Canvasbacks

January 13 2026. Burlington Bay.  ON.  I’ve  turned a couple of corners over the past weeks: I’ve gained revived mobility after three slow months post knee surgery; and today went for an aimless drive around just looking for birds, I haven’t done aimless since Covid. It didn’t start out to be that way, but with an empty afternoon ahead, I drove to the ship canal to admire the many ducks and other waterfowl I knew were there. The canal can be a winter birding hotspot attracting thousands of diving ducks gathered for an apparent banquet of fresh-water mollusks.

Road access was limited by new fencing palisades, but with some difficulty I was able to scan the canal’s large rafts of Long–tailed Ducks and Lesser Scaup (and maybe Greater Scaup too, hard to tell and too cold to invest much time.)

This is a grubby part of the world at times, winter especially.  Can’t be helped, our neighbouring big brother city is Canada’s beating heart of primary industry, steelmaking looms large.  It’s hard to find colour here sometimes but it helps that we sit on and around some large bodies of water and where there’s water, open water, there’s birds.

Far out on the as yet unfrozen harbour were large wind-blown rafts of Common and Red–breasted Mergansers. They were a very long way out and close to vanishing, they taxed my rusty identification skills.

After a couple of birding stops I could see that I was on a birding-crawl, aimless now, so followed my nose the long way around the harbour. In a quiet backwater edge, I found a large group of Northern Shovelers, hunkered down and heads tucked under wings.  Such handsome birds, now apparently dozing through winter. Vulnerable I thought, though presumably someone was on sentry duty. One of those encounters where I wondered what do they think about on these long winter days; and is thinking part of their existence anyway.

Here and there I accumulated a mental list for the harbour tour adding Trumpeter and Mute Swans, American Coots, American Black Ducks, Green–winged Teal, White–winged Scoter, Hooded Mergansers, Common Goldeneye, and Mallards and Canada Geese of course. Then just as I thought I was done for the day, I binocular-scanned to a small offshore flotilla of Canvasbacks. I inwardly cheered, My Birds of the Day.

Canvasbacks are a rather highborn looking duck whose unhappy disadvantage is that they are considered one of America’s dinner table favourites, roasted and served with fried hominy and red currant. They look better, I think, served up like the ones above.