Northern Waterthrush

August 28 2026. Hendrie Valley Burlington ON.  My first transect of the fall got off to a quiet start and for a while I thought my day’s count might not be much better than a January day. But the species count gradually crept up to 30 although the numbers of individual birds was low.

This transect route follows a wide and luxuriantly overgrown valley. The birding was okay, not more than that, but I was happy enough with a warm, late summer hike. The route leads out to a bridge over the small river, the half-way spot that we call the turn-around bridge.  It’s a place to linger, catch your breath, watch and listen, sometimes it pays off – as it did today.

About to turn and head back, I heard a few short call notes, ‘Spltt’, intentional, almost metallic. At first, I took them to be the annoyance note of a Northern Cardinal, not quite right but a common bird here and likely.  It’s difficult to describe and distinguish sounds this way but the cardinal’s contact note under these conditions is a juicy ‘pfitt’, with a bit of squeak in it, not much different from metallic ‘spltt’, but different enough that I was alert.

A small bird zipped along the river, under the bridge and disappeared for a moment behind flood debris at the water’s edge. Could that be what I’d heard? It quickly showed itself as a Northern Waterthrush, a dainty member of the warbler family, searching for food in the debris.  A quick check of available technology confirmed that it was what I’d heard.  It was happily searching and bobbing like a small toy, its yellowish streaky breast and distinct eyebrow line were clear and plain to see in the bright morning light.  Seeing one like this was a pleasure because they can be hard to find in the dense woodlands they favour.  I knew right away that this would be my Bird of the Day and it held up despite some nice encounters later with two Solitary Sandpipers and a very early fall migrant Yellow-rumped Warbler.

The Solitary Sandpipers were apparently defying their species’ name; we almost never see more than one at a time. They were quiet, enjoying a peaceful stopover on their southbound migration. These two behaved as if a bonded pair or maybe siblings. I struggled to get a reasonable photo of them but here they are above, and below a better shot from many years ago.