Category: Uncategorized

Royal Botanical Gardens. Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON. July 19 2022. I walked the length of my favourite valley early this morning and it was nice. I use that word with some hesitance for I remember teacherly admonitions to avoid ‘nice’ the adjective.  I was instructed that nice is bland and limp, and a weak choice, but it was nice in the valley. Now with the reproduction frenzy of May and June behind us, everything in the bird world seemed to be at peace, a place for everything and everything in its place.

It was a time of simple sightings and no drama. A few Eastern Kingbirds flycatching and a Great Blue Heron fishing for breakfast. Tree Swallows gossiping on open branches, a Green Heron passing overhead and Warbling Vireos singing among the high layers of American Sycamores.

As I ambled a path that runs parallel to the creek I heard the thin I’m-watching-you ‘pip’ note of a Northern Cardinal.  I soon found him just above me and saw one of birding’s curiosities, a bare-headed cardinal.  He’s molting.

Molt is the pre-programmed shedding of worn feathers and their replacement with new. At its simplest it’s just that birds change their clothes too, but the variables and complications are many. It is a complex area of study: males of many species have an eye-catching breeding plumage but some molt into glory in the weeks or months just before spring, while others do so a full six to nine months ahead of spring.  Why the difference?  Some large birds don’t do a complete molt every year at all, because growing feathers demands too much energy. Some species go through several intermediate molts before reaching full adulthood, and many ducks, geese and swans molt out their long flight feathers and are unable to fly for a period.

Curiously, some individual Northern Cardinals and Blue Jays have a way of molting into a bald-headed state for a short while. Such baldness is uncommon and usually prompts a flurry of alarms and queries among local birding groups. Naked like that they’re strikingly ugly, I’m sure I see their dinosaur lineage, and who would have imagined that cardinals have grey/black skin under their brilliant red plumage.  I wonder (and I have no idea) whether it’s a coincidence that the heads of both cardinals and jays have prominent feathered crests. He was my un-feathered Dinosaur of the Day.

Port Perry, ON. July 8 2022. While a car full of adults might ignore hunger pangs for a while, a nursing 8-month old is almost certain to call for immediate satisfaction. It was exactly that set of circumstances that broke our longish journey into several parts today, happily we made each stop somewhere green, shady and mosquito-free.

We stopped for a while at a lakeside park popular with people of all ages and interests: young, old, ice cream and play. I might have been the only one paying attention to bird life, gulls mostly, but especially a steady patrol of terns along the waterfront. From where we sat, I thought they looked like Black Terns, and if so, I wanted a better look. Excusing myself, I returned to our heavily packed car to retrieve my binoculars and camera.

Black Terns as a species are considered to be of ‘Least Concern’ across the Americas, they thrive in the centre of the continent breeding in small colonies on freshwater marshes, At the edges of their range however, Black Terns have declined sharply and are now much less common around the Lower Great Lakes. It’s been a while since I last saw Black Terns and I was keen to get closer.

A small flock, perhaps a dozen, had found good pickings in the matts of vegetation accumulating along the shallow shoreline and quiet backwaters. They formed a constant parade, passing parallel and close to a waterfront path, wheeling suddenly for shallow plunges or picking daintily from the weedy surface. Where open water gave way to a busy marina they veered out and away to circle back to the starting point, and repeat.

I think that in all my years that I have never enjoyed such a privileged opportunity to watch and study Black Terns, they are usually more solitary and too far away. It might be hard to write enthusiastically about a bird that is generally black, sooty black and pale black but their bouncing acrobatic flight and delicate swallow-like lines make up for it. They were difficult to photograph but nevertheless a happy distraction from our journey.

Burlington Bay, ON. June 17 2022. A week or two ago I walked a stretch of overgrown and unloved beach.  It can be interesting birding but the charm is rather diminished by the washed-up litter, plastics and boating paraphernalia. It is tangled and overgrown with non-native vegetation, mostly it seems plants that produce seeds-that-cling, things like Common Burdock and Rough Cocklebur.

As I picked my way along, dodging Stinging Nettles and generally watching my steps, I saw, on the gravel in front of me, what I took to be a dead Northern Flicker. It was splayed out in a crash-landing pose, Tail spread awkwardly, one wing at an odd angle and head askew. ( It’s a bit like the one in the photo except….) I thought perhaps it had fallen from the air, mid-flight, felled by a mysterious, perhaps alien, infection. Or maybe it had been dropped there by some kills-for-the-fun-of-it predator perhaps a Peregrine Falcon or Coopers Hawk.

I stared at it for a while, probably a few seconds only. As I was stooping to take a closer look, it opened its eye, turned its head to look at me and with a quick scramble took flight, apparently well rested and perfectly healthy. Taking a nap I suppose.

Royal Botanical Gardens. Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON. June 24 2022. A gorgeous mid-summer morning and I was up and out early to hike the valley; once again looking for evidence of breeding birds. I made a little progress by confirming the presence of fledged young,  in this case Belted Kingfishers.

But first I spent a long, quiet spell comfortably seated beside a pond, first watching this Great-crested Flycatcher making the most of early-hours peace and quiet; and very shortly afterwards, its cousin, an Eastern Kingbird. Two of my most admired birds.

I spotted the kingfishers on conspicuous perches over water and within a few yards of where I had long suspected there to be a nest. They were sitting quietly and quite a long way off but I could tell they were smaller than adults, still a little fluffy and perhaps a bit stubby-tailed, so definitely fledglings. I took many photos but couldn’t remember how to manually focus, very frustrating.  I found another and better viewpoint, overcame my camera lapse and spent many minutes watching these youngsters. A parent appeared briefly and pushed a small silvery fish down one throat but other than that it was just the pleasure of the birds, the time and the place that made them my Birds of the Day.

As I made my way back I was lucky enough to come across an adult female Belted Kingfisher sitting quietly on a branch and just visible through a thick Multiflora Rose bush. Kingfishers are usually very quick to fly off at the first sight of us but she apparently hadn’t seen my approach. The sunlight and deep shadow contrast was a challenge, but here she is, Mother 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…..