My Bird of the Day

Royal Botanical Gardens. Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON. June 22 2022. On a day forecasted to be a scorcher, I did a quick and early hike of the length of the valley looking for better evidence of certain breeding  birds. This was as part of my data-gathering efforts for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas.

I’m particularly interested in spotting higher levels of breeding evidence for Green Herons and Yellow-billed Cuckoos. I’m pretty sure the herons nest somewhere along the creek and I’ve watched a pair of cuckoos that seemed well settled in. For the record I didn’t see either species today, but I did happen upon a surprise colony of Cliff Swallows.

The valley is crossed by a lofty road bridge, the supporting piers of which are enjoyed as wide canvasses by spray-paint artists.  Those decorators’ reach is about 3 meters at best, but some 30 or 40 metres above them, where the piers meet the road deck, Cliff Swallows have built their gourd-shaped nests. Their nests are constructed of mud, and adhere, largely by the grace of God, to the underside of concrete bridge decks and ledges. Here they’re using a road bridge, which evidently works well for them, but railway bridges with all of their attendant vibration are high-risk nest sites.  Collapse and disintegration of the nests are an unhappy fact of life and death for the species.

Cliff Swallows are considered common, yet I don’t see them very often, probably because of their rather preferred habitat. Originally, they were birds of the western mountains, they have spread east and are adapting to man-made structures that substitute for steep canyon walls with overhangs.

Today’s colony is the third that I know of within my 10Km.X10Km. atlas square. And I probably wouldn’t have noticed it had it not been for a lively group of swallows, mostly adults as far as I could tell, alighting along the water’s edge and apparently picking at the soft mud. Adults  are distinctive for having a bright white or cream triangle on the forehead, like a headlight. It seemed to be a social gathering with much wing fluttering and apparently brief, good-natured tussles. I tried for photographs but my results were disappointing, too gloomy or, more likely, too much handshake, but here’s one, for the record…..

 

Scarborough Marsh, Saco, Maine. June 8 2022.  I spent a week in early June birding with Dan, my friend from British Columbia. We travelled to Maine, heading first (with some good birding along the way) through Quebec, Vermont and New Hampshire. Dan had a handful of must-see birds including Bicknell’s Thrush (which led us into a very obscure corner of New Hampshire – without success) and Atlantic Puffin (offshore from Boothbay Harbor Maine. With success). But one other bird species had special appeal, the Saltmarsh Sparrow.  It is an uncommon bird of Atlantic salt-marshes and we were in the right part of Maine to find it.

Scarborough Marsh is a well-known place for Saltmarsh Sparrows and a guide at the marsh’s Audubon Center gave us easy directions, “Follow this road for about a mile. You’ll see a parking lot on the left, park there. Follow the trail out across the marsh. They’re about 400 yards down that trail.” Well his advice put us on the right track, but it turned out to be a very very long 400 yards, and he didn’t mention the little biting flies.

Dan was more driven than I and moved on ahead. I was intrigued by the marsh and its tidal ecology as a whole, specific birds could wait. The tide was low and I paused to admire a Herring Gull foraging for crabs. It paced a bare trickle of water along a narrow tidal creek, all the while peering up and investigating the overhanging vegetation. As I watched, it worked its way up and reached in, several times, to grab a flailing crab.

Taken to the flat bottom, and with one stab of the gull’s bill, the crab was opened up and cleaned out. I was fascinated by the gull’s hunting efficiency and that the vegetative overhang held so many crabs. They were probably European Green Crabs, one of the world’s worst invasive species.

I caught up with Dan and he pointed to a narrow expanse of salt-marsh where another birder said to look for Saltmarsh Sparrows. His tenacity and patience paid off and it wasn’t long before he was able to show me one. A couple of old timber piling made good vantage points for claiming territory, and at least one, perhaps two, used such high spots to make sure their houses were in order.

We both left Scarborough Marsh satisfied with our days’ work.  We could say we’d seen a Saltmarsh Sparrow and I had been intrigued by the Herring Gull’s learned approach to feeding success.

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Safari Road Marsh, Flamborough. ON. June 5 2022. There is a wide marsh, bisected by a busy road, about 40 minutes drive from home. It’s a good place to look for American and Least Bitterns, Virginia Rails, Sora and Common Gallinules, they’re all there. Given peace and quiet you’ll usually meet with some success.

I’m not sure what ‘they’ were thinking when the road was imposed upon the marsh a hundred years or so ago, it must have had a huge impact on the wildlife at the time,  tons of gravel poured in and laid down to make a road bed. And tarmac too in time. But decades on, we birders value that obscene scar on the landscape. We value it for the birding access it affords despite the speeding traffic, beer-can litter and road-killed frogs, turtles, snakes and birds.

I went there this morning and found that the road had been closed to traffic, it was barricaded and detours set up. High water and a tough winter had deteriorated the road surface to the point that the local roads department had deemed it unsafe for vehicular traffic; but importantly it was okay for walking birders.  I was there a bit after first light and other than bird song, the distant coughs of lions at a safari park, and the crackly trail of small planes high overhead, it was all very peaceful.

I was lucky enough to watch a Virginia Rail pace across the road, but it was nervous and soon ducked into thick cattails and was gone. I could hear Common Gallinules singing in maniacal cackles and maybe best of all Marsh Wrens announcing their hold on a patches of reed-bed.

Around me, Barn and Tree Swallows swept the air for flying insects, a Sandhill Crane and a couple of Great Blue Herons laboured by and two Blue–winged Teal were a colourful surprise as they leapt out of the water showing off the wide blueness of their wings in flight.

Marsh Wrens can be a bit quick to take flight so I count myself lucky that this one, above and below, posed patiently, and steadily enough for me to photograph it. Perhaps it was just determined that I should understand its place in the marsh and mine on the roadside. In any event it was My Bird of the Day.

Royal Botanical Gardens. Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON. June 2 2022. Now for the clamour of reproduction. June is about the next generation: the task ahead is everything from establishing territories, to courtship, from nests to eggs to fledglings and to flight. It’s the May arrivals (and there are plenty of them) who are the ones just getting started, some locals like Ravens and Great Horned Owls got started back in February and their young are out of the nest by now.

Today I completed the last of our spring transects under ideal conditions, clear, bright and sunny, T-shirt weather.

From the start I could hear Great-crested Flycatchers calling, a beautiful self-assured bird of treetops. Walking a riverside trail rich in bird song and activity, I watched a pair getting acquainted, he singing and apparently defining a territory and she staying close. I was so enamoured by them and the many others just like them around the valley, that I thought Great-crested Flycatcher was my Bird of the Day. But not long after, I spotted this line up of young Black-capped Chickadees, just-out-of-the-nest fledglings dependent on their parents for an unfailing supply of food. I have to give them equal billing to the flycatchers.

I counted over forty species this morning. The Great-crested Flycatchers dominated the soundscape but there were others that made me stop and appreciate the morning: I could hear: Rose–breasted Grosbeaks, Swamp Sparrows, Red–eyed and Warbling Vireos, Orchard Orioles, Blue Jays, even a Black-billed Cuckoo calling softly from the forest edges.  Both Willow and Alder Flycatchers were singing their very similar songs, dry emphatic phrases rather like a roadside cricket.

I was a bit dismayed when I passed another birder who, in the exchange of morning pleasantries, commented that it seemed a bit quiet today; I thought it was anything but.