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December 21 2016. Bronte Harbour ON. I was reminded today that one of the things about birding and this follow-up writing exercise, is that my story is as much about the texture of the day as the calibre of the bird(s) that makes the news. Today for example, arguably one of the least productive days of birding in memory. I believe I can list the sightings of the day – and it won’t take long: American Crow, Red-tailed Hawk, Mallard, Canada Goose, Common Merganser, Red-breasted Merganser, Great Black-backed Gull, Black-capped Chickadee and Mourning Dove; nine species!

What then, was it about the texture of the day? The shortest day of the year, sunlight in limited supply, uneven crusty and sometimes deep, snow on the ground and a quest by three, faintly long-in-the-tooth, usually easy-going birders to see what we could find; with luck maybe an owl or two.

To cut to the chase we didn’t see many birds and we didn’t see any owls. The best bet for most winter owls (other than Snowy Owls) is to check dense groves of evergreens like cedar, spruce and pine where they like to roost hidden from assault or predation. But although we hiked and stumbled along three or four deep-snow kilometers and scanned pine after pine and spruce after spruce, the best we could say was that we found a spruce with evidence of owl poop .

But owls aside, we also walked around the encompassing arm of a now-empty yacht-basin hoping for some nice winter ducks (and maybe a Snowy Owl). On the fractured plates of thin ice, dozens of Canada Geese sat idly passing the time of day. A handful of mergansers cruised by and then a Great Black-backed Gull wheeled into view and settled at the end of a floating pier.

The sight of the gull gave me a little shiver of pleasure; such handsome birds! If they weren’t just another raucous gull or so bloodthirsty at skewering a meal, or if they had some kind of noble bearing, they might, as the world’s largest gull species, have earned a fond place in the public imagination. But it hasn’t worked out that way for them.  Still I admire them and today’s was easily my Bird of the Day – not that it had a lot of competition.

Here’s a couple of photos: Above of a Great Black-backed Gull and a Herring Gull side by side; Below taken three winters ago of a young-plumage Great Black-backed Gull polishing off the remains of an indeterminate duck – on ice.

December 6 2016. Burlington ON. At this low-light time of year when the urban landscape is monochromatic and the skies, as often as not, grey, then any bird seen against that sky is pretty well sure to be one of: a wind-tossed crow, a solitary gull, a flock of starlings, or, if wheeling around using the wind as an aid, a Red-tailed Hawk.

On my mostly uninspiring drive to my place of casual work I pass a rather abused and under appreciated field. Once part of a productive farm it is now squeezed between the competing space demands of a busy rail line, a highway service road and an overpass that serves to allow the cars and trucks of commerce to move more happily. Someone still takes the trouble to cut the grass and make a few rolls of hay but mostly I suspect to keep property taxes down by claiming that the land is legitimately farmed .

Along the roadside, on the other side of a gritty ditch, runs a march of utility poles, between the poles are swoops of thick cable and on the cable sits an American Kestrel; it’s there every time I drive by. Sometimes it’s moved along from one loop to another but generally it sits impassively gazing at the dry grasses below. Twice I’ve seen it drop purposefully to the ground to grab something.  I wonder what it finds: a mouse, a vole – surely not grasshoppers any more.

I never linger and watch, usually I’m on my way to meet a deadline, it’s not the sort of road that encourages casual stopping anyway and I don’t have my binoculars or camera with me. And besides, that little passing glimpse of a falcon makes for a bright spot, a Bird of the Day, in an otherwise rather dreary early winter day.

Here’s a photo of another American Kestrel, another place and a sunny day.

 

October 6 2016. RBG Arboretum, Hamilton ON. It being late November as I write this and since much of the past few weeks has been absorbed by catch-up on the other demands of life, this is a look back at a day’s birding two months ago. The 6^th October: 18 degrees C. (65 F), no cloud, a very light west wind; perfect day for a census and a walk through a hardwood forest.

It was, for a while, a bit on the average side: Yellow-rumped Warblers everywhere, a flyover Cooper’s Hawk and handfuls of Blue Jays. But then it seemed to become a woodpecker day: six Red-bellied and four Downy Woodpeckers, a couple of Northern Flickers, three Hairy Woodpeckers and even a quiet, minding its own business, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Only one missing – although not for long.

