My Bird of the Day

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.

Burlington. ON. April 28, 2023. Those of us with a decent reputation as a birder periodically get asked for bird identifications. If you’re lucky it’s something well described, and that sustains your expert status, but often as not the description is just unhelpful. My late friend Anthony always threw the most obscure and improbable descriptions at me.  What, he asked, Flies like a bat out of hell, sounds and looks like an F16 firing its machine guns?” Fortunately, knowing from where he was writing, I was able to guess at Belted Kingfisher and with that he was happy.

Tonight around 5, my wife brought me a photo just received from a friend. ‘What is this?’ was the demand alongside a picture. I looked, and sat bolt upright.  It was either an Eastern Whip-poor-will or a Common Nighthawk; either way not the sort of bird most people would notice on your way to work, or at any other time. I wondered where this picture had come from? A clipping or maybe a clue from a quiz game.

A bit of enquiry revealed that it was at the friend’s work and it was still there, as it had been all afternoon. One of her colleagues happened to notice it through a large window and thought it was just a new fallen log where logs don’t belong.

So we raced over and I was lucky to photograph this Eastern Whip-poor-will trying to stay hidden. It was in a courtyard, at ground level and just outside a large window. There was no better spot to get photos than a bare three feet away, inside and out of the rain. I am certain this bird is a migrant who stopped here early this morning and found a secure daytime roosting spot. They are not uncommon where they breed (a little north of here and well away from urban areas) but they are rarely seen.

So this Eastern Whip-poor-will is my lucky, right-place-at-the-right-time, Bird of the Day.

Burlington. ON. April 21, 2023. There are a couple of moments in the yearly cycle, mid-late April and mid-late September, that go largely unheralded. This is when Broad-winged Hawks make brief, overhead, migratory appearances.  For us they’re just passing through.  They are birds of Central America during our winter, and northern nesters through our spring and summer. Those who have a summer residence, or otherwise spend time in northern Ontario’s lake-dotted landscape, would know the Broad-winged by its piercing whistle, but may not be very familiar with it by sight.

Their fall departure takes place in mid-September right after the passage of an early cold front.  If you happen to see it, the flight is a spectacle: hundreds of Broad-wings sailing high overhead as if on a smooth, straight, south-bound highway. It usually happens over a very few days and if missed well, there’s always next year

The spring migration is a little more relaxed but Broad-wings make a social event of it, passing through in the last couple of weeks of April; about now. They were my Bird of the Day today. I watched as swirling kettles of dozens circled up on warm-air thermals, spiralling until they’d gained enough height to slide off the top and drift northward in a long stream of ones and twos.

It’s difficult to get a decent photograph of one of these gatherings but here is the sight that stopped me in my tracks this morning.

That was the highlight, but this fresh spring morning delivered a few nice bird sightings. A pair of Pileated Woodpeckers took flight at my approach but one diverted to investigate a collapsing tree as a possible food source.

An Eastern Screech Owl has become something of a celebrity, I have noted it several times on these pages. Today it was out taking full advantage of the sun’s warmth and was encouraged to stick its neck out a bit.

Coming to the end of my long hike I checked what a week ago was an American Robin’s nest under construction. I had thought it rather too exposed to predators and a risky choice of nest site, so I was pleasantly surprised today to see the female apparently incubating a clutch of eggs. We’ll see.

Burlington. ON. April 15, 2023. In front of our house there’s a big old Norway Spruce. It’s huge, perhaps 80 feet tall and elegant in an overgrown spruce kind of way.  It drops an endless supply of cones and I sometimes worry that one of our riotous mid-summer thunderstorms might topple it. Atop the spruce, is a large twiggy nest, It was used successfully by American Crows a couple of years ago, and I think they’re using it again this year; certainly they’ve been hanging around a lot of late. Yesterday, through binoculars, I could see black tail-feathers extending beyond the edge of the nest as if a female crow was on the nest and laying or incubating eggs.

Behind our house there’s an equally tall Black Walnut, it’s bare right now but leaf-out is imminent. It’s not actually in our back yard which is just as well, Black Walnuts produce juglone, a natural herbicide that represses the growth of many plants, especially competition like ornamentals, that might otherwise grow beneath. As if that wasn’t reason enough not to encourage one, they drop hard, staining, billiard-ball-size fruit.  For the past three days, a pair of Merlins have been hanging around atop the walnut and I think they‘d like to evict the crows from the spruce.

Two days ago, I heard a brief crow-to-merlin squabble at the nest site. Just a squabble.  Merlins are known to be very territorial and aggressive in defence of their nests and young, but why invest time on a nest site apparently already in use? Are they waiting for an opportunity to evict the crows?

The male Merlin flies around and chitters loudly every now and then, but still he and his mate mostly just sit and watch. This morning the male swept straight to the nest, there was no sign of the crows and the female watched from high in the walnut.  Apparently, the drama has yet to play out fully.  Whatever the outcome, it is a pleasure to have two Merlins as resident Birds of the Day.