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August 16 2012.  Mountsberg ON.  If you’ve been following me closely over the past few days perhaps you’ve noticed some repetition in my birding.  It’s been all about shorebirds of late; I’m trying to learn more about them.

Shorebirds make many birders throw up their hands in despair:  “They all look the same.” and  “They’re so difficult to make out.” And it’s true, they are difficult.  But, like so many bird groups (and ferns and goldenrods too, I’m finding out) there’s really a rather limited palette of likely candidates at any one time.

Sometimes it’s the field guides that scare us off. The National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America describes in detail about 80 species of what we might loosely call shorebirds. Eighty! But wait, around here only half of those shorebird species have ever been recorded; and of all of those I’d say you have a reasonable chance, if you work at it, of seeing about 15 in any one year.

It gets simpler as you study them because there are some distinctive family groups like plovers and sandpipers that help narrow the field.  After that you have to concentrate.  It’s not like reading People magazine, you do have to think for yourself.

Today for example, my companion and I found a mystery shorebird lurking at just about the limit of our aided vision.  At first we knew just one thing, that it was different.  It wasn’t a Greater or Lesser Yellowlegs and it wasn’t a duck or a Killdeer, there were plenty of those around.  We squinted and strained to make out detail, and we could see that it had an extraordinarily long bill; twice the length of its head.  It fed with a probing, sewing-machine action.  We wondered if it was a Short-billed Dowitcher, but it was not quite right.  As the bird moved around we started to make out some facial detail and distinctive stripes on its head and eventually, long lines down the length of its back. Wilson’s Snipe seemed most likely, our field guide supported our suspicions, and when it shuffled along with a snipe’s distinctive short-legged waddle, that clinched it.  Interestingly once we knew in our minds what it was, it all became crystal clear literally and metaphorically; there was no doubt. A great learning experience.

My companion studied and triumphantly identified a rather drab Hooded Merganser and it became her Bird of the Day, but for me it was the hard-won Wilson’s Snipe.  Here’s a photo of one taken earlier this year.

August 15 2012. Badenoch, ON.  I can never look at an Osprey these days without thinking back to my adolescent years in the U.K.  Back then (the 60s) Ospreys were avian rock stars, and I blandly assumed that I would never ever see one in my life; shows how short sighted a young lad in post war England could be.

Ospreys had been extirpated from Great Britain by 1915; they were the targets of gamekeepers whose job it was to maintain healthy stocks of fish and game for their landowner employers.  Probably Ospreys were never very abundant so the methodical destruction of these conspicuously nesting birds was quite easily accomplished.  The Osprey vanished from the landscape so the salmon stocks were spared some trauma; all they had to worry about were the gentlemen anglers.

Then, sensationally, in the 50s a pair appeared on Loch Garten in northern Scotland. Ospreys are found on every continent except Antarctica, so the rest of the European population had presumably survived okay; it’s not far from Scandinavia to Scotland for strong flyer like the Osprey so a return to the British Isles was more or less just a matter of time.  This time the Osprey pair was cherished and closely guarded, they were avian rock stars remember, and in due course nested successfully; today the Osprey is well reestablished, and at last count there were over 180 nesting pairs in Great Britain.

Much the same fate befell the White-tailed Sea Eagle, which was reputed to snatch innocent lambs from their mothers’ care and was therefore a blight to be eliminated.  They too have since been reestablished to breed along the west coast of Scotland; but that’s another story.

Today after a pleasant hour or so scanning mudflats for shorebirds, with reasonable success (including yesterday’s Black Bellied Plover again, Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, Least Sandpipers and a few well hidden Pectoral Sandpipers) I found myself driving through a small settlement that rated little more than a handful of houses and a small park with a baseball diamond.  It was important enough though to have floodlights, and on the top of a bank of lights a pair of Ospreys has established this nest.  They’ve been breeding for several years on this nest which is now starting to appear a little lopsided.

A very respectful, even nurturing, relationship obviously exists between today’s enlightened sportsmen and these Ospreys; quite a contrast to the tactics of sportsmen a century ago.

August  14 2012. Hamilton ON. Cootes Paradise.  A heavy blanket of rain swept over us in the middle of the day.  Afterwards I happened to read a hotline report of an adult Bald Eagle seen nearby and thought I’d go and have a look.  Well, I didn’t see the eagle, and that’s okay because there was plenty more to see, in fact my cramped field notebook was soon overflowing.

Arriving at the shore of a large muddy and shallow lake I heard the peevish “Chip chip chip chip” of an Osprey and looked up to see it patrolling closely along the shoreline.  Hey! bird of the day I thought.  But a little later as I stood on a large platform lookout, a Least Flycatcher popped up to see what I was doing there, it paused just long enough for me to satisfy myself that it was a Least and not a Willow or Alder or some other look-alike Flycatcher; nice I thought; maybe that’s really my bird of the day.

I walked on down to a boardwalk that leads out through a cattail marsh to a platform overlooking expansive mudflats.  Maybe the mid-day rains had brought the birds down,  but whatever the reason the mudflats were lively with interesting birds.  Least Sandpipers filled in the gaps between legions of Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, and one of the Greater Yellowlegs appeared to have lost a leg; posing the question I suppose of whether it was still appropriately named. Nevertheless it seemed to be quite able; if it were not it would have perished long ago.

