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RBG. Hendrie Valley, Burlington ON. September 7^th. 2020. Strong winds this morning blew fat rain drops from the trees, left from a riotous and drenching overnight thunderstorm. The natural world was drying out and few other souls ventured out when I walked one of my regular transects. The birding was somewhere between fair and good, small birds like warblers and flycatchers were conspicuously absent, but there were lots to see among larger ones. I watched this belly deep Great Blue Heron patiently stalk and spear a couple of cold, wriggling, protein packages.

Despite noting many speckle-breasted juvenile American Robins, a Black and White Warbler, two Ospreys a few young Rose–breasted Grosbeaks and a Warbling Vireo, easily the highlight of the day was watching and puzzling over the combative behaviour of a group of about 8-12 Blue Jays and a single Merlin. It was an avian version of that childhood game; What time is it Mr. Wolf? Except that Mr. Wolf, the Merlin in this case, is a predator who lives on a diet of smaller birds snatched out of the air in fast pursuit. A Blue Jay would make a good meal.

The play went like this: The Blue Jays, as teasers, perched conspicuously distributed around the high branches of a bare or sparsely-leaved tree, the Merlin swooped in, took up a strategic perch, surveyed the meal opportunities and then made a dive or maybe a feint for one of the teasers. The teasers all scattered, shrieking like 7-year olds, and then promptly reconvened, often in the same tree. The Merlin returned as before but empty-handed and they did it all over again and again and again.

This is not the first time I’ve witnessed this cat and mouse game and I wonder what this is all about. Could it be that they’re all young birds, hatched this year, engaged in mutual learning; albeit with the possibility of a bad outcome for one of them.

Blue Jays were around in the valley in huge numbers today, a big migratory pulse I’m certain. The Merlin looked very crisp, in fine fettle. I’m sure it would soon find a meal not necessarily a playmate. My Birds of the Day.

Royal Botanical Gardens Arboretum, Hamilton, Ontario. August 30 2020. Some birders make a weekend out of following up reports of others’ notable bird sightings. Just before lunch, I met a couple who had already logged about 200km chasing sightings in central Ontario.  They were far from home with more leads to follow. For their troubles they had seen a Buff-breasted Sandpiper (a good find) but missed a Western Sandpiper. I may have added joy to their day by pointing them in the direction of a Willet that I had found just an hour earlier.

The Willet caught my eye as I was doing one of our just-restarted fall transects. The morning had been rather slow going as far as species numbers and mix were concerned, but entertaining with a couple of young Bald Eagles playing aerial acrobatics, a Great Egret softening up a catfish meal, and squabbling Caspian Terns.

The Willet was an identification challenge and I spent quite a few minutes going through my mental rolodex. For a while I couldn’t shake the word whimbrel from my mind, I knew it was wrong. But W… W… W-something?

A Willet is a notable but not totally unexpected migrant, a handful are seen here most years. The question that puzzled me later was, to which of two subspecies, Eastern or Western, do our birds belong?  The Eastern breeds along the Atlantic on coastal flatlands anywhere from Virginia north to Newfoundland, then winters on open mudflats and beaches almost anywhere south of that, including the Gulf of Mexico.  The Western subspecies is a bit more widespread and breeds in the vast centre of the North American continent, and spends its winters on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, from California or Virginia south including tropical South America.

In all likelihood today’s bird was a Western Willet on its way from somewhere far inland to the Atlantic coast. Perhaps to spend its winter dodging the throngs of winter escapees on Florida beaches.

On first meeting, a Willet is a conspicuously large but rather plain shorebird, especially a post-breeding one like this. At any time of year, they are a long-legged bird about the same colour as the mudflats. But all is forgiven when they fly, whistling loudly in alarm and exposing beautiful, bold, under-wing panels in black and white.  My thanks to Andrew Mactavish for this revealing photo.

It was unquestioningly my Bird of the Day.

Woodland Cemetery, Burlington ON. August 28 2020. Roger Tory Peterson’s book, A Field Guide to the Birds (first published in 1934 and for decades North America’s bird-identification bible) was, for the most part an invaluable revelation. When I started birding in Canada it was almost alone in shining a light on bird identification mysteries. The only stumbling block was its two-page section on Confusing Fall Warblers. Those few discouraging pages clouded the other 200 of confidence and joy earned in finding and knowing what you were looking at. It was enough to put many people off looking at little birds. The taint has stuck, undermining some birders’ confidence still.

I met with friends this morning to look for migrants of any and all kinds among the trees and shrubs in a large cemetery. The weather has cooled in the past couple of days and many bird species have taken the hint that it’s time to move on.

I felt like a beginner birder today, the trees were hopping with birds, there was too much to absorb in not enough time and it was all moving around. I had no trouble with Red-eyed Vireos, a glimpsed Philadelphia Vireo, many Chipping Sparrows, Black–capped Chickadees, American Redstarts, a Magnolia Warbler or two, a Blue–winged Warbler and Red–breasted Nuthatches, but there were many more active little birds moving quickly, flitting, dropping and vanishing before you could get your binoculars on them. To complicate things, several of them fit right into Peterson’s ‘Confusing’ category: Cape May, Bay–breasted, Pine, Black–throated Green, and Blackburnian Warblers. They were all there, undoubtedly dozens of them, bouncing and fluttering, teasing us. You can usually figure them out given field guide in hand, time, and a reasonable look. But today it was difficult to make certain identifications, my colleagues were more confident and I owe it to them that I was able to latch on to some of those tricky ones.  

