as blinking.  Plop, and they’re gone!

I managed to shoot of a bunch of photographs which serve to illustrate how varied is the plumage of these delightful birds.  The males wear dapper black and white evening clothes, as if off to a society ball somewhere, while their somewhat dowdy mates are dressed to stay home and sweep the hearth.  You’ll easily pick out who’s who in these photographs.

[slickr-flickr tag=”LTDU”]

December 29 2012.  This time last year the birding  fraternity hereabouts was all atwitter about a couple of Black Vultures hanging out along the banks of the Niagara River in Lewiston, NY.  What made it extra tantalizing was that the Niagara River marks the international border between the U.S.A and Canada.  So for those who compile winter, country, province and goodness-knows-what lists, waiting in the cold, willing the birds to take flight and wander into Ontario must have been some kind of exquisite, self-imposed masochism. And yet….in 1987 on this very date a Black Vulture had taken up residence not so far from my house, albeit in a slightly more up-market neighbourhood.

This entry in my diary qualifies it as retrospective bird of the day, though not necessarily in the celebratory sense.  “1987.  Sheltering in hemlocks at LaSalle Park a Black Vulture.  Found on Boxing Day by others. D.S looking for it failed at first but found a Varied Thrush instead. Burlington now temporary home to Black Vulture, Varied Thrush, adult Bald Eagle and 2 Brant Geese.”

A few words more about each: I saw the Black Vulture that day but was only mildly impressed, lumpen and black, sitting disconsolately high in a hemlock tree it was no prize for me. Soaring in high wheeling circles on a hot day – now that’s worth looking up at, that’s when it could be Bird of the Day.  The Varied Thrush eluded me, I have only ever seen one and that was in British Columbia where they belong; a very pretty bird, in stature like our American Robin but coloured in black, orange and blue-grey, like the mountain slopes in October. Bald Eagles were a rarity around here until about 10 years ago since when they have become regular winter visitors and have established breeding territories.  Brant drift through from time to time, they must be strays gone off-course in migration, they are a bit like a familiar but erratic cousin who shows up from time to time then leaves without even saying goodbye; here today gone tomorrow.[slickr-flickr tag=”boxingday”]

December 27 2012.  We had snow last night, quite a bit for us; last winter was so mild that it was something of a novelty.  I’d almost forgotten how a night of snow lays a blanket of silence over a neighbourhood.

With a breakfast meeting to go to, it was dark and still when I left the house. I dug a winding pathway to my way to my car and was contemplating how best to sweep it clear of snow without making the drifts in my small parking area any worse when I heard a Screech Owl’s tremolo call. Did I imagine it? No, because I heard it again moments later, I stopped what I was doing and listened, the third time it called I could pinpoint it to a large ash tree in a neighbour’s back yard.

Screech Owls’ calls are odd, not at all what you’d expect from an owl.  Click here for recordings of them courtesy of the Macaulay Library.  Among Canadian owls it’s only the larger species like Great Horned Owl, Barred Owl and Great Gray Owl that hoot in the classic sense, the smaller birds make a funny assortment of screeches, squeaks and whistles.

The Screech Owl has two main songs or calls, and I defer to Pete Dunne, who in his Essential Field Guide Companion describes bird songs and calls particularly well, and for the Screech Owl he says: “ The contact call sounds like a low mellow, gargled or trembling whistle, lasting two to four seconds, all on the same pitch; it may be loud or softly uttered, giving the impression that a bird no more than 10 – 20 feet away is much father away. Also makes a descending nasal “whinny” that is often (but not exclusively) used to assert territoriality.”

Eastern Screech Owls are really quite common in urban areas; it’s just that you don’t see them very often.  I read somewhere that if you have enough trees in your neighbourhood to support gray squirrels; you have Screech Owls too.  They’re also fairly easily lured by imitations of their call; if you can figure out how to effect the burbling tremolo that is, but they’re not particularly amused by trickery; they sometimes literally hit back.

The pleasure of a today’s soft Screech Owl call in the fresh snow early dawn made it my Bird of the Day even before the day had really begun.

May, June & October.  Heading north on Interstate 17 from Phoenix is a fascinating if occasionally propulsive drive.  As you leave the great sprawl of Phoenix the desert landscape is punctuated by Saguaro cacti, hundreds of them, most of them stately and senatorial.  You get so used to them as you head into the mountains that almost without you noticing, they become fewer and fewer; and then they’re gone.  It’s on the return journey that you start to notice them again because now they’re special.

And that’s the way it’s worked for many bird species. Birds that are commonplace gradually dwindle, hardly anyone notices until they’re gone.  Then years later one reappears and we celebrate.  Take the Black Tern.

In my old diary of notable sightings, for four consecutive years,1981 to 1984, I noted the return of Black Terns, all around the 7^th to 10^th of May .  It was remarkable because their pond was a stranded remnant of an old marsh that had the misfortune to be obliterated by a major highway.  River valleys and frequently by extension, marshes make popular routes for highways, much of the hard work of cutting through hills and leveling the land has been done by the river.

Birds of Hamilton and Surrounding Areas by Robert Curry, my best reference book for local bird records, states that 1989 was the last nesting at the site where I was seeing them.  Curry writes: “There were only one-third as many Black Terns in North America in the early 1990s as in the late 1960s.  The loss of wetlands, both for breeding and as migration stopovers, has been the major cause of the decline.  Other factors may include the effect of pesticides on insect foods and declining numbers of small pelagic fish, the birds’ preferred food on the tropical ocean wintering grounds off the South America coast.” They’ve gone from many once reliable breeding sites in this part of the world, and it’s a sad loss.

I watched a Black Tern in October of 2011 in Smithers British Columbia.  It was a long way away, swooping and hunting over a large lake, flitting erratically then diving in large dipping arcs to touch down and pick a morsel from the lake. It made my blog entry but was upstaged as my Bird of the Day by a Western Grebe.

In June that same year, at a large marsh on Lake Erie where Black Terns are still found, I was shown one on its nest. Although I wasn’t keeping these records then, I remember the thrill, it was best bird of the day. They’ve gone from being a reliable migrant nesting species to a rarity in a generation; and regrettably I’m discovering my diary has many more just like it.