Category: Uncategorized

August 15 2019. Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton, ON. I have agreed (volunteered actually) to help with a small-scale project to build a photo-library of tree-parts: leaves, buds, fruit, flowers etc; specific tree species and specimens that is, not just any old roadside scrub. It’ll be a task for all seasons and will refine my tree i.d skills. Today I got started with some beech, birch and hazel species (of which there are several) and it worked in well with some late summer birding.

I watched a small group of Yellow Warblers chasing each other in wide loops and swoops, characteristic Yellow Warbler behaviour I think. They are early fall migrants and most will have left us by month’s end and won’t return until early May. They’ll be anywhere from southern and coastal Mexico to Columbia in those eight months, so, if they belong to anyone, whose birds are they?

Three Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were a surprise find, enough to make them my Birds of the Day. They probably shouldn’t be such a surprise, they are not all that uncommon but they are small and more often than not birds of tree-tops so are easy to overlook. I managed to grab some photos of a couple of these fast-moving mites and am struck by how shabby they look in this season of moult.

Most adult North American birds go through a complete late summer moult, replacing all feathers. Feathers don’t last for ever and a complete moult takes a lot of energy and resources.  This is the time to do it, food is plentiful, migration still several weeks away and the new generation is no longer dependent on them for survival. The pictures above of  Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, a Red-eyed Vireo, an Eastern Kingbird and a Yellow Warbler, all taken today, show the gnatcatcher, the kingbird and the vireo in a state of moult-induced dishabille while the Yellow Warbler is shipshape and ready to start the journey any day now. (It’s worth noting though that the pointed tail feathers suggest the Yellow Warbler is a youngster, and if so, naturally its plumage is fresh.)

August 13 2019.  Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. Just two weeks from now we will start monitoring the fall migration, counting birds in what is rather like watching groups of partygoers leave for home, a few at a time until only the clean-up remains. It took well over two hours to walk around one of the transect routes, I hadn’t expected to take that long but the birding was good with little evidence of the great rush to come.

For a while I thought it was going to be all Black-capped Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches and Red–winged Blackbirds.  Then the clear and strident song of a Carolina Wren was an encouraging change of pace because their population took a big hit in last winter’s deep and prolonged cold; by morning’s end I’d counted three of them.

Perhaps the most captivating was this Great Egret.  Caught in the bright light against a dark backdrop it made a nice picture reflected in the waters, it was my Bird of the Day although there were several other highlights. I watched a family group of Eastern Kingbirds for a while and in these photos, I think a parent/adult can be identified by the worn and tattered white tail-feather ends whereas the youngsters’ are new, tight and tidy. (Also, I think the youngster looks hunched and insecure.)

A pair of Lesser Yellowlegs and a Spotted Sandpiper worked along the muddy margins of the small river and two Belted Kingfishers watched quietly for a fishy meal.

Along a woodland path I noticed a pair of Song Sparrows foraging for food followed closely by a fledgling Brown Cowbird. Although the sparrows never did offer it food I’m inclined to think the pair had been its host parents until very recently when they decided it is big enough to fend for itself. The Brown Cowbird is an obligate brood-parasite and Song Sparrows are sometimes luckless hosts. (Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and some fish. Wikipedia.)

I noted 34 species this morning and the only ones showing any apparent change in behaviour were the many Common Grackles now starting to socialise in loose flocks in preparation for heading south in a month or so. But conspicuously absent was any sign or sound of Warbling or Red-eyed Vireos, Yellow Warblers, Tree Swallows or Common Yellowthroats.

July 28 2019 Burlington, ON.  So, maybe it’s started, the fall migration. Well the tide has turned even if the big rush south is still a good two months away. In my birding calendar January and July is slack water, the pause between inrush and outrush; nautically between high and low tides, when boats may launch or conversely be fast aground.

But today I heard a Northern Flicker calling, a call something like a forced ha-ha-ha laugh; it’s the first I’ve been aware of for several weeks. The flicker inrush peaked here in the second half of April and by mid-May they had dispersed, finding their place in the world, most of them passing over and spreading widely across the continent.

Other birders will have looked for and spotted some early (July) southbound shorebirds, yellowlegs, dowitchers and sandpipers. But let them look, I’m in no hurry to usher summer out, slack water or not. Such early southbound shorebirds are conjectured to be failed breeders or quite possibly one-year-old birds who have not yet figured out their part in the whole life-cycle story, frustrated or baffled they turn and head back south.

