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August 6 2017. Urquhart Butterfly Garden, Dundas On. I’ve spent a week or two mulling over whether a Hummingbird Clearwing has a place as a Bird of the Day. Technically no because it’s a moth but Hummingbird Clearwings look and behave a bit like a bird, superficially anyway.

These evenly warm summer days bring out the pollinators like those above, insects mostly: butterflies, all sorts of gentle (non stinging) bees and wasps, and moths. All you need is a block of idle time spent in an unkempt expanse of knee-deep flowering plants to see them, the sort of dreamy, summer-light place that might inspire a Victorian poet to start scribbling or painter to unpack her watercolours.  In this part of the world you have a reasonable chance of seeing a Hummingbird Clearwing hovering at a flower’s doorstep. They use their almost one-inch long proboscis to draw nectar from deep within tubular flowers.

Hummingbird Clearwings are members of a family of moths called Sphinx or Hawk Moths and don’t behave anything like the way we expect moths to.

In expanding my knowledge of moths I found that unlike butterflies, which are generally considered inoffensive and charming, many moth species engage in some pretty undesirable behaviour at one stage or another of their life cycle. If there’s a worm that does destructive things in gardens and orchards, there’s a chance it’s the larva (caterpillar) of a moth. Just take a look at the index of The Peterson Field Guide to Moths and you’ll find some pretty anti-social sounding creatures: Cherry Shoot Borer, Sorghum Webworm, Ironweed Root Moth, Red-necked Peanut Worm and Iris Borer to name a few.

I don’t know what the Hummingbird Clearwing does as a larva, whether it’s destructive to anything that mankind values. But as an imago (the mature stage of any insect’s four-stage life) it is an arresting sight. As I took the photo above, a woman standing beside me was certain it was a real hummingbird. It’s not…except as an honorary Bird of the Day.

August 19 2017. RBG Hendrie Valley, Burlington, ON. I’ve just read that August is the Sunday of summer. I get the analogy, August is kind of slow-paced dreamy, it also means that the work-week starts in September and there’s plenty of truth in that. We will be starting our systematic bird counts, or transects, in a couple of weeks and as a warm-up I walked around my favourite deep wooded valley this morning. I’m not the only one who likes the valley, by mid-late morning many family groups make their way along the easy paths feeding Eastern Chipmunks, Gray Squirrels and Black-capped Chickadees.

My walk around was largely unremarkable but seeing thirty or so species of all shapes and sizes, as I did, is pretty good going. Looking back at some of my best days in Uganda or Kazakhstan thirty is decent day’s count. The really big count days come in the midst of the migrations of spring or fall and at known hot spots.

I heard more American Goldfinches than I could either see or reliably count, they twitter musically whether flying or gathered in upper branches. I noted thirty-five but it could easily have been twice as many. At this time of year the males are bright yellow with jet black cap, back and wings, the females are less vividly yellow, a little more olive. They’re easy to hear but hard to spot passing high overhead, tiny birds against a stark blue sky.

I was musing on what a rich birding experience this place offers to anyone visiting from almost anywhere and thinking about which of ‘our’ species might be familiar to long distance visitors: Mallards are found in the temperate and sub-tropical Americas, Eurasia and North Africa; they are abundant here and I counted twenty-six this morning; Ospreys (I saw at least one this morning, but there could have been two or three, it’s hard to be sure) have a worldwide distribution and are the second most widely distributed raptor species after the Peregrine Falcon.

At least one Belted Kingfisher was patrolling the river and watery reaches. I hear them more often than see them, there could easily have been more because I’m sure they breed here and this year’s young are presumably not far away.

It was Barn Swallows, a pair of them chittering musically, from a branch overhead that prompted the species distribution line of reflection. As a child in the U.K I was fascinated to watch them at high-speed skimming and insect-gleaning inches, maybe a foot, above the mown grass of our school’s sports fields. Swallows are built for effortless flight like few other birds, they have with long, slender flight-efficient wings and, as if to emphasize their sporty build, adults have exaggeratedly long outer tail feathers. I saw wintering Barn Swallows in Uganda last February, I don’t know where they go to breed from there, Europe possibly or almost anywhere across to Siberia. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Barn Swallows breed throughout North America and from Iceland, across Europe to n. Siberia, south to Mediterranean regions, n. Africa, Near East, Arabia, Iran, Himalayas, China, Taiwan, and Japan. And from all of those northern territories they winter in Central and South America, tropical Africa, East Indies, n. Australia, and Micronesia.