I managed to get this poor photo, below, of a young female Cape May Warbler. She’s brownish, shows no wing markings and is faintly streaked on the breast.

On the other hand, the next two, below, are also Cape May Warblers, both adult males, one in spring, the other in fall. Some quite radical differences, you can see a bit of what Peterson was getting at.

Finally for today, as we were about to head for home, with my head still trying to catch up, we heard a piercing three-note whistle and looked up to see this adult Bald Eagle, no mistaking.

RBG. Hendrie Valley, Burlington ON. August 26 2020. On this morning’s walk around familiar trails, there was almost too much to choose from. Late August, slightly cooler weather and birds are on the move, these are the early days of what will become a flood of migrants heading south. I look at them and wonder how they know what they know; how does this five-iridescent-grams of a young Ruby-throated Hummingbird, know that it’s time to go to Panama? Science has teased out answers but not all of them, not the biggest one – how they know what they know.

The hummingbirds was one of several attention getters, there was also: a family group of Red–eyed Vireos – one of my favourite birds and one that I have not seen enough of this strange summer, a Warbling Vireo, a couple of Ospreys, one of them holding a flapping fish, and a beautiful young Green Heron stalking the length of a sodden log, peering and posturing, hoping to spearfish a late breakfast.

Warbler species can be a difficult identification challenge in fall. We found three: a small group of American Redstarts flitting and foraging, they are easy enough to identify at any time of year – as long as you can follow their constant movement; a lucky couple of photographs enabled us to identify a Blackburnian Warbler in its fall drabness, a striking contrast to the flaming orange beauty of spring; and two active Chestnut-sided Warblers – so utterly different now in fall plumage.

Quite unexpected was this Pied-billed Grebe. Maybe it’s the time of year or maybe it’s just a naive youngster, but Pied-billed Grebes are usually difficult birds to get close to. They prefer to keep their distance, and, if in the slightest bit threatened, retreat into pond-side vegetation or dive, sometimes slipping below the water like a submarine. Not this one though, it was on the edge of a too shallow pond, barely 5 metres from us and showed no alarm about our presence, conversation or movement.

Our 3-hour morning hike turned up nearly 40 different species. All the familiars: Blue Jays, American Goldfinches, Gray Catbirds, Great Blue Herons and Hairy Woodpeckers included, but some intriguing specials too. The best of which could easily be the Pied-billed Grebe, the Blackburnian Warbler or Chestnut-sided Warblers, but I think My Bird of the Day would be this lovely young female Ruby-throated Hummingbird perhaps for the secrets she holds.

Home, Burlington, ON. August 23 2020.  I write this as the last light of the day smudges the north-western horizon leaving faint pink edges around distant thunder clouds. We have just come in from sharing a home-made peach pie with friends and catching up on progress: them, us, various children and partners, and grandchildren of all ages.

In the warm comfort of an August evening it entered my mind that I should look skyward in case a Common Nighthawk should happen to pass overhead, this is about the time of year and time of day when they might be seen.  And, almost as if it had been staged, one and then a second passed quite low above me. Their characteristic flight makes me think of them as if hanging on long springs, and perhaps described best by Pete Dunne, “ Flight is wheeling, darting and tipsy. Wingbeats are given in a quick or slow series followed by an unsteady raised-wing glide.”

Yesterday, a small, carefully distant, group of birder friends and I had been discussing the annual, late summer flight of Common Nighthawks. We had noted that now, late August, is the time to be looking for them and dusk seems to be their favoured flight time so, we’ve been watching.  A bit of research found that they have a long flight ahead of them: from here to Florida, across the Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula, then continuing south to half way down the length of South America into southern Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay where they’ll spend our winter; roughly 10,000 kilometres and all on a diet of insects caught in mid-air. Reportedly, they often move in big, leaderless flocks, sometimes in long rectangles, adding local birds, pied-piper style, as they go. Curious and incredible.

It is unusual to see a Common Nighthawk anywhere other than overhead because by day they remain hidden and, like all members of the Nightjar family, they are cryptically patterned. Several years ago, we disturbed one on its forest-floor nest, it flew moth-like to a nearby branch and sat, waiting for us to go and hoping not to be seen. Here it is.

P.S. The day after this post was published, a friend emailed me to say she’d like to see a nighthawk, had never seen one. She lives in quiet part of town, fairly close to Lake Ontario where it should be fairly easy to see one given the right time and tide. I replied later and we agreed to meet at 7 that evening (yesterday August 24) in a strategic, wide open view, spot (actually a cemetery). Hardly had we set up our folding camp chairs and blown the dust off our binoculars than the first nighthawk appeared and passed almost overhead, then second, third, fourth ..all the way up to 7. Wow!