Author: Peter T

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.

Princess Point, Hamilton. ON. April 10, 2024.  At the right time and place you can watch migration happen, literally on the fly, but most of it goes unseen.  Overnight they move, flying hundreds of miles while you sleep. They’re there to greet you next morning; it happened to me today, the greeting that is not the flying.

I had a transect to do this morning.  It’s one of the best, following trails along a lake edge, crossing some open grasslands and leading up through a hardwood forest.  It can be, usually is, very bird-rich. And being mid-April the world was alive with the press of new life, everything in its finest courtship colours.

Moments out of the car I went to count all the Mute Swans I could see (16) , and at glance could see about twenty Northern Shovelers and twelve Gadwall. I was furiously jotting down sightings: a pair of Mallards, Ruddy Ducks and a scattering of Buffleheads when I heard a familiar cry that I could hardly at first believe, a Caspian Tern. Back already? I wondered. But of course, it’s an easy overnight flight from the east coast for a strong flier like a Caspian Tern.

Caspian Terns are built like 1960s fighter jets: all points, hard angles and sharp wings. They have a raucous call, a loud, grating  ‘CRaaHaa’. Described by Pete Dunne, one of our finest writers on the topic, as “…more nearly approximates the sound of a cat being stepped on aieee YOW.”  Or, less colourfully by the National Geographic Complete Birds of North America as “rraah”. You get the idea.

Caspian Terns demand your attention; they are always dominant, frequently noisy, and indisputably handsome. The Russian name for them is Chekrava, almost onomatopoeic, the word and the bird mirror each other’s purposeful crispness. Caspian Tern occurs on all continents, breeding and/or wintering along coastlines and inland along rivers, lakes, and marshes.

You’ve probably rightly guessed that the Caspian Tern was My Bird of the Day.  I know I will get tired of them by September but today they were a jolt in a full morning of great birding. For the record, among other best memories today were the songs of a Rusty Blackbird (something I don’t think I’ve ever heard before) the ‘Chewink’ note of an Eastern Towhee and the warm trill of a Pine Warbler. And lots more, actually forty-four species in two and a half hours, but Caspian Tern came out tops.

Princess Point, Hamilton. ON. April 4, 2024.  I had forgotten how much fun the first big deluge of spring birds can be. I’ve been away for the best part of a month so had missed most of the March trickle, an exciting but oh-so-gradual reappearance of things like Red-winged Blackbirds and Killdeer. That trickle becomes a weather-regulated flow, flow becomes a stream and then, weather-be-damned,  it’s all about April days like this.

I had inadvertently assigned myself to one of our most challenging transect routes today. It was a wake-up call.  I felt excitement and a heart-lift as I untangled songs I knew but couldn’t put immediately my finger on: American Goldfinches, Dark–eyed Juncos and Carolina Wrens. I was happily distracted by waterfowl, a squadron of male Northern Shovelers splendid in white, green and rust. A little way off, tucked away trying not to be seen, was a scattering Gadwall. All old friends I was glad to see back.

 

Out on open water a long string of Ruddy Ducks mingled and merged with Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead and even a few Common Mergansers. A grand reunion driven by hormones and the need to find territory to raise the young of this year.  The waterfowl in particular have a long way to go yet, there are thousands of lakes, waterways and wetlands for the taking north of us, most of it still locked in winter.

I watched a trio of Song Sparrows apparently squabbling. It was unclear what the male: female mix was but the argument was over who holds which patch of grassland and associated rights.  They reminded me of medieval barons and princelings claiming domains and fiefdoms to be overseen by landmark towers, keeps and castles. Here is one of those would-be czars, a male in full hormonal battle cry. He and the others of the tangle were my Birds of the Day.

Horta, Faial, Azores Is. Portugal. March 29 2024. 

The Azores, a group of volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic about half way between mainland Portugal and New York, is not a great birding spot. Geologically the Azores are young, they are a living product of the ever-upwelling North Atlantic Ridge and continue to grow in fiery fits and bursts.

There are few endemic birds here save for some oceanic species like Cory’s Shearwater, Yellow-legged Gull, and, notably, Island Canary. They have several species like Eurasian Blackbird,  Blackcap and European Robin that were probably deliberately imported for their song or cuteness. Others, like House Sparrow and Rock Pigeon probably arrived as hitchhikers on trading vessels. I may take some heat for this sweeping view since an on-line search of Birds of the Azores turns up some 430 species, but I’ll bet 400 of those are occasional strays and blow-ins.

I came across a group of Collared Doves today and since there is little avian competition they were quickly My Birds of the Day.  They were feeding on spilled grain around the hoofs of a group of cattle in a compound on the edge of the ocean-side town of Horta.

The Collared Dove is one of the great colonisers of the bird world, having spread west from Asia, it first bred in England in the 1950s where it is quite common, it has even reached North America. I can still bring to mind my first sighting of one, very exciting and I think I was about 16.

So super-coloniser Collared Dove is My Bird of the Day.  Whether it was a recent stray or a blow-in, I have no idea, but it’s here.