As one who longs to travel I looked at these two Barn Swallows above me (my Birds of the Day incidentally) and thought for a moment about the months-long journey just ahead of them. A journey they make without any of the trappings we depend on; the route is known to them without thinking and they’re ready to leave when the winds tell them; any day now.

August 4 2017. Spooky Hollow, Normandale ON. It’s an hour and a half’s drive from home to what is probably my favourite bit of old Ontario forest. It’s a nature sanctuary purchased some fifty years ago by our local naturalists’ club and valued for its richness: towering maple, beech and oak forest, a clear, fast-running,sand-bottom, cold-water stream, and, what I came to enjoy today, many species of ferns growing luxuriantly. I had little expectation of seeing birds, well, I thought I might hear Black-throated Green Warblers calling in the tops of the Eastern Hemlocks since they breed here, but it’s late in the season and I didn’t. In any case my mind was on fern study, the threatening thunder-storm and fending off mosquitoes. But unexpectedly the day produced two bird experiences following in quick succession.

Pushing between dripping branches I heard a little ‘chink’ note repeated several times to my right. My first thought was that an Eastern Chipmunk was warning me off, but no, the longer I listened the more I came to appreciate that I was hearing a bird’s alarm note. I remembered how on just about this same date in 2011 and in almost the same spot I came face to face with an adult Acadian Flycatcher feeding a fledgling; could this be a repeat performance I wondered. It wasn’t, but watching me closely was a beady-eyed, bright-ish yellow warbler of some kind. Yellow Warbler was my first reaction but the habitat was all wrong. I snapped several quick photos to examine later if needed and then did what I should have done in the first place, used my binoculars for a better look. Right away, something inside me said female Hooded Warbler. Here she is. (Click on any picture to enlarge it.)

I know that Hooded warblers breed in this forest so it wasn’t such a surprise, but the hour and a half drive from home, better things to do, and their characteristic evasiveness scarcely makes it worthwhile to come here looking for them in spring. The male is a bird photographers’ favourite, he’s so strikingly handsome. Here’s one seen and photographed in May of last year.

Since she was alarmed it was time to move along and, still feeling a touch jubilant about the warbler, I very soon passed a tip-up, the root-base of a fallen tree. Some forests have more tip-ups than others; this place has many probably the sandy soil and the maturity of the forest play a part. Eventually long after the tree’s fall and total decay, evidence of tip-ups remain as small humps and hollows on the forest floor. I was thinking back to how, as a young bird-watcher, we used to inspect the underside of tip-ups for birds’ nests, they offer many sheltered crevices and hollows that suit wrens in particular. And there, almost to order today was, a wren’s nest – or at least that’s what I suppose it was. Here are two photos, see if you can spot the slightly mossy entrance to the nest.

July 26 2017, SC Johnston Trail, Brantford, ON. That there’s always something interesting to be found underlies the origins of My Bird of the Day. I hold that whenever I go birding, regardless of how otherwise dismal the day may be, there’s always at least one bird that makes me think Wow!  Today we investigated new, unexplored-to-us, places.  Although we weren’t exactly off trail there was plenty to enjoy including some interesting mid-summer bird behaviour, an identification lesson or two and a wow! of a different kind, an insight into brevity, longevity and timelessness.

Our first lesson came when we misidentified a Grasshopper Sparrow calling it a Clay-colored Sparrow. I should know better by now, not that it matters all that much, we got it right in the end.

We had half expected to encounter a pair of Orchard Orioles, half expected was appropriate for when we did we saw only the female.  She popped up quite unexpectedly at the edge of a dense, shrubby willow allowing just enough time for one photo and a moment or two to wonder quite what we were seeing. My first impression was of a large Yellow Warbler; but hardly. What then? Once I’d got it, it was a good reminder (lesson number two) that Orchard Orioles are noticeably smaller than their Baltimore Oriole cousins and that the females look nothing like the brick-red coloured males, she had me baffled for a moment.

