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Bronte Creek campgrounds, Oakville. ON. March 7th. 2021. I always pick away at the calendar in March looking for signs of winter’s release. It’s worth a try but it doesn’t give way easily and I know we’ll still be getting vengeful, cold reminders in May.

A couple of friends and I went looking for wintering birds today but with an attentive eye for signs of spring. Trudging through crusty snow or sliding on slippery packed ice made it hard work at times.   Wherever we went we could hear Downy Woodpeckers drumming loudly, it’s their way of claiming territory.  There were just as many Northern Cardinals in full song and a couple of House Finches too; all signs of spring but really, if that was what you wanted, you had to look pretty hard.

I lost contact with my friends for a few minutes as I pushed my way through the interlocking thickness of a pine plantation. There was no snow in there and perhaps it was the clear ground and the chance of food that attracted a furtive Hermit Thrush. It caught my eye as it worked busily staying low to the ground. I didn’t get much in the way of prolonged views, it was moving quite rapidly, but when I did have the luxury of a clear sight I was able to confirm the identification – not that it could be confused with much else at this time of year. There are always a few Hermit Thrushes overwintering here, quite unlike their cousins the Gray-cheeked, Wood, and Swainson’s Thrushes, who all head to tropical forests anywhere from Southern Mexico to the Amazon Basin. Somewhere along the way, evolution has convinced the Hermit Thrush that staying put and making a go of it in the northern winter presents fewer risks than the journey to Brazil and back.

It was a welcome sight, heartwarming I think is the word, Hermit Thrush – My Bird of the Day.

Plains Rd. Burlington. ON. March 1^st. 2021. I spent a couple of hours following a familiar but treacherously icy woodland trail on this wintery day. Not a bird did I see, not that it mattered, I always enjoy the variety of this walk along a valley edge and through a mature hardwood forest.

On my way home, I made a point of visiting that busy corner of town where I met the Suburban Turkey just a month ago. It was still there.

Suburban Turkey, how you have found your place in suburbia. This is a busy intersection with Esso on one corner and Royal Bank on another. There are traffic lights to control the flow of traffic, traffic that flows straight through, turns left and turns right in the familiar ballet that makes things orderly. Orderly until the turkey decides it’s time to take part.

I arrived today just as the turkey decided to come down from its roosting spot on the Esso sign,  time for a little drink and a bit to eat. It found a trickle of melt water at the roadside and there was plenty of grain thoughtfully left for it by other residents. I watched as it sipped quietly, flicked at a few kernels of corn and decided to use the pedestrian crosswalk to cross the road, perhaps to go to the bank. Turkeys using crosswalks without heeding the ‘walk’ signal can cause difficulties. Cars stopped mid-turn, some moved ahead but could only wait, traffic lights changed as programmed but still no one moved. A driver got out of his car, walked towards the Turkey and gently ushered it back to the gas station, and then everything went back to the way it was.

After that, well…

I don’t often digress very far from the familiar My Bird of the Day track, but I want to share a discovery with you. It would take too long to explain our connection, but my friend Chris Taylor is someone you should know about, he lives in Norfolk, England. Although he spends some of his time as coxswain on a lifeboat rescuing mariners in distress he is also making a series of masterful videos, A Year on the Wild North Norfolk Coast, is about the seasons of life and wildlife in his little corner of England. The link above will take you to his most recent production, Winter. If nothing else enjoy it for his eye for a picture, it’ll enrich 15 minutes of your valuable time.

Oakes Rd. Grimsby ON. February 18th. 2021.  Until today, I don’t think I’ve ever posted two consecutive entries celebrating the same species. But, since last week’s Snow Bunting posting we have received two significant snow falls, so staying home has made sense: many roads are icy and some of my favoured trails are inaccessible. But today we needed to make a short trip to collect some yards of 2/8 cotton in pale yellow (You’d have to ask the weaver in my household for more about that.) and that took us in the right direction to follow up on yesterday’s report of another flock of Snow Buntings.

The bunting report specified that they were seen along a former road, now a wide path, that bisects a large field set aside for dog-walkers and their best-friend companions. The now much-reduced road ends abruptly at the rocky , ice-cramped, shoreline of Lake Ontario.  It can be quite scenic on a nice day, but better if you’re looking towards the lake and not back at the encroaching urbanisation. Scenic views as beauty are in the eye of the beholder but even the most accommodating might have found it difficult today as the stiff north-easterly wind tugged at our hats and coats, caused our eyes to stream and made minus 5 deg.C feel like minus 20.

