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Waterdown ON. April 15 2020. I try not to make this a place of overt social commentary but these are strange times with many new currents and tides. One such current is governments at all levels urging us to stay home, to not visit our parks, conservation areas or trails. We are to stay away from recreational opportunities (at least the ones they manage) they’re barricaded, fenced and caution-taped off anyway, it’s for our own good you see.  For some, going birding now is bad citizenship, but others reason that one person alone in the great outdoors does not pose a risk of sharing a viral infection. I’m strongly inclined to the latter point of view although current cold, early spring weather makes it easy to fall in line with the stay at home edicts. But what will happen when spring truly arrives  as it will any day now?

Needing some exercise today and despite a cold wind and social pressures, I visited an old worked-out quarry that has been rehabilitated to include a network of four ponds plus walking trails; trail-side deposits confirming the popularity of the place among dog owners. It is the same spot I visited exactly a year ago where I watched a pair of Pied-billed Grebes in extended courtship. There was no sign of grebes today but I did hear the brief kidick kidick call of a Virginia Rail – heard only and from somewhere in an expanse of dense winter-beaten cattails.

The spectacle to be enjoyed though was a pair of Caspian Terns patrolling the ponds and occasionally plunge-diving for a bite to eat, my Birds of a cold Day. They wove fast, winding loops swooping from pond to pond, sometimes close to where I stood in the lee of some junipers. I challenged myself to get a decent photo knowing that my chances were slim, the difficulties included fast moving subjects moving in and out of focus against a bright sky, sometimes near and sometimes far. I knew I’d need luck so just kept shooting, 147 photos in the end. Of them just six were near-keepers but still not good enough, I’ve included some from another day.

St.Cross, Winchester, UK. June 18. 2018. This post is prompted by another random reach into my photo archive.

I paused to watch a pair of Grey Wagtails early one morning on my way back for breakfast at my cousin’s lovely home in an antique corner of Winchester. I use the adjective antique in an attempt to paint her part of the city as only quite old, unlike other neighbourhoods which are anywhere from ancient to unfathomably historic. Or perhaps to put it more simply her house is Victorian, while other parts of the city are Medieval, Saxon and Roman in that reverse order.

I noticed the wagtails beside a small stream that emerged from under an old stone bridge, they were very busy finding and delivering insect food to a hungry brood nearby.  Other passers-by either didn’t see them, had grown tired of them or needed to get to work. It’s the female in the photo above and the male here.

Much as I like these Grey wagtails, they are vividly outshone by Citrine Wagtails, their Central Asian cousins.  I met Citrine Wagtails in Kyrgyzstan just a month later, this is one below, also from my photo archive.

Burlington ON. April 9 2020. A day will come when readers of this might wonder about the circumstances of today’s bird.  But just about every one of the 7.6 billion souls on this planet will know why it is that I’m stuck at home today.

The birding is not great from my office window, but at least I have a window and I look out onto back yards with trees and shrubs, – and it’s spring.  So, there should be new birds passing through. Well there are, and today as I sat at my computer fidgeting listlessly, I saw some quick bird movement outside: something a little elongated in posture apparently and with luck, something out of the ordinary. I grabbed my binoculars (always within reach) and looked, but whatever it was had flown. Hmmm.

Then this Common Grackle arrived to within just a few yards of my window and looked enquiringly around. I think this was what I just missed, certainly it’s an elongated bird. It seemed to be scanning the skies, perhaps for kith and kin, perhaps for danger overhead. Whatever the reason, it was there long enough for me to admire it, something we tend not to do very much with grackles. But in the sun its iridescent blue head was eye-catching – almost splendid.

Happily, it stayed surveying the neighbourhood long enough for me to grab my camera (also always within reach) and get a few shots. Taken through winter-grimed glass the best impression is lost a little, but it’ll do. A visiting Common Grackle My Bird of the Day.

Burlington ON. April 1 2020. Various levels of government have shuttered parks, woodland trails and other places of exercise. I think they mean to protect us from ourselves but it does frustrate me. Today I followed a rough old trail that few know about, I think it was a farm track at one time. As spring progresses, I’m optimistic that its route through scrubby second growth, pine plantations and mature deciduous forest will be quite good for birding – provided the authorities don’t find a way to close it off.

The lengthening and warming days have caught the attention of many birds and I watched Red-tailed Hawks circling over patches of woodland, in one case two of them kept within a short distance of each other so I took them to be a probable breeding pair. A little later another individual swept slowly and quite low overhead, my camera is rarely ready enough but I managed to get a couple of lucky shots.

Mundane though American Robins may be, they are still elegant birds. As I made my way along the path, a group of eight or ten male robins moved ahead of me, keeping a safe socially distant space between them and me. Still, I managed to photograph one of them with some success, here it is and I think he was My Bird of the Day because he’s handsome and anything but mundane.

Boquete, Panama. February 8. 2015. Still filling time, I tried another at-random draw from my photo album and came up with a butterfly on my first try, a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail on Purple Coneflower.  Not a bird but a nice picture nevertheless.

A couple more tries and I landed on this Yellowish Flycatcher seen along a forest path in Panama. Interestingly, just like the Malachite Kingfisher in my last post, I can clearly remember spotting and enjoying this individual, I can bring to mind the little recess it had chosen off to one side of the trail, and how it sat so obligingly still for me. I remember thinking it was all over when it zipped away to snap up a fly, but like many flycatchers it came back to just about the same spot to resume its quiet watch.

Certainly, photos trigger memories. I tested myself and dipped in for a few more photos and the quality of memories varied according to how singular the sighting. It’s no coincidence that Yellowish Flycatcher and the Malachite Kingfisher were both one-offs from exotic travels.

One thing that strikes me about the Yellowish Flycatcher is how characteristic is it of members of the Empidonax flycatcher family, It looks and behaves just like our familiar Least Flycatcher except of course that it looks as if it’s been dipped in yellow dye.

But, paradoxically, I have dim recollections of the bird below, a Tufted Flycatcher, I think it was just a brief encounter a little earlier on that same day and I had snapped the photo to aid in identification later. Looking at it now though I wish I’d had more time with it, a lovely looking bird.

Our summer flycatchers can be a bit baffling to sort out, we have half a dozen of almost look-alikes, but Panama has many more of its own plus ours as winter visitors. Fortunately the Yellowish and the Tufted were both easy identifications to make.

The Yellowish Flycatcher might well have been Bird of the Day, but I do remember there was lots to choose from that day, Panama is bird-rich.