My Bird of the Day

Hendrie Valley, Burlington. ON.  August 30, 2024.  Today marked the start of two months of interesting and sometimes intense birding. A team of us will be undertaking transect walks on four roughly circular routes on lands of Canada’s Royal Botanical Gardens. Our task each time is to record all bird species seen and heard, and to estimate abundance.  Our four transects are quite different and variously make their way through woodlands, river  valleys, grasslands and other natural areas. We undertake to collectively complete at least three transects per route, per week. That’s a lot of happy birding: four routes, nine weeks, three times per week.

On this comfortable late summer morning I was half expecting to find a lot of birds, but it was relatively quiet; just yesterday colleagues on other transect routes were challenged with good counts and good variety including many migrant fall warblers. The warm comfort of late summer was enjoyment enough even though the birding was thin. There were dozens (I suspect) of Blue Jays, calling, socializing and building relationships to carry them south in weeks ahead.

It was all a bit routine until I reached a turning point when I caught a glimpse of two Least Flycatchers. There’s nothing particularly head-turning about a Least Flycatcher, they are grey drab, a little reclusive and not at all musical. Perhaps appropriately they have a humble Think-what-you-like-eating-flies-is-what-I-do -attitude. Anyway I was pleased to see them but unable to get an in-focus photo. The shot above is from a spring morning a decade or so ago.

I was still feeling a bit of a glow from the flycatchers when I got my binoculars focused on a little trailside activity, and there was a lovely little Philadelphia Vireo.  I like all vireos for their sometimes-pugnacious air. This little Philly was just getting on with life, making its way south to Central America in due course, no hurry.   It had a bright sulphur yellow breast to cement itself in my books as My Bird of the Day.

 

Burlington. ON. August 18 2024. This was an evenly warm and somewhat sticky mid-summer day, one in which work around the house, painting and a bit of weed pulling, was the order of the day. Taking a break from the painting, I spotted a couple of Northern Flickers atop an old snag, they were sharing alarm over something, perhaps the whining calls of a young Red-tailed Hawk who was pleading with his parents for food.

This is fattening-up time, by now most young of the year (those that have survived the perils of fledgling stage) have figured out how to find food, how to fly effectively and when to take cover. But nature deals the unexpected: late last October (28^th) I was surprised to find a very late in the season fledgling Indigo Bunting, it may have been fully independent but was still showing the yellowish edge of its nestling gape. It was in an area of plentiful food, maybe that helped. Working it backwards, the nest building, /incubation,/nestling growth,/independence cycle is about 45 to 50 days,7 weeks; taking us back to mid-September when the parents started on the brood. Pretty late to get started, I think.

Back to today. This fledgling American Robin, perhaps one from of its parents’ second or third brood, was calling for attention with its grating and gurgling squeal, and was getting results. At this stage the young are dotted with warm speckles but they will molt quite quickly to take on the classic brick red breasts. In a month or two this bird will be joining flocks either heading south or at least settling in somewhere that promises shelter and food.

July 2024.  Copenhagen & other places. On our first evening in Copenhagen, I gazed across the road to watch a couple of urban gulls squabbling over nothing it seemed. Their calls were unfamiliar, certainly not Ring-billed Gulls (they’re an American species anyway) and didn’t quite sound like Herring or Black-headed Gulls, though both were plausible.  What then?  For a moment I weighed but quickly dismissed Baltic Gull and lighted correctly on Common Gulls (aka Mew Gull).  Common is a good name for a bird with no distinguishing features, just a textbook gull, grey and white.

In an earlier note I said that Magpies rule Copenhagen. A figure of speech, but they are plentiful. Cornell Labs’ Birds of the World has plenty to say about Eurasian Magpies and appropriately notes, “In recent decades increasingly common in urban areas, especially in places with avenues of trees; can reach very high densities in parts of urbanized Europe.”

