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November 10 2014,. Hamilton Harbour, ON. Several years ago, when on-line reports of bird sightings were a new thing, there was a bit of a race to report the first singing Cardinal of late winter/early spring.  Year over year the dates crept earlier: Mid-February, Early February, Mid January and so on.  And then one year the earliest report came sometime in December and, well it all became a bit silly.  And besides, the various on-line bird group systems had become more serious and focused. No-one seems to care about early dates for cardinal song anymore.

Well today as I walked along a well used bike path squeezed between a railway marshalling yard and the shoreline of a large harbour, I heard a Northern Cardinal singing: “PEETA PEETA PEETA – Teww tewww.”; just briefly.  It was really quite heartwarming, an advance preview of the next spring so far off.  And as I was musing that perhaps I could report this record-early (or record-late) cardinal song, it continued on – but all wrong!  It was a Northern Mockingbird, doing what they do better than almost any other bird: mimicking.

I could hear it rather faintly, yet it was obviously coming from this small offshore island, which was not very many yards away. Mockingbirds do this, they’ll run through their full repertoire, but softly as if to keep it to themselves for comfort; or maybe they’ve been told to practice every day.  I wrote down some of the song’s other notes as follows: “puurrr puurr, sheek sheek, Kingfisher rattle, peeew peeew,ch ch ch ch wrrr wrrr.”  You really had to be there.

They can be quite skittish when they think you’re looking for them, or even worse at them, but as I moved closer it emerged from among the tangle of wild rose to allow me a few photos.

For that performance the mockingbird was my Bird of the Day.  There was little else of interest, although a couple of late Red–necked Grebes, a tidy little flight of four Red–breasted Mergansers and an American Kestrel atop a utility pole were nice sightings. And I did see a real Northern Cardinal, but it wasn’t singing; it didn’t need to.

November 10 2012.  I spent the morning helping to pull non-native, invasive trees from the supposedly natural areas of our botanical garden. It was a good work-out and by noon I was done. As we left the clamour of a group of American Crows erupted from a few hundred yards to the west, it was as if they’d suddenly been deeply offended.  Moments later they flew towards us and then noisily circled the top of some nearby White Pines.  With this the gang quite appropriately lived up to their collective noun, a  ‘Murder of Crows’; something had their attention and they wanted revenge.  I suspected a roosting owl, for crows are notorious for mobbing or harassing them for no better reason than owls often kill crows while they sleep, which I suppose is a fair motive.  But I wondered, do crows spend all day looking for opportunities to take their revenge? After all they’d managed to pinpoint this one from quite far away.

Moments passed and then they took off in clamorous pursuit of a Great-horned Owl, the large, round-winged owl flapping sedately as if just a little exasperated by all the needless noise and fuss, and hoping for somewhere more peaceful.

November 8 2012.  Sparrows in general could use a public relations overhaul.  Any non-descript brownish bird is likely to be generalized as a sparrow.  They probably got off to a bad start with the European House Sparrow which are birds of the drabbest urban backwaters and non too fussy about tidiness in general.

The sparrows of the Americas though are quite a different matter.  They can be difficult to sort out but that shouldn’t take away from the appeal of them.  I’ve celebrated several sparrows in previous blog entries, including White-throated, Song, Grasshopper, and Savannah Sparrows.  All neat birds in their own way.  But when all’s said and done, they are mostly little birds with stripy brown backs.

To get to the point though, my Bird of the Day today was an American Tree Sparrow that I found on a frosty morning walk in a narrow river valley.

The valley is an exceptional place for families with children to see and feed chickadees, cardinals and nuthatches; all of them will approach closely, and the chickadees will often alight on your hand to take a sunflower seed.  It was in this easy-viewing setting that I was able to enjoy several Blue Jays, Black–capped Chickadees and Northern Cardinals up close, while a White–throated Sparrow and a Golden–crowned Kinglet flirted with finding where the easy food was coming from.

But the American Tree Sparrow came out tops, it scored on cuteness, no higher or more intellectual reason than that.  They are beautiful little birds with a rich brown, complexly patterned back (like all sparrows!), a clear whitish breast with a single, distinct central spot, and a rich chestnut crown.  They are winter visitors found in a broad band mainly across the USA , roughly from the Great Lakes and extending south but not as far as the Gulf States. As winter winds down they head back north to where they are breeding birds of scrubby areas close to the tree line.

