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Westdale, Hamilton. ON. May 28 2023.   Attentive long-term readers will recall that I have a soft spot for birds in the vireo family.  At this end of Lake Ontario, we count five most years: Philadelphia and Blue-headed Vireos as transients moving to and from breeding grounds further north, and Yellow-throated, Red-eyed and Warbling Vireos as summer residents of deciduous woodlands. Vireos have a certain understated elegance but are really not much to look at.  To make up for it they have an air of swagger and self-reliance.

This morning I had a small group of new-birder friends with me, once again we were doing a transect hike. We were surrounded by bird activity, noisy too, everything from pairs of Canada Geese shepherding little squadrons of goslings to Red-winged Blackbirds busy at the serious job of reproduction. The bird song all around was challenging; within minutes I had noted Gray Catbirds, Yellow Warblers, Northern Cardinals, Song Sparrows, Warbling Vireos and American Robins, and that was just identified by sound but not necessarily seen. The list kept growing with contributions from my companions: Eastern Kingbirds, Common Grackles and Carolina Wren.   I could hardly keep up: listening, looking, scribbling, explaining and interpreting.

Then out of the blue came the hint of a Yellow-throated Vireo in the upper levels of some Red Oaks. Just a hint because Yellow-throated Vireo and Red-eyed Vireo have very similar songs, it could have been either and Red-eyes are much commoner; a visual i.d was needed. My companions had to humour me as I ignored the many challenges around us to focus single-mindedly on a  putative Yellow-throated Vireo. Well, in due course we connected the source of the sound with an individual bird. It obliged us by moving our way and eventually passing within a few metres of us and almost at eye level. It was a positive identification, the lemon yellow of its throat was plain to see but getting a decent photo proved impossible. The best I could do is in the photo below, look closely, it IS there, dead-centre.

It became an instant My Bird of the Day without regard for anything else the day might yet deliver, and there was plenty.  A charming Spotted Sandpiper, pairs of American Redstarts, Rose–breasted Grosbeaks and (it almost goes without saying) Red–eyed Vireos.  More Yellow Warblers and more Gray Catbirds, even another Yellow-throated Vireo. We ended the morning with a species count a little over 40; and that’s the way May birding goes.

Westdale, Hamilton. ON. May 22 2023.   Why is it that from a feast of drama-queen birds I manage to be captivated by one of the quietist and drabbest?  How come that on a transect walk, ringing with countless orange and black Baltimore Orioles and dozens of bright canary-yellow Yellow Warblers, how come the bird that made me think Wow! is a little Least Flycatcher?

To set the stage, understand that I was doing one of our routine transect hikes. I am part of a team of birders who walk defined routes many times a week, compiling lists and counts of all birds seen and heard. We’re gathering data for Canada’s Royal Botanical Gardens on whose land those routes lie.  Our hikes take us through varied natural habitats full of birds. Now late mid-May and many, perhaps most birds, are migrants who have spent the winter in warmer places and, as if to remind us of their tropical origins, many are raucous, bright and colourful.

This day was cool, not a cloud in the sky, but a buffeting easterly wind made it chilly at times. The wind noise was distracting. I had reached the half-way point in this circuit, a stretch of path where deciduous woodland lays against a municipal playing field. The breeze in the trees made it impossible to spot any conspicuous bird movement but a nearby male Indigo Bunting flew up to a tree top, hopped from spot to spot briefly, grudgingly allowing just me enough time for one photograph. In the bird of the header bar you’ll see the blue brilliance is still emerging from dull brown as his spring moult completes.

And then a small movement and an equally insignificant ‘chip’ note caught my attention. A small something chased another small something and both vanished into cover. Whatever it might be, it was worth watching and waiting for. In time a bird appeared, one of them anyway, it was a Least Flycatcher. That small chip note I’d heard was part of this species’ limited repertoire of a small ‘pwit’ or a bold, territory-claiming ‘ch-beck’. There is not much to write home about Least Flycatchers. But when you see one you usually get several minutes to enjoy it and although small and generally greyish-olive, they have an air of self-confidence, pugnaciousness almost. They are happy to be seen because, after all, presence is some confirmation of ownership, in this case of its little piece of woodland edge. Inexplicably that’s why he was My Bird of the Day.

