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October 5th 2017. RBG Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. It was a glorious morning to be out birding, the sort of day that the Great Masters might have painted glowing radiant light. There would have been mythical creatures peacefully attending gentlefolk, heavenly hosts gazing beatifically from distant clouds and of course birds decorating the landscape. While we didn’t manage the entire composition we certainly had birds decorating the landscape.

I’m sure today was International White-throated Sparrow Day, they were everywhere. You can grow a little tired of some over-abundant species, Red-winged Blackbirds come to mind, but not the White-throated Sparrow. As sparrows go they are pretty, the browns are rich, the black and white striped head is bold and the white bib (when evident, because it isn’t always) modestly charming. They have a distinctive spring and summer song, which is reduced to a sibilant whisper at this time of year; instead we recognize them now by a rather short metallic chip note, “plink’. I was supposed to be counting them and tallied ninety but I’ll bet there were ten times as many around the valley.

Coming a close second in abundance were Myrtle Warblers. At this time of year they are comparatively drab and were it not for their signature yellow rump they might cause a lot of confusion. I counted just over thirty but again, for every one I counted I’ll bet there was another dozen.

These two species are on my long list of small-f favourites, not for any special reason, I just like them and the day might have been satisfying enough with them alone, but many more surprises were to come. My list for the day hold ones and twos of many species which I had assumed had left for good some days or even weeks ago: a Nashville Warbler, two Palm Warblers, an Eastern Phoebe, a Philadelphia Vireo, two Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and – My Bird of the Day a Brown Thrasher which certainly invoked my Wow! response.

I thought Brown Thrashers had left for good a month or so ago, wrongly it turns out; I certainly hadn’t seen one since mid-late August. But there it was, feasting shyly on the thick bunches of Virginia Creeper fruit. Searching various reference books I’ve learned that Brown Thrashers don’t need to go very far south to find suitable winter quarters and may sometimes be found here during the coldest months. Well, not so unusual I suppose, but still My Bird of the Day, it too is in my long list of small-f favourites.

The drama of the day came while I was looking down across a pond holding passive Wood Ducks and Mallards, I heard a brief splash and caught the vanishing sight of a Peregrine Falcon climbing strongly away from the pond and heading to the crest of a line of tall oaks. It was one of those fleeting Peregrine glimpses and I assume the splash was a panicked but still alive duck, the falcon left empty handed.

September 26th 2017. Port Rowan Wetland, ON. Today brought the break in the weather we’d been waiting for. The overnight turned cool, we found morning temperatures in low teens (C.) and a steady breeze from the north-west.

With this change of weather in mind and anticipating a rewarding day my companion and I headed to Long Point, arguably one of the best (if not the best) birding spots in Canada. Long Point is a 38 km, east-west aligned, finger of sand, anchored at one end and leading out into the middle of Lake Erie. In many ways it is effectively an island and for reasons I have yet to fully understand, migrant birds are drawn to it before working their way back westward to the base of the finger to rejoin the mainland.

Our day started in the woods around the bird observatory and it was busy: busy with volunteer observers counting, collecting and banding birds, busy with visitors like us and busy with birds almost everywhere we looked. My British companion could hardly keep his feet on the ground he was so inspired and excited by the abundance. He used expressions to describe the windfall, common enough in England I imagine but oddly colourful to North Americans, “It’s mental, it’s heaving with warblers everywhere you look!” he exclaimed before disappearing down another trail dense with wild grape and poison ivy.

Much of the activity was Mytle Warblers but there were other favourites of mine like Blue-headed Vireo and Northern Harriers. In our half-day spent more or less in one small area I noted about forty species, a good half of which would be comment-worthy sightings any day and included: Wilson’s Snipe (three feeding in the deep mud of a shallow pond), a Black–throated Green Warbler, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, three Bald Eagles, and first Bird of the Day, a long, V-skein of Canvasbacks high overhead.  Almost out of sight, flying in silence and twinkling in the sunlight, perhaps a hundred and fifty of them. Sadly many of them will end up one on someone’s table; they are one of America’s favourites, roasted and served with fried hominy and red currant. They look better, I think, served up like the ones below (ice and snow excepted).

To close out the day we made a side trip to a managed wetland where we found an interesting assortment of ducks and near-ducks: Gadwall, Green-winged Teal, Mallards, Pied-billed Grebe, American Coot and a last minute joint-Bird of the Day, a Common Gallinule with her trio of fluffy black chicks. As soon as I saw it I exclaimed “And there’s a Moorhen!” Well a year or two ago I would have been correct, it was a moorhen, but the arbiters of nomenclature have renamed it Common Gallinule; a name that doesn’t trip nearly as easily off the tongue.

Going back through some of my old books, first published variously in 1898, 1934, and 1966 this species was always Common Gallinule and then sometime in the not to distant past ‘they’ decided to call it Common Moorhen. That was an easy and welcome change for me because it is virtually identical to the European Moorhen of my childhood; an aquatic bird of quiet waterways with plenty of shoreline vegetation. Too good to last,a short-lived name change now it’s gone back to being Common Gallinule.

Others seem to see them with regularity, I don’t. It’s been a few years since I last caught a glimpse of one so, scarce or not, today’s Common Gallinule was an easy Bird of the Day in the company of that earlier flight of Canvasbacks.

September 26th 2017. RBG Arboretum, Hamilton, ON. Another hot day brought low expectations for bird activity. Today was forecasted to be almost the last of this dehydrating heat wave. My companion and I made our way through woodlands listening to Blue Jays screeching and chuckling and walked a lakeside trail scanning the waters hoping for something more interesting than the usual rolling and roiling flocks of hungry Double-crested Cormorants.

