Category: Uncategorized

October 5 2019.  Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. Today’s birding was mundane at best. The sun shone all right but the wind was trouble, a howling Force 5 out of the east. Out of the east means that it has first swept the length of Lake Ontario raising whitecaps.  The day was cool but at another time of year such an easterly would make it bitterly cold, Lake Ontario’s 47 fathoms holds winter’s cold long into summer months.

Our valley is well sheltered but, on this day, birds knew better and preferred to stay low and out of sight. I struggled to find them and my meagre daily tally was built in ones and twos. I can usually count on a few Great Blue Herons, but the only one I saw had backed into a stand of cattails safe from gusts which, I suppose, might be treacherous for a bird that flies so lugubriously anyway and on such a wing spread.

My Bird of the Day came as I threaded and slipped my way along a wet creek-side path. It was still mostly uninspiring going until I heard the cautious song of a Swamp Sparrow come from a reed bed some twenty or thirty feet away. Swamp Sparrows in spring and summer are, like most sparrows, inclined to be a bit reclusive but their song rings out across a marsh like a peel of bells. I was glad to hear it today, a welcome bright spot.

September 25 2019.  Valley Inn, Burlington, ON. Leaning, in the manner of an idling wastrel, over the railing of a narrow bridge I was gazing at the thick red-brown waters of Grindstone Creek below when this Double-crested Cormorant popped to the surface right before my eyes.  In its billhook beak it held a wildly protesting Brown Bullhead (a species of catfish).

Catching a fish is one thing (and very tricky I should think in turbid waters like this) but swallowing it quite another and the Bullhead was having nothing of it. The cormorant’s task was to turn it 90 degrees, very much alive and flapping, in order to drop it head-first down the bird’s throat. Here it makes a risky attempt to flip it around.

All bets are on the cormorant getting its meal: it’s done it many times, its bill is such that it doesn’t allow for quick escapes, it’s throat will easily accommodate the fish once turned and time is on its side. The fish’s problems, on the other hand, were overwhelming: Out of water and rather too securely in the bird’s mouth.  Its only hope was to flap enough to wriggle free as the cormorant wrestled with the 90-degree flip.  We were pretty sure how it would all turn out as the cormorant left and disappeared around a bend in the river.

I admit to a general ambivalence about cormorants. Other than they are fish-catchers par-excellence, it is hard to pinpoint anything particularly engaging about them. Their appetite for fish doesn’t bother me, but they can be a bit much in the sort of numbers we see them.

There were other interesting birds today but the Double-crested Cormorant was my Bird of the Day and the Brown Bullhead gets Fish of the Day.

September 24 2019.  Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. We are awash in discouraging if not downright bad news: rainforests on fire, three billion birds fewer birds in North America and world leaders mired and tripping in their own half-truths and entanglements. This is not a forum for exploring the political ills of the world, but it was against the backdrop of bad news on the climate and wildlife front that we laboured through September wondering where all the birds had gone. The much-anticipated autumnal flow of southbound migrants just seemed to not be happening.

Today it all changed, a slight drop in temperature and a wind out of the northwest stirred things up a lot. With two skilled companions we completed one of our regular transect routes and enjoyed one of the best days birding in several months. I would bore you if I recounted anything approaching a full list of the day, but real highlights were ten species of warbler, those little colourful mites of spring that make birders drop everything: four American Redstarts, five Black–throated Green Warblers, nine Magnolia Warblers and ones and twos of Bay–breasted, Black and White, Cape May, Chestnut–sided and Nashville Warblers, and Common Yellowthroat – there that’s nine, one more to come.

I was so consumed trying to get a decent photo of this lingering Red–eyed Vireo that I completely ignored a Northern Parula (the tenth warbler) which was being enjoyed by the others.

Birds of prey were in the air: a group of distant Broad–winged Hawks, a couple of Sharp–shinned and Red–tailed Hawks and, Birds of the Day, two falcons, a Merlin and a Peregrine Falcon perched a respectful distance apart in a bare branched tree. Both are worth dropping everything to watch, Merlins because they make flying look easy, (Peregrines too, come to think of it) and Peregrine Falcons because they personify the formidable hunter, Pete Dunne calls them the Crossbow in the Sky.

The transect took over four hours to complete, we should have been tired but 54 species, a sky full of perfect cumulus clouds and head-turning bird-life made it easy work. Imagine if you could get paid for it.

