June 1 2019. Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton, ON. Lest it sounds as though my birding days are an endless string of big block-buster events, I should correct the record. I have plenty of ordinary, non-birding days, I have to work from time to time, eat, hunt and gather, get the car serviced, all that stuff. And I do experience plenty of average birding days; today might have been one, somewhere between average to good for late spring.
Two of us completed one of our routine transect walks: two and a half hours and 52 species, most of them to be expected. If I look at my field notes, the remarkable ones include many Red–eyed Vireos in a state of fluttering and tail-fanning excitement – pairing up and squabbling over tree-top territories I suppose; a first of the year Blackpoll Warbler; and a hard to find but got it in the end, singing Chestnut–sided Warbler.
Bird of the Day was a male Indigo Bunting. I don’t know whether he already had a mate or whether he was hoping to attract one, but he was singing loud and clear and not in the slightest bit concerned by our approach. Eventually he moved a tree or two further away and we thought we’d lost him. Then we spotted a female; his magic had worked, she was besotted I’m sure, certainly compliant to his overtures. They were last seen flying off to a quieter woodland edge. I had lots of time to take photos of him but, as is so often the way, I’d press the shutter at the precise moment he moved or he was inconveniently (for me) partly obscured by a leaf cluster. Still there were a couple of good ones worth sharing. Here he is; who wouldn’t be besotted
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