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Scarborough Marsh, Saco, Maine. June 8 2022.  I spent a week in early June birding with Dan, my friend from British Columbia. We travelled to Maine, heading first (with some good birding along the way) through Quebec, Vermont and New Hampshire. Dan had a handful of must-see birds including Bicknell’s Thrush (which led us into a very obscure corner of New Hampshire – without success) and Atlantic Puffin (offshore from Boothbay Harbor Maine. With success). But one other bird species had special appeal, the Saltmarsh Sparrow.  It is an uncommon bird of Atlantic salt-marshes and we were in the right part of Maine to find it.

Scarborough Marsh is a well-known place for Saltmarsh Sparrows and a guide at the marsh’s Audubon Center gave us easy directions, “Follow this road for about a mile. You’ll see a parking lot on the left, park there. Follow the trail out across the marsh. They’re about 400 yards down that trail.” Well his advice put us on the right track, but it turned out to be a very very long 400 yards, and he didn’t mention the little biting flies.

Dan was more driven than I and moved on ahead. I was intrigued by the marsh and its tidal ecology as a whole, specific birds could wait. The tide was low and I paused to admire a Herring Gull foraging for crabs. It paced a bare trickle of water along a narrow tidal creek, all the while peering up and investigating the overhanging vegetation. As I watched, it worked its way up and reached in, several times, to grab a flailing crab.

Taken to the flat bottom, and with one stab of the gull’s bill, the crab was opened up and cleaned out. I was fascinated by the gull’s hunting efficiency and that the vegetative overhang held so many crabs. They were probably European Green Crabs, one of the world’s worst invasive species.

I caught up with Dan and he pointed to a narrow expanse of salt-marsh where another birder said to look for Saltmarsh Sparrows. His tenacity and patience paid off and it wasn’t long before he was able to show me one. A couple of old timber piling made good vantage points for claiming territory, and at least one, perhaps two, used such high spots to make sure their houses were in order.

We both left Scarborough Marsh satisfied with our days’ work.  We could say we’d seen a Saltmarsh Sparrow and I had been intrigued by the Herring Gull’s learned approach to feeding success.

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Safari Road Marsh, Flamborough. ON. June 5 2022. There is a wide marsh, bisected by a busy road, about 40 minutes drive from home. It’s a good place to look for American and Least Bitterns, Virginia Rails, Sora and Common Gallinules, they’re all there. Given peace and quiet you’ll usually meet with some success.

I’m not sure what ‘they’ were thinking when the road was imposed upon the marsh a hundred years or so ago, it must have had a huge impact on the wildlife at the time,  tons of gravel poured in and laid down to make a road bed. And tarmac too in time. But decades on, we birders value that obscene scar on the landscape. We value it for the birding access it affords despite the speeding traffic, beer-can litter and road-killed frogs, turtles, snakes and birds.

I went there this morning and found that the road had been closed to traffic, it was barricaded and detours set up. High water and a tough winter had deteriorated the road surface to the point that the local roads department had deemed it unsafe for vehicular traffic; but importantly it was okay for walking birders.  I was there a bit after first light and other than bird song, the distant coughs of lions at a safari park, and the crackly trail of small planes high overhead, it was all very peaceful.

I was lucky enough to watch a Virginia Rail pace across the road, but it was nervous and soon ducked into thick cattails and was gone. I could hear Common Gallinules singing in maniacal cackles and maybe best of all Marsh Wrens announcing their hold on a patches of reed-bed.

Around me, Barn and Tree Swallows swept the air for flying insects, a Sandhill Crane and a couple of Great Blue Herons laboured by and two Blue–winged Teal were a colourful surprise as they leapt out of the water showing off the wide blueness of their wings in flight.

Marsh Wrens can be a bit quick to take flight so I count myself lucky that this one, above and below, posed patiently, and steadily enough for me to photograph it. Perhaps it was just determined that I should understand its place in the marsh and mine on the roadside. In any event it was My Bird of the Day.

Royal Botanical Gardens. Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON. June 2 2022. Now for the clamour of reproduction. June is about the next generation: the task ahead is everything from establishing territories, to courtship, from nests to eggs to fledglings and to flight. It’s the May arrivals (and there are plenty of them) who are the ones just getting started, some locals like Ravens and Great Horned Owls got started back in February and their young are out of the nest by now.

Today I completed the last of our spring transects under ideal conditions, clear, bright and sunny, T-shirt weather.

From the start I could hear Great-crested Flycatchers calling, a beautiful self-assured bird of treetops. Walking a riverside trail rich in bird song and activity, I watched a pair getting acquainted, he singing and apparently defining a territory and she staying close. I was so enamoured by them and the many others just like them around the valley, that I thought Great-crested Flycatcher was my Bird of the Day. But not long after, I spotted this line up of young Black-capped Chickadees, just-out-of-the-nest fledglings dependent on their parents for an unfailing supply of food. I have to give them equal billing to the flycatchers.

I counted over forty species this morning. The Great-crested Flycatchers dominated the soundscape but there were others that made me stop and appreciate the morning: I could hear: Rose–breasted Grosbeaks, Swamp Sparrows, Red–eyed and Warbling Vireos, Orchard Orioles, Blue Jays, even a Black-billed Cuckoo calling softly from the forest edges.  Both Willow and Alder Flycatchers were singing their very similar songs, dry emphatic phrases rather like a roadside cricket.

I was a bit dismayed when I passed another birder who, in the exchange of morning pleasantries, commented that it seemed a bit quiet today; I thought it was anything but.

Caledonia. ON. May 30, 2022.  In the normal course of events I wouldn’t drive very far to see a Ring-necked Duck. Small flocks, males and females, show up here on medium-sized ponds shortly after the ice clears, at about the same time the first Red-winged Blackbirds arrive.  They are notable as one of the earliest ducks to make a spring appearance. Then, just as we’re getting used to them, they leave, most have gone by late April continuing their journey to northern nesting grounds. My reading tells me the species nests in a broad band across the continent. As Cornell Lab of Ornithology puts it “… this duck nests at generally low densities in subarctic deltas, taiga, boreal forest, aspen parkland, and to a lesser extent, prairie regions.” Which is to say, mostly in Canada. In Ontario they head to regions on or beyond the Canadian Shield, so well north of us.

But normal courses of events are subject to change and surprises. Lyn, an Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas colleague, contacted me recently to say that she was seeing Ring-necked Ducks, perhaps a bonded pair, on a quiet lake in her atlas square. We exchanged emails agreeing that if indeed Ring-necked Ducks should be breeding there, it would be a significant southerly breeding-range extension.  She invited me to join her to confirm and corroborate her sighting.  It didn’t take long this morning to re-find the pair who are showing every indication of planning on raising a family.

The pond is on private land and a long track took us to it through wide grassy fields alive with Bobolinks and Savannah Sparrows.  The landowner gave Lyn enthusiastic permission to enter his land, hundreds of acres of open, undulating fields and woodlands dotted with ponds.

The photo above of the pair of Ring-necked Ducks is the best I could do at the distance, but it’s okay. For purposes of the atlas this observation rates as ‘Probable Breeding’. Confirmation will require a higher standard of evidence including such obvious things as seeing the nest with eggs or young and perhaps most likely here, observing the birds with a flotilla of young on the water. I’m betting on confirmation in a month or two.