Mehhh. I’d really, truly, honestly intended to get out and do some birding yesterday, but felt too crummy to go anywhere. Felt even worse this morning, so I called in sick and instituted my usual home remedy of lounging on the couch, drinking tea and watching cartoons. Loki provided some convenient sketch fodder while shuffling around the apartment looking for furniture to climb and personal possessions to dismantle. I’ll have to try again to get out