I’ve noted a few times, in recent posts, how bird song diminishes as summer displaces spring. Most song that is, not all, I still hear a Carolina Wren around our neighbourhood and on today’s walk we became aware of a repeated note, the dry fitz-bew exclamation of a Willow Flycatcher. We found it patrolling the edges of a small patch of willows and young cottonwoods. It was a wonderful opportunity to study the bird: we both managed to get some decent photos. Because it and two close relatives, the Least and Alder Flycatchers, are so easily confused, the long and instructive encounter enriched our morning and made it My Bird of the Day; I suspect for both of us.

There were a couple of other contenders for the title: Eastern Meadowlarks, A flock of a dozen or so circling and feeding over nearby river flats and a Black-billed Cuckoo feeding busily in the upper levels of an overhanging Manitoba Maple. We probably would have spent more time watching the cuckoo had it not been for biting mosquitoes and a noisy grass-trimming team.

I started this with the observation that there’s always something interesting to be found and I think the Encounter of the Day was finding a Preying Mantis making its painstaking way up the vertical face of a boulder. I’m not sure what you’d call this: A study in contrasts? A metaphor for time fleeting and immemorial? Here, a predator with a life expectancy of just one summer, with the eponymously fitting scientific name of Mantis religiosa and the lineal descendent of insect species going back for perhaps 300 million years. It was on a pinkish boulder placed precisely in its place by someone driving a front-end loader to mark a trail’s end. The rounded rock, the size of a lawn chair, has been tumbled around by ice sheets for a few hundreds of thousands of years but got its start about 1.2 billion (!) years ago as the metamorphosed bedrock of a long-vanished mountain chain. Now, not that it cares, it too has a name, Grenville gneiss. Nice.

July 22, 2016, RBG Arboretum, Hamilton ON.  I wouldn’t exactly say I was humbled (one should try to avoid that), but I more or less had to eat my words this morning. I had the pleasurable assignment of leading a two-hour birding hike for an indeterminate number of people, and I misled everyone, including myself.

The background to this is that Ontario’s Royal Botanical Gardens had staged a two day bio-blitz, an all out effort (yesterday and today) to see just what species and forms live, grow, breath, fly, buzz or just sway in the breeze in this large tract of land. Yesterday was for professional botanists, entomologists and zoologists and today was open to anyone interested in contributing. My job was to lead a group of bird enthusiasts and see what we could find.

I was quite surprised at the size of the group that gathered, perhaps fifteen or twenty: some novices, some clearly skilled and a very helpful number of young ears and eyes. Before we set off I explained how July birding can be very quiet, that the noise, the clamour and the drama of migration, courtship and territory-claiming is over and that the birds are now much quieter and more inclined to remain unseen. My expectations were low.  How wrong I was; we ended up with a tally of forty-seven species, Whew!

I was relieved quite early in the walk to spot a Ruby-throated Hummingbird atop an ornamental beech, it was in almost exactly the same place as we reliably found one last year so quite possibly the same bird. Just as I was feeling relieved to have found the hummingbird, one of our young members called out, “Scarlet Tanager!” and there in deliciously full view, a male posed for several minutes, even allowing several to get some really good photos.

I had hinted at the outset that we might, just might, be lucky enough to see a bluebird this morning and, lo and behold, as we revelled in the tanager spectacle at least one Eastern Bluebird came quite close. American Goldfinches flew overhead to add to the colour of the moment. An Eastern Wood Peewee took issue with the tanager’s presence and chased it around for a while, Blue Jays shrieked from the forest behind, a Northern Flicker or two cried out and, to my delight, a Red–eyed Vireo sang its ‘here I am – way up –treetop’ song. It was becoming a very good morning.

Venturing down towards a large expanse of water we added Indigo Bunting, Common Yellowthroat and Black–crowned Night Heron, many of which were reasonably well seen by everyone. We were all excited to see a Great Blue Heron and a Great Egret almost side by side, what a comparison!. I asked people to be on the lookout for Bald Eagles and in due course one of our younger members caught sight of one, albeit fleetingly. We also managed distant glimpses of an Osprey, a Belted Kingfisher, Bonaparte’s Gulls, Mute Swans and Barn and Northern Rough–winged Swallows.

As we straggled towards a rainy end of the walk I was happy to admit that I’d been needlessly, what? un-encouraging about our morning’s prospects. Perhaps a lesson learned; I really should get out more.