(Footnote) My Bird of the Day site recently vanished for a week for vague “Server Error’ reasons. They were complex reasons, almost beyond my understanding. I think I was being punished for doing too much of something I don’t think I do at all.  It seems that once or twice a year I spend time grappling with technical terms, much of it in acronyms. Eventually I recover – but one of these days I’m going to throw in the towel. My Bird of the Day has been around for about ten years. It would be a shame to stop what is, in some ways, a personal diary. But really! Scripts, viruses, keyloggers, block widget editors etc etc. There will come a time. PT.

Westdale, Hamilton. ON. May 13 2023.   This morning I led a group of modestly experienced birders on a walk on what is arguably the best and busiest day of the year for new neo-tropical migrants, New World warblers in particular.

We followed a well-used loop of trails wandering first along a shoreline and then up through hardwood forest. There were almost too many birds and too much bird-song to sort through, certainly my note-taking couldn’t keep up.

Countless Baltimore Orioles, had arrived overnight, cleared customs and were now singing loudly to let everyone know. Yellow Warblers who’d beat them to it by a few days, were already on territory declaring their planned summer home in song: ‘Sweet-sweet shredded wheat’; and all around us in the treetops were Warbling Vireos ,one of my favourites birds of summer.  They sing all day, a long sweetly cascading song that I’ve heard described as: ‘If I sees you I will squeeze you and I’ll squeeze you til you hurt’, a little preposterous but accurate if taken with a pinch.

My companions lapped up the sights and sounds as we went along, I was equally intrigued by some less eye-and-ear-popping oddities, for example four Canvasbacks far out on the lake. To my mind they are ducks of winter or early spring and should have been long gone, west and much further north to breed. Checking local resources, I learned that while most have left by the end of April, each year one or two birds choose to remain.  There’s no end to the learning in this game.

Approaching a turning point in our walk I could hear a Rose-breasted Grosbeak singing, we located it with difficulty and my companions managed a fleeting glimpse of one our most striking birds, I know they were thrilled, but what they didn’t see, because it was there and gone in a flash was a Cape May Warbler; now I was thrilled.

Perhaps most arresting and definitely My Bird of the Day was a briefly glimpsed Magnolia Warbler. A male in brilliant breeding colour: black, white, slate grey and buttercup yellow. It made a brief full-frontal appearance and positively glowed against a dark leafy background. It was too quick for any of us to get an acceptable  photo, but this one from several years ago gives you the idea. Although I’d been thrilled by the Cape May Warbler I was now intoxicated by this Magnolia Warbler.

Safari Rd. Flamborough. ON. May 4 2023.   There’s a large marsh not far from home that took a beating when the local council decided it was in the way of commerce and would be better off crossed by a road. I think that for locals it was not a bad voter-return on investment. The trouble is that the water level in the marsh fluctuates, sometimes to extremes with spring being the wettest time and I suspect the road base is slumping a bit. A wet spring like this year’s inevitably floods the road and it is now closed. Which is fine by me, because today in the absence of traffic I was able to walk that stretch of road to look and listen for the many, usually inaccessible, marsh birds.

Almost right away I could hear the deeply guttural call of an American Bittern and away in the back the unhinged banshee-gurgle of a Pied-billed Grebe, two birds best found at the back-waters of inaccessible wetlands. I joined another birder who had earlier succeeded in photographing the bittern. Tree Swallows in pairs looped around us looking for suitable tree stumps with nest-holes and a distant Common Gallinule swam quickly across the flooded road, a lucky sighting.  We stood talking while scrutinising the edges of Cattail reedbeds hoping the bittern might re-show itself. Were it not for the faint hope of seeing it, I might have shrugged and left, but it was there somewhere and I knew from experience that bitterns can be surprisingly obvious even when they think they aren’t.

Like this one which thought its streaked plumage and sky-pointing posture would render it invisible when in fact it was anything but.

As I was finally resolving to leave, the other birder pointed and called. “There it is!” and the American Bittern flew quite low, right in front of us crossing from one side of the road to the other. Well, that made it all worthwhile and it certainly was My Bird of the Day.

But the day was yet young so I moved to another marsh, this one bisected by a wooden boardwalk. Here I could hear Virginia Rails talking to each other from opposite sides of the path. Their vocal repertoire includes a funny rhythmic grunting sound which another birder laughingly called a marsh-pig. I was lucky to catch a glimpse of one of them, like a little bantam hen scurrying through the dense Cattails; now three lucky sightings this morning: bittern gallinule and rail.