The Snow Buntings were there, as reported, in a big flock of perhaps two or three hundred, it was quite a spectacle and surprisingly easy to find and follow. The birds gathered in milling carpets, shoulder to shoulder, focussing on the bare road surface presumably finding weed seeds or possibly the bits of grit needed for digestion, whatever the purpose they were front and centre. But they didn’t stay anywhere very long, a minute or two and they’d take off in a swirling, chittering cloud, make a wide, undulating swoop, circling around and settling again a little further along to resume the search.

Eyes watering and shooting almost blindly, I took many photos,. The results were surprisingly good and I was able to pick out at least one Lapland Longspur in the crowd. But Longspur or not, the day goes to Snow Buntings.

Hagerville. ON. February 9th. 2021.  Another snowfall last night, light and very cold, the sort of snow that brushes off easily. In urban areas like ours, clean snow soon becomes trampled and grubby so it was with some pleasure that we went on a long drive to an area of rich farmland where the snow really did lie deep and crisp and even. 

With our errand complete and plenty of time in hand, we drove back along quiet country roads heading generally in the direction of home, expecting and hoping to see some birds of winter along the way: Horned Larks in particular (we saw several little flocks), and Lapland Longspurs or Snow Buntings if we were lucky. 

Knowing that Snow Buntings and longspurs were very much a matter of luck, I thought we should visit a quiet backroad where, in previous years, a birding friend Nancy has trapped and banded Snow Buntings. It’s something only possible in mid-winter when there’s a blanket of snow and I was gambling with favourable odds that she would be there today.  

Snow Buntings are winter visitors and congregate in flocks of a few hundred and favour open, apparently desolate places like their high-Arctic home, so farmland with some weedy fields is ideal. To get her buntings, Nancy provides a daily scatter of grain with some tantalisingly placed inside small walk-in traps. Some wander in, are unable to find the way out and once trapped are carefully collected, banded and quickly released. I worked alongside her one bitter January morning six years ago and suffered frostbite for my troubles, but still it is a beautiful experience on a bright winter morning with stark white fields under a clear blue sky. 

We were in luck arriving just as Nancy was finishing a busy morning of banding about 140, mostly female, buntings.  We watched as clouds of buntings settled to pick over the provided corn. After a few minutes, at some mysterious prompt, they would lift off in a twittering scramble, fly around like a rolling snowsquall and eventually regroup back at the same place to continue feeding.

There was a bit more to it than Snow Buntings: a small flock of Common Redpolls worked their way along the weedy roadside ditch and Nancy pointed out a Northern Harrier patrolling the margins of far hedgerows. Either of those two species might be bird of the day, but not with Snow Buntings as competition, who were definitely my Birds of the Day.

Plains Rd. Burlington. ON. February 3^rd. 2021. A couple of unlikely sightings today. The first was a Wild Turkey that had become something of a celebrity in its neighbourhood.  It has taken up residence in a busy, mixed-use, urban part of town where followers of a local Facebook group keep everyone current on its whereabouts. Today I photographed it whiling away time on top of an array of traffic lights at a very busy crossroads. A passer-by told me that just yesterday, it had stopped all commerce as it sauntered through the intersection while a police officer directed traffic.  It’s not uncommon in this city to have to stop for a slow moving parade of Canada Geese crossing the road, but turkeys!

The turkey’s behaviour is bizarre and hard to explain other than to suggest that it’s got something to do with winter. There is a substantial flock known to inhabit an area of woodland and farm fields a couple of kilometres north, but it’s not like it’s a hop and a skip away. To get there means crossing a major railway line and a 6-lane highway among other man-made barriers; but Wild Turkeys are strong fliers. Who knows.

More conventionally but striking in other ways, was the pleasure of seeing two Eastern Screech Owls sunning themselves. I’ve written about them before, the grey one (above) just a month ago, and today it was standing tall exposed to the sun’s precious warmth. The red one was in a well-known owl-tree in a local cemetery, its presence was almost predictable.  Screech Owls sunning themselves has become a mark of mid-late winter for me, a reminder that, while there’s plenty of cold ahead, the sun is gaining strength.