Jackdaws and Hooded Crows are crow-family cousins of Magpies, are urban -adapted successes and opportunists too; they seem slightly more inclined to need a bit of green or tree cover at hand. The two species are superficially similar though Hooded Crows are  larger, more brutish and less engaging.

If the streets are the domain of Magpies, the skies of summer belong to Common Swifts.  They are so perpetually airborne that they are far from intrusive; invisible unless you look up to where they swirl and dive in long loose tangles. Swifts make flying look easy.  As daylight started to fade, I’d often see large, wheeling flocks high above the tallest buildings, presumably making a meal of flying insects. I think if you were high strung or abed with a fever, that scream might tip you over the edge. In a month or so those same birds will be on their way to sub-Saharan Africa to spend the winter.

July 8 2024 Lokken, Denmark.  After a few days in Copenhagen where, as far as bird life goes, Magpies rule, we’ve made our way to the west coast of Denmark, to a modest and rather minimalist summerhouse semi-hidden among grassy dunes. The dunes here are huge, looming like old apartment blocks and dotted in the valleys with many such holiday homes, and all within walking distance of the sandy beach. It’s a deservedly popular beach for it is wide, clean and slopes ever-so-gently seawards. And it’s worth noting that the sand comprising the beach and structure of the dunes is silky fine and a treat to walk barefoot on.

In contemplating this trip I had assumed that Danish bird life in July would be much like the England where I grew up, and had discounted the chances of seeing anything much out of the ordinary. Yet on our 4-hour drive here (four hours including a ferry ride will get you across Denmark quite easily it seems) I was happy to note a large flock of Northern Lapwings gathered in a wide river-edge field, and a soaring White-tailed Eagle. Things were looking up.

We had hardly arrived at our summerhouse, in those early minutes before the car is fully unloaded but when you sit for a head-settling breather,  when I heard a birdsong that I knew instantly, a vivid memory from my youth, a Yellowhammer.

Yellowhammers are a largeish bunting, bright yellow in parts and typically a bird of dry, scrubby fields and heath, it certainly belongs here. Yellowhammers are globally abundant but have become scarce in Ireland and the UK, where it is considered a species of concern, all the more reason for my delight at hearing and then seeing one for the first time since my mid-teens.  As is often the case with wildlife, folklore and country wisdom shape public understanding and appreciation. The Yellowhammmer’s song is described anthropomorphically as “a-little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheeeeze”. A bit of a stretch perhaps; although it was that little piece of old wisdom that brought it back to me.  Less prosaically its song is a series of five or six small dry notes ending with a long wheezy exhale.

Thrilling it was. To me anyway. When I drew my family’s attention to it and all that goes with it, just two or three grunts showed they were not really on the same page.

There was more to be seen and heard. Greater Whitethroats were quite common in the shrubby dunes and males (presumably) restlessly patrolled their territories burbling as they go, Eurasian Linnets too and even a Red-backed Shrike showed itself for a while. It was a lifer for me and a bit of a thrill, but I was so smitten by the Yellowhammer I let it go.

Hamilton. ON. June 27, 2024.  This is just one of those totally unexpected and serendipitous urban sightings. My companion and I were on a catch-up lunch, two birders with lots to share and cross-check.   We were both going easy on the alcohol and neither of us had ordered a particularly large lunch, but all was well we had a shady spot in a large and open patio alongside a busy street.

I have no recollection of who was where in his story when we were simultaneously distracted by small background sounds, non-urban sounds that rose above the clatter. Almost in unison we said “Peregrine Falcon?” and looked up. Two young falcons swept low across the open sky, almost in formation and calling a scratchy “chrea chrea chrea” as they passed. Then as if to impress anyone who cared, the two banked left into a u-turn and did a low overhead fly-past. And that was it.  We were impressed and thrilled while none of the other lunchtime diners showed any interest so, we kept it to ourselves, Barry said he’d do an e-Bird report and I made a mental note about this spontaneous Birds of the Day.