At a time when we would normally be seeing active small migrants, warblers, vireos and the like, we struggled to find much movement in the trees at all. We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make out this small warbler, neck-wrenchingly high overhead. Here’s a blown-up photo, the best I could get and I think it was a Myrtle Warbler.

A word about Myrtle Warblers is in order here. In about 1974 when I first started birding in Canada there were Myrtle Warblers, I won’t say I knew them well; they were just one more puzzling warbler species among the two or three dozen that might be encountered. Around that time a formal committee of the American Ornithologists’ Union decided that Myrtle Warbler was too sweepingly vague and that it should thereafter be split into at least two species; our local bird would become the Yellow-rumped Warbler and out west there would be Audubon’s Warbler. Well, that did make it easier for many of us; Yellow-rumped is after all a perfectly descriptive name (whereas neither Myrtle nor Audubon’s tells a novice birder anything helpful). And so for as long as I have been posting to this site I have greeted Yellow-rumped Warblers countless times, they are a conspicuous and much-loved part of our avifauna. But the Yellow-rumped is no more: it and its close relatives have been re-sorted and the Myrtle Warbler is back with us.

Our Bird of the Day was a pair of young Cooper’s Hawks that stormed us, flying low and fast up the middle of a trail, approaching us at eye-level and only breaking away at the last moment. They split, one veered to the lake while the other shot to our right and settled in a tree not five metres away. It sat nervously on a branch watching us warily but allowed me to take several pictures, here’s one of the best.

It all happened so fast and I was uncertain, were they Sharp-shinned or Cooper’s Hawks? The two species are all but identical and my opportunistic photos didn’t help much. There are some subtle plumage and structural differences and Sharp-shins are generally smaller, but only generally smaller because a female Sharp-shinned may be larger than a male Cooper’s. After the fact examination of my photos and some poring over texts persuaded me these were young Cooper’s Hawks.

We were still tingling from this close engagement when a little later we saw two more Cooper’s Hawks who were trying to ignore groups of protesting Blue Jays; the jays chased and screamed and the hawks coarsely SSHHhhhd back at them.

September 23rd 2017. RBG Arboretum, Hamilton, ON. A blanket of hot weather has rolled over us and promises to hang around for a few days yet. Heat really puts the damper on all bird activity so my companion and I had low expectations of today’s count around one of our defined routes.

Saving the day though were uncountable numbers of Common Grackles pacing around and feeding across a wide-open expanse of short grass. By wide and open I’m referring to an expanse, perhaps five or ten acres, of clear, tree-dotted parkland, and the grackles were thick on the ground. We approached slowly hoping for a closer look suspecting that the group included some Red-winged Blackbirds and hoping that maybe, with luck, a few Rusty Blackbirds too, but no, it was all grackles.

They were quite a spectacle and counting them was impossible. They were flighty anyway and kept moving, marching and leap-frogging, group over group as if they were anticipating a call any moment to take off and leave for good; a bit like waiting for your flight to be announced. Enough of a spectacle to be Birds of the Day, especially in light of the rest of a hot day’s birding.

The woods and skies were noisy with migrating Blue Jays, but otherwise we were recording species numbers in ones and twos. One White-breasted Nuthatch, one Great Blue Heron (see artsy photo below), two Hairy Woodpeckers and so on. An hour later sticky and weary it really was time to call it quits.

September 12th 2017. RBG Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. Cool weather continues to chase the birds south. It was just 14 degrees C. at 8.50 this morning when I started a count of birds in the valley.

It starts with a stretch of trail that gets a lot of foot traffic, much of it families bringing offerings of cracked corn and sunflower seeds for the waiting Gray Squirrels, Eastern Chipmunks, Black-capped Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches and Mourning Doves. Occasionally (and this was one of those days) something unusual and migratory stumbles upon the bounty, we sometimes see Fox Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows mixed in. Today there was something altogether new – Lincoln’s Sparrows.

Another day I might have overlooked them. As I approached the bottom of a small hill I saw and noted what I took to be a couple of Song Sparrows scuffling with all the usual ruffians. Then one of them shot across the path running (yes running) like a panicked rodent. I wondered for a moment if what I’d seen was a large vole and not a bird; a worrying sort of misidentification for an experienced birder you’ll understand, or maybe I’d just imagined something. Then it happened again and this time I knew it was a bird, but this was behaviour unlike any I’d ever seen before. Birding is full of new experiences most of which get tucked away and absorbed as part of the lore and so far this rodent run was nothing more than that.

Then moving on I heard a song I didn’t recognize, a weak musical trill, pretty and puzzling. I found who was singing it and I realized it was a Song Sparrow lookalike but definitely not a Song Sparrow. It didn’t take long to narrow the field to Lincoln’s Sparrow, not that I’ve seen many, but there were a few field marks to point in that direction. I found a recording of the song on an iPhone app to clinch the identification and smiled inwardly; a new one for the valley.

A little later I met one or two more Lincoln’s Sparrows, singing too. Song at this time of year is unusual but without it I might well have noted a handful of Song Sparrows. Here is a better picture of a Lincoln’s Sparrow followed by one of a Song Sparrow, you’ll understand the confusion.

There was more to the day of course. The last of the season’s vireos: Philadelphia, Warbling and Red-eyed, a couple of Belted Kingfishers patrolling the waterways and a shy Green Heron. All delightful birds but it was definitely the Lincoln’s Sparrow that carried the day.