November 5 2012. Ruthven Park Cayuga ON.   At the bird observatory today any number of birds could have been my Bird of the Day. From the Great Blue Heron that rose ponderously out of the creek valley in the emerging grey light, the singing Carolina Wren that brightened up the census round or maybe the trio of Evening Grosbeaks hanging around the banding lab late in the morning.  But it was the fragments of a Blue Jay that I liked best.

I wondered what had happened to the rest of the jay: taken by surprise by one of the many resident or migrant owls or maybe chased down among the trees by a Sharp-shinned Hawk; it could have been either. Whatever the cause, this fragment holds all of the pure and intense blues that make a Blue Jay one of our most easily recognized and loved birds.  Look closely: there’s midnight blue, the sky-blue of high noon, and countless other intergrades and shades, some leading into purples and greys.  White tips accentuate the purest blues of these wing feathers.  Jays, especially the Flemish/European Jay, Mexican Jay, our Blue Jay and Steller’s Jay, really know how to use blue to good effect.

This is the last week of the fall banding season at the bird observatory, and today was my last scheduled day.  I’ve always done the daily census when I’m there and as the days shorten it has become increasingly hard to fill a page with sightings.  Today it was stiff-knuckle cold and stretches of riverside habitat that seem to always be lively with birds, from Tree Swallows and Common Yellowthroats in summer, through Red-winged Blackbirds, Song Sparrows and Golden-Crowned Kinglets as recently as two weeks ago, are all but silent now.  So the early-light Great Blue Heron was a pleasant surprise.  There are always a few reports of lingering herons every winter, but finding food must be tough what with the frogs hunkered down in the muddy depths and the creeks and rivers either too turbid or (coming soon) lidded with ice.

I found a group of four busy Tufted Titmouse working over the tops of some Northern Hackberry and Bitternut Hickory trees

and was pleased with an almost impossible to photograph Brown Creeper. 

The Evening Grosbeaks only managed a fleeting visit, I was returning to the banding lab where a group of school children were learning about avian fat storage, when I spotted the three grosbeaks in a tree overlooking one of the many feeders around the place.  I assumed they’d been there for a while and that everyone knew about them, but my casual mention of them caused a bit of excitement, so we all went outside to see them, but they were gone.  That’s birding for you.

November 2 2012. Ruthven Park Cayuga ON.   As often as not it’s not the bird, or at least not the species, that makes it as Bird of the Day, it’s the spectacle of an individual bird.  Today at the bird observatory an adult Bald Eagle and a female American Kestrel soared overhead together.  The eagle was way up high, but the kestrel was low and it made one of those characteristic slow, wheeling turns that raptors in particular seem to be so good at.  With its wings spread, tail fanned, and the sun back-lighting it, it was a MasterCard ‘Priceless’ moment.

The upset of Tropical Storm Sandy had pretty much moved on today. Our early morning skies were still a bit troubled but not quite as lumpy or tumbled looking as they had been for the past few days.  By mid morning wide blue gaps reappeared; a sky on the mend.  The storm has stripped the trees bare revealing their bones and uncovering a raw landscape.

One of my census walk companions said she loves November, particularly since she’s discovered the joy of greys; then became all wistful as if it were babies or grandchildren she was talking about. She also told us she’d just learned she has the hearing of a 25 year-old, which she promptly proved by picking out some little ‘tseep’ sounds that turned out to be a group of five Golden Crowned Kinglets lurking in a dense riverside clump of willow and clematis.  Then for a long while there was precious little more except a solitary Mallard flying up river, a pair of Brown Creepers exploring the top of a small Black Walnut and occasional maybe-woodpecker sounds that we couldn’t quite pin down.  We watched two Red-bellied Woodpeckers squabble over tree ownership and could hear Eastern Bluebirds, American Goldfinches and Pine Siskins calling all around us.  But it’s inescapable, the days of little pretty birds are behind us; Slate-coloured Juncos and American Tree Sparrows (although handsome in their own right) have moved in, it’s definitely November.