September 13 2019. Dark Harbour, Grand Manan, New Brunswick. The setting for today’s Birds of the Day really has no bearing on the bird, you can see them almost anywhere on the eastern half of this continent. Dark Harbour is a harbour but little more than a sheltering cleft in the basalt west wall of Grand Manan Island. It offers an enclosed safe haven for small boats, room for a few modest dwellings at the toe of the cliff face, and a winding road leading through thick spruce forest back to the gentler, more inhabited side of the island.  It is said that Dark Harbour has laws of its own and the Mounties prefer to let well enough alone. Rather an odd place to visit, picturesque and comfortable enough in decent weather, and people always smile when you mention its name.  Worth a visit if you like places with an air of unease.

My Birds of the Day were Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, they were probably there for a refuelling stop before making the 20-mile jump across to the coast of Maine. At least four of them had found a couple of sugar-syrup loaded feeders hanging in front of one of those modest homes. With the permission of the spouse of the home-owner (or similar authority), I settled into a corner to watch and photograph the hummers. The feeders only offered enough space for two birds at once to draw nectar and several squealing squabbles erupted over who had priority. Whether they were real squabbles, or greetings and familial interaction I couldn’t be sure. Sometimes two of them, hovering face to face, inches from each other, exchanged whispered threats, opinions or compliments while climbing in an arial dance before peeling off the top in opposite directions.

In one of my photos you can see the bird’s tongue still extended as it pulls away from the feeder. A hummingbird’s tongue is built like a stack of open-on-one-side ice-cream cones: as it extends into a source of nectar the cones separate to absorb the liquid between segments. When the bird withdraws, the cones pull back onto each other carrying the enfolded nectar. This food-gathering system is tucked into a tiny head that also carries the navigational knowledge to guide the bird from Canada to Costa Rica and back several times (fuelled by sips of sugar water or nectar).

In contrast to the minute and ingenious hummingbird, Dark Harbour is a favoured home for equally sophisticated (but perhaps more brutish) Common Ravens and American Crows. I watched a murder of crows gathered around the topmost spire of a Red Spruce, ten or twelve of them socializing noisily. They could be Birds of the Day any day because really, who can say that any bird is more or less brutish than any other? The tiny squeaky whispers of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, charming though they may sound to us, may well convey a blood-curdling message; and well, a murder of crows?

September 10 2019. Southwest Head, Grand Manan, New Brunswick. A bit of context will be useful here: we are taking a few days off to return to Grand Manan, an island in the Bay of Fundy lying a few miles offshore from where New Brunswick meets Maine; it’s been 30 years since our last visit; some things have changed, much of it I think, a result of the surge of retired baby-boomers’ wealth and health.

Grand Manan is an Atlantic island and somewhat sheltered from the rigours of the open ocean by the south-reaching peninsula of Nova Scotia. If you had to come up with one word to describe Grand Manan, its geography and its people, I think rugged works best . The main industry here is fishing: lobsters, herring and salmon; one of those often romanticized occupations where the truth of the matter is one of long, hard, cold and dangerous days. It has a picture postcard shoreline almost everywhere you look, which also means you wouldn’t want to be washed ashore along much of it, nor would you want to drop off its sides. It was along one of those high, knee-weakening edges that I saw today’s Bird of The Day, a Merlin.

I was following a path, narrow and knee-deep in Spirea, Alder and Goldenrods, along the precipitous southern cliffside, one where if you lost your footing at the crumbly edge, it would be a two or three-hundred foot fall, well not so much fall as panicked slide, cart-wheeling tumble and bounce to the waiting waves. So, staying well away from the edge, I watched Monarch Butterflies dancing and circling each other in the warm sunshine, all gathering for their long drifting and soaring migration to wintering grounds in Mexico. In front of me, one lifted high, caught a breeze, made a couple of flaps and set off to cross twenty miles of open waters to the distant Maine shore. It was airborne and heading for Mexico, those sickening cliff edges and the sea far below of no consequence. I had hardly finished internalizing thoughts of “Farewell brave soul”, when a Merlin appeared from below, swept up in an easy climb, slowed to near stall and snatched the Monarch mid-flap. Here it is.

Well so much for one creature’s migratory ambitions, gone in a flash.  I was under the impression that, because of their larval diet, Monarch Butterflies are distasteful to predators, if so, perhaps this one’s life would only serve as a bitter lesson to a young Merlin, a sacrifice for the betterment of the population; sad though – the inherited ambitions of thousands of generations plucked from the air like that.

Behind us a Common Raven croaked in resigned acknowledgement, that’s the way it is around here.