Nearing the half-way point of our census circuit we heard a Pileated Woodpecker’s fanfare call some distance away. And the thing about this loud, ringing cry is that it penetrates forests, carrying proportionately much farther than others of the clan; a distantly heard Pileated could be half a kilometer away. We could only hope that the one we could hear was somewhere in front of us and would stay long enough for us to get a lucky glimpse – that’s usually all you get. Our luck held and we soon found ourselves close enough to hear it chopping wood looking for a meal. I was keen to see how far our luck would carry us and wandered off the path a few meters, looking up and following the chunky hammering until I spotted it wrapped around the thin heights of a dying ash. Ash trees here and across much of the north-east are falling in quick succession to an imported pest, Emerald Ash Borer, and the only good thing to come of this blight might be a feeding bonanza for woodpeckers. I suppose it worked in my favour today. Here it is in a gallery visible only on the website, not if you’re reading this as an email.

September 5 2016 Chokpak Pass, Kazakhstan. I’m digging back into my near-archives for this one, going back to September when four birder friends and I spent a couple of weeks in Kazakhstan. And I’m writing about the European Roller not just because we saw quite a few, or simply because they’re magnificent, but because I’ve been imagining rollers for decades; they are one of my childhood dream birds. A few times in past posts I have written about the thrill of finally meeting up with those I-never-thought-I’d-see-one birds: Hoopoe, Bee-Eater, Avocet and Osprey come to mind. Many of those elusives are Eurasian birds and in hindsight it’s evident they’re more –asian than Eur.

During our days in Kazakhstan we saw many European Rollers but rarely close enough to get a decent look or photo. For mile upon mile there seemed to be a roller on every loop of the utility lines that paralled the highway or railway, but trains don’t stop to look at birds and the glimpses were unsatisfying. But on this day of exploration of the wide valley that separated our camp from the Tien-Shan Mountain slopes, I finally had a chance to move in close to a small group of European Rollers who had settled in the upper reaches of a track-side thicket.

What makes rollers so appealing is their glorious colour, a shimmering sapphire blue below and rich chestnut above. Superficially they look and sound (a hard crow-like RACK-ack) as though they belong in the crow family, but it seems they’re in a family of their own and are more closely related to bee-eaters, kingfishers and kookaburras.

Finally getting a good look at one of those childhood nemesis birds is satisfying; it seems to put to rest a nagging incompleteness. And if seeing is satisfying then getting a decent photo is truly icing on the cake. The photo above, while unmistakably of a European Roller, is, I think, of a young bird because it certainly doesn’t have the sapphire blue I referred to.

The illustration below dates from 1876 and shows the bird in the glory I innocently believed in from poring over the sometimes quaint reference books available to me. I was lucky to enjoy the generous, if slightly stand-offish, tutelage of a certain Major Fenwick who certainly was a child of the 19^th Century.

November 8 2016. The Owl Foundation  exists to treat and rehabilitate (if possible) wounded and orphaned owls; they’ve been at it for about fifty years. These sorts of undertakings rarely have a precise starting date but it seems it all got started for Kay and Larry McKeever sometime around 1967. Today the Owl Foundation receives a hundred or so damaged owls every year; sadly many are beyond saving.

Owls in the wild fly across political borders all the time but governments see borders differently and make it difficult for the foundation to accept injured or orphaned owls from anywhere other than Ontario. Interprovincial regulations make it complicated; international regulations make it impossible.

I volunteer some of my time and energy to help raise funds for the foundation and I spent half of today at their facilities just learning more about the operation.  If you like birds and feel that wildlife gets a bad deal, feel free to donate to the Owl Foundation; they will sincerely appreciate your support.

I had thought to open this post with a list of bird sightings today but no one would be fooled. Today’s list of birds included: Great Grey Owl, Barred Owl, Barn Owl, Eastern Screech Owl, Great Horned Owl, Snowy Owl, Long–eared Owl, Short-eared Owl, Northern Saw-whet Owl, Northern Hawk Owl, Peregrine Falcon, Northern Goshawk, Bald Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk, Broad-winged Hawk, Osprey and American Kestrel – I think that’s all of them. And yes they do sometimes accept other raptors, usually another rehabilitator’s overflow.

But of course, notwithstanding the mission of the Owl Foundation, these are all caged birds – well there was a free flying Red-tailed Hawk perched in a Red Oak just outside the foundation’s office. Many of them will fly free again once strong enough or fully re-feathered.

Any one of these birds whether owl, falcon, buteo or eagle could make Bird of the Day. My loudest gasp of appreciation or admiration was for this young Peregrine Falcon. Just look at those flight feathers! It had somehow suffered a torn crop (how that could happen is anyone’s guess) but surgery, tube feeding and recovery time have done the trick and it will be released fairly soon.

And, by the way, on my return home I saw a free-flying, wild Peregrine Falcon sitting on wires close to a nest site that has been reliable for a few years; so it wasn’t all captive birds.