Herons were represented by 9 Great Egrets, a single Black–crowned Night Heron and a couple of Great Blue Herons.  Lots of Mallards and just as many Green–winged Teal were shuffling around in the shallow silty margins.  Its quite striking how small Green-winged Teal are, they’re perhaps two-thirds the size of Mallards, and bodywise the same size as a Greater Yellowlegs. They are also a very pretty duck, even now when they’re going through their late summer moult they have very warm chestnut speckling on their backs and breasts.

But best birds were a distant Short–billed Dowitcher (which really should have been examined through a telescope just in case it’s a Long-billed, but with the weight of probability on my side, I feel safe in my identification.) And quite close to me, my last and final candidate for Bird of the Day, a Black–bellied Plover.  They’re quite unmistakable, in profile they have the classic sturdy look of most plovers, and Black-bellied Plovers could almost be described as thuggish looking except that they have innocent doe-like eyes that seem to render them harmless.  This one was in the middle of its post breeding moult, its handsome black belly feathers were more or less all gone making it rather less handsome than usual, but still it was nicely speckled in black, grey and white.

This Short-billed Dowitcher was one of the many I photographed in May.

August 13 2012. Normandale ON. Feeling a little starved of in-the-field time I visited a favourite forest preserve today.  I’m working on fern identification skills and this particular piece of unspoiled forest is one of the botanically richest in Ontario.  It is also known as a great birding spot but even it is not immune to the bird doldrums of August.

The fern expedition was a success, I added a couple more species that I think I can now identify if asked, but the quid pro quo is that some fern species that I thought I knew I am no longer so sure of.  It’s like getting to know difficult birds like vireos and sparrows all over again. This 6-inch high fern was new to me and I believe it to be a Ternate Grape Fern; but there’s a good chance I’ll change my mind about it another day.

Today’s list of birds was varied and interesting and short enough not to be tedious in the re-telling:  A Yellow-billed Cuckoo calling slowly and deliberately: “cowp cowp cowp”. A Red–eyed Vireo high and distant and sounding tired of summer. Blue Jays flitting in the treetops. A couple of Red–bellied Woodpeckers, which for a bird that can seem so omnipresent much of the year, has been quiet for the past two or three months.  Today I heard them again, their edgy “Chak chak” contact notes remind of the European Jackdaw. A Pileated Woodpecker, I only heard it to begin with, it was bashing away methodically at a something high above, then I caught sight of movement between branches, its bright red crest and moustache caught my eye and then I could see chips of wood flying as it kept whacking away . Somewhere a young Red–tailed Hawk was calling for food and parental attention and in the distance I just caught the song of an Eastern Tufted Titmouse.

The Bird of the Day was an Ovenbird that watched me carefully from about 10 feet overhead.  You hear Ovenbirds a lot in spring and early summer, their ringing “Tea-cher Tea-cher TEAcher TEACHER “ song increases in volume with each phrase and comes from the forest floor where they build their oven-shaped nest.  But actually seeing an Ovenbird can be pretty hit and miss so it was an unexpected treat.

It was an overcast day and very gloomy at forest-floor level but I managed to photograph some interesting ferns and a rather stunning mushroom.  Below is what I think is a Parasol mushroom or Lepiota procera.  As to edibilty, my field guide to mushroom lists it as “choice with caution”, and says: “Parasol  is a favourite edible among experienced mushroom hunters.”  I’ll leave it to them.

August 8, 2012. This entry may be more about decaying industrial landscapes than birds, but I make no apologies.  I live close to a major heavy-industry city, a place of steel mills (one of them mothballed), fading manufacturing and gritty neighbourhoods.  Industry settles in places with the most favourable combination of the factors of production: Land, Labour & Capital.  It so happens that these happened to converge at one of Mother Nature’s most beautiful and wildlife rich places on the Great Lakes.

Today, concentric circles of urbaniztion start at the industrial core, encircled by wreaths of transportation facilities: a deepwater harbour, 6–lane highways and railways, and after that lies housing and eventually, fully withdrawn from the smokestacks, suburban sprawl.  Beyond it all lies farmland and countryside, which I think, I’ve sketched effectively in my About Me and This Collection page.

All of this to set the stage for an early morning stop at the side of a busy service road to take a look into a large and unpleasant pond that is a happy home to hundreds of Double-crested Cormorants, a few dozen Mallards and many juvenile Black–crowned Night Herons. It was not a nice place to stand and even as I write this I imagine little tickly things crawling inside my socks and around my bare summer legs; at least I hope it’s just my imagination..

I’m sure the cormorants’ mothers love them, but that may be the extent of it.  As I watched them I looked for their redeeming features: They are graceful in flight, Really good swimmers and Expert fisherbirds.  They’re kind of elegant too in their glossy, slightly iridescent plumage and, well I think the first of these picture has a barbed-wire beauty about it.

The Black-crowned Night Herons around the pond were all youngsters, not nearly as elegant as their gray, black and cream coloured parents; but that‘ll come in time, provided they survive the winter months ahead. Some of them were hanging at the edge of the water waiting patiently for a meal; others were roosting quietly, deep within some of the scrubby trees that struggle to survive in this harsh and unloved place.  They’re wary birds night-herons, but I managed to get a picture of one before he stalked uneasily away into the darker recesses of his tree.  Daytime is Night Heron bedtime and it really just wanted to go back to bed.