Author: Peter T

Rondeau Provincial Park. ON. May 13, 2024.  I am less inclined to drive distances for birding these days but every now and then I’ll do it, get up at first light and go.  I did so this morning, went without breakfast counting on a highway stop somewhere along the way. It was a little after eight when I paid the park’s daily admission fee less senior’s discount, and breathed in the fresh green stillness of Rondeau Provincial Park.

Rondeau reaches out a little into Lake Erie keeping it a touch cooler and less thickly leafed-out for a while in spring.

Despite my apparent resolve, I arrived at Rondeau with modest ambition, I just wanted to spend a bit of time in a reliably birdy place and move at my own pace, or maybe just sit and stare.  There is a woodland trail not far from the visitors’ centre, it leads through a swampy broadleaf forest, the sort of place you’d avoid if there were any mosquitoes.   Being cool there were none today, it was exactly what I was looking for.

I didn’t keep a list but enjoyed lingering looks at Bay-breasted, Black & White and Black–throated Blue Warblers among others. Pileated and Red–headed Woodpeckers were easy watching and what I took for a Great-crested Flycatcher turned out to be an Olive–sided Flycatcher which is an uncommon bird in southern Ontario but conspicuously not so in the north, it was just passing through.

My Bird of the Day was this Blue–headed Vireo for two reasons.  First because it’s a Blue-headed Vireo, a no-nonsense favourite of mine; Second because my camera captured it with a large, winged insect in its bill and therein a metaphor for what makes the world go around.

The fly, which I choose to identify as one of those nasty, biting Deer Flies, probably emerged not long ago from its pupa in the wet woodland below.  Before the pupal stage we would have dismissed it as a loathsome maggot or grub, rather unsightly and we’re quite happy to see a vireo grab and eat it. That Deer Fly once consumed, and along with many more just like it, will fuel this vireo for a few more days on its migratory journey north.  More flies, beetles, bees, and ants will keep the ball rolling in months ahead, summer, fall and winter, to ensure the next generation of vireos.  All of them bits in a food chain. A chain that used to include humans although most of us have managed to somehow side-step it in favour of breakfast on the run and day-use parks as wilderness.

Princess Point, Hamilton. ON. May 12, 2024.  I witnessed something altogether new to me today, bird behaviour I’d never seen before.  I had just started a transect on a very busy and birdy May morning and was making my way along the woodland edge of a wide grassy park. I was struggling to sort out the almost overwhelming variety of bird song and sound when I caught sight of different movement.  I’d read about it before so immediately knew I was seeing the courtship flight of a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

Male hummingbirds of many species perform dive-displays for their females. The displays usually start with the male hovering close to his mate before climbing high then diving steeply in a pattern which is distinctive to his species. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds do relatively shallow U-shaped dives, other species’ dive tighter and steeper.   Today’s bird’s dives were perhaps 3 or 4 meters wide and deep, after a few swings he retired to a perch to see whether she was impressed.  Here he is, My Bird of the Day in a day full of birds.

There was much more to stop me in my tracks this morning. A Yellow Warbler who had found his territory for the summer and was patrolling it from post to post.  Two Eastern Kingbirds, evidently a pair, were busy assessing trees along the shoreline seeking a nest site I assume and close to a pair of Warbling Vireos who had already started construction of their nest, a masterpiece of woven grasses suspended from forks of horizontal twigs.

Had it not been for the display behaviour of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, I think the day would have belonged to a vocal Scarlet Tanager.  It is a strikingly handsome summer visitor (the male anyway) and almost common in the hardwood forests around here. I hardly ever see them because they hang around high in the canopy level of those woodlands.  But I do remember my first sighting of one when I was birding a trail along the top edge of a deep and narrow valley. From that angle I looked down upon treetops and out of the May greenery popped a male tanager, I could hardly believe the intensity of scarlet; an intensity that today’s more modest digital cameras sometimes have trouble rendering properly.

It was a challenging day to be a birder, almost too much to see, hear and process and I’m told there will be a couple more big migration nights ahead.

Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON. May 1, 2024.  May! The biggest birding month.  We’ve been greeting spring migrants for several weeks, especially thoughout April, but nothing can hold a candle to May.

I was charged with doing one of our transects this morning in one of the best birding spots for miles around, I knew it would challenge me,.  But the day started foggy and patches of fog continued to roll in making the light flat, but when it cleared out the going was glorious. There was bird song all around and many times in my two and a half hours I reveled in the sight and sound of several First of the Year (FOY) returnees .

I’d barely set foot on the trail when I could hear an Ovenbird calling in a valley off to one side, then a Wood Thrush singing its soft fluting. Ee-o-lay, two FOYs to start with and both birds of the forest floor missing from here since last September.  Hundreds of White-throated Sparrows raked and scratched through the forest leaf litter and Ruby-crowned Kinglets ranged high and low foraging among bare branches and twigs.

I caught a clear song that I knew I knew but it took a while to place it, a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and then he showed himself; sensational.