I hear American Goldfinches singing overhead as they explore my neighbourhood for ripened sunflowers and other sources of seed. The goldfinches start breeding late, usually in mid-July, timing the need to feed their broods with the best of seed production. I suppose you could call breeding goldfinches part of July’s slack water but their musical foraging is an August sound, a sign of the tide’s turning.

For all I know, today’s flicker could also be a failed breeder or a naïve one-year old; but I didn’t seek it out, it just showed up reminding me that something’s in the wind. The flicker and goldfinches are not alone in hinting at change, I hear Common Grackles in small post-breeding gangs chattering amongst themselves. Those flocks will accumulate new members and in time start wandering south and west.

Still, it’s high summer with everything that goes along with it, but the flicker in particular was notable and a high-summer Bird of the Day.

June 23 2019 Valens, ON. My suggestion to go birding early this morning was met with mild groans of resistance and disbelief, it’s a Sunday you see. But I knew my companions’ appetite for good birding.  I had in mind to re-visit the same bird-rich marsh of a week ago and to get some quiet birding in before road traffic made things difficult; and besides, the early hours of the quietest day in arguably the finest month can be some of the best. We agreed upon a seven-a.m. meet up, not everyone’s best hour, but a good start.

The marsh was mellow and productive, it was full of crawling, wriggling and swimming invertebrates popping to the water’s surface and the overhead was laced with swooping Tree Swallows and Eastern Kingbirds. We watched a Common Gallinule at close quarters and saw a very secretive Pied-billed Grebe successfully melt into the reedy background. Our list of 30 species included a couple of Marsh Wrens, a barely glimpsed Virginia Rail and a Pine Warbler, and we left scratching a few mosquito bites but happy with our results.

Despite being a bit short of time we decided to make a roadside stop at some open fields, deep in waving grasses, hoping to see Grasshopper Sparrows, Eastern Meadowlarks, Eastern Bluebirds and Bobolinks; it was not difficult, they were all there.

The fields are maintained as permanent grassland and are cut for hay much later than conventional wisdom would suggest. The farmer stopped to chat and told us she deliberately delays cutting until well after all ground-nesting birds’ young have flown. It’s a management approach that puts wildlife, particularly threatened or endangered bird species, above current best practices of haymaking.

We were invited to enter the property and enjoy the birds and it was like turning the clock back to days when farms and nature were more at ease with each other. There would have been a time in rural history when such a farm landscape easily attracted and supported the life-cycle of grassland birds: bobolinks, sparrows, meadowlarks, kingbirds and swallows. Today those species are threatened from all sides and sources and their populations are dropping precipitously.  At least on this farm they are secure for a summer.

I paused to peer through an open doorway into an old barn with twittering Barn Swallows zipping and racing past me, all busy with their mud-cup nests fastened to old hand-hewn beams. Their endless comings and goings made it impossible to know how many nests there were, but in a glance to the skies outside, I reckoned on at least 40 swallows cruising around in woven tangles. This is the picture of summer that must go back hundreds of years, even if not necessarily in young Ontario then in many other parts of the northern hemisphere. And as a metaphor for a dreamy, bird-rich, summer morning off the beaten track, the Barn Swallows were my Birds of the Day.

June 19 2019. Glen Morris, ON. The bird that made me say Wow! (and therefore) My Bird of the Day today was a Least Bittern. It was right there in front of us, posing. A Lifer I’m calling it. No matter that I have a faded memory from decades ago of one sitting quietly at the edge of a reed bed, so long ago that I sometimes wonder if it was real. No matter that I’ve heard Least Bitterns singing (if you can call it that) or that I once found a dead one along a roadside. Today’s Least Bittern was all text book. And to all intents and purposes my first ever. Here it is.

The Least Bittern was the finale to a morning seeking birds of summer: Sandhill Cranes in particular, (we found a group of 15); but also, posing for the camera, Bobolinks, Savannah Sparrows and Eastern Kingbirds. We saw or heard Barn Swallows, Tree Swallows, Warbling and Red-eyed Vireos, Baltimore Orioles and Gray Catbirds too, all sights-and-sounds birds of summer.

The Least Bittern came as we moved to a convenient pull-off spot from where we could scan a wide expanse of bog. We had no sooner stopped than it flew to within a few yards of us and climbed a Phragmites reed stalk to look around. If I could have asked it for a favour I would have requested a few of the foreground reeds be moved aside, but you have to make allowances sometimes. That’s it, My Bird of the Day – Least Bittern.