Many birders view warblers as the stars of the show.  Rightly, I understand the appeal, they can be very colourful, baffling to identify and neck-breakingly hard to spot in upper branches.  I was lucky enough to find Yellow-rumped, Black and white, Palm, and Yellow Warblers as well as a couple of Northern Parulas and a Northern Waterthrush (both also warblers). All much appreciated and FOYs too.

But out of this richness the one bird that made me say Wow! and was therefore my Bird of the Day,  was a briefly seen and heard Great-crested Flycatcher. It made a brief appearance fairly high up and I think it was objecting to a squirrel for no reason I could see. It called its distinctive Wheep just once and then vanished.  I thought it was an unusually early arrival but various reference books support it being here on May 1.  I have written about Great-crested Flycatchers several times I’m sure. I love their beautiful sulphur yellow breasts, rich brown rump and tail and assertive air of belonging-ness. They stay around here to breed and today’s bird was a promise of many summer hours of admiration ahead.

 

It was a 43-species morning.  Some of the other highlights were a trio of Great Egrets somehow appropriately staged in light fog; two Caspian Terns who wheeled around one of the ponds and their presence half in and half out of the in fog again seemed to suit them. As I finished the circuit, four Barn Swallows traced large loops over the river, I expect they’ll be nest building under the bridge again; summer birds.

 

 

Princess Point, Hamilton. ON. April 20, 2024. Many decades ago as a recent immigrant, I was often at a loss to identify  so many new-to-me  birds. I’d been a casual and ill-equipped birder in my English youth but getting settled in Canada had led to paying much more attention to birds, as well as getting married, paying rent and other signs of adulthood of course. I often think back to one spring day and being confounded by little birds that looked for all the world like warblers yet didn’t match anything in my field guide.  They were small, olive drab, showed a pale wing bar, and flitted and foraged endlessly. I thumbed back and forth through Peterson’s warbler illustrations. Then, for a just moment, one of them showed a bright crimson crown-patch. Now I had something I could hold on to. I was familiar with the Goldcrests and Firecrests of Europe and these little things were their lookalikes, the closely related Ruby-crowned Kinglets!

Today was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet day, I think there must have been an influx overnight, it happens when conditions are right and millions of spring migrants take flight. Everywhere on our transect we could hear Ruby-crowned Kinglets singing.  Their song is a drawn-out tumble of quite loud notes, well described in the Sibley guide as si si sisi berr berr pudi pudi pudi see.  Kinglets could have been my Birds of the Day had it not been for my young companion spotting a beautiful male Blue-gray Gnatcatcher not 3 meters from us.  It stayed around long enough turning, posturing, flitting and generally behaving to become a textbook sighting. It was My Bird of the Day displacing the kinglets.

The gnatcatcher must have arrived on that same overnight wave as the kinglets, and many Yellow-rumped Warblers and White-throated Sparrows.  The photo in the header is today’s gnatcatcher, a little out of focus but appropriately with a gnat in its bill. The one below is from nine years ago and might be helpful had it not been for all those branches.

Princess Point, Hamilton. ON. April 13, 2024.  Caught by conflicting promises I tried to squeeze in today’s transect by starting at 7:30 but rain put paid to that. You can’t realistically blame the weather; it’s always been around but it sure complicated things and I found myself having to start an hour later and in Force 6 winds.  Benignly labeled a Strong Breeze, Force 6 is ‘Large branches in motion; whistling heard in telegraph wires; umbrellas used with difficulty.”  To all of that at six degrees C. I can only add that it made my eyes water, nose drip and knuckles stiffen.

I hastened around the route where despite the challenges I was pleasantly surprised a few times.  I’ve been enjoying watching a flotilla of Northern Shovelers grow over the past week or so, mostly males so far, today the count hit 42.  In the same area Gadwall numbers had grown to 27 but they tend to be shy and there could have been many more. I also noted several Bufflehead, Mute Swans, Lesser Scaup, Common Mergansers and even a beautiful pair of Green-winged Teal in a sheltered backwater.   Open water though was being wind-ripped to a wavey chop and was apparently birdless.

Away from the water in a sheltered corner a solitary White–throated Sparrow was singing boldly but apparently alone.  My bird of the Day was a Yellow–bellied Sapsucker which at first, I took to be a Downy Woodpecker.  They are close-ish in size and overall colouring, but the sapsucker is a dowdier looking bird, instead of crisp black and white patterning it is more soot-black and off-white. The reliable field mark for the sapsucker is its pale wing-slash.

I think sapsuckers as a family could do with re-branding.  That name, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, sounds as if it was invented as a comic book joke.  True that it does sometimes show a pale yellowish cast on its belly and that it does tap trees to prompt a flow of sap to attract insects, but I think ornithology could do better.

Today’s sapsucker sighting was brief, and anyway I was distracted by the repetitive calls of an Eastern Phoebes who was staking out its territory among some Witch Hazels, I enjoyed it too but didn’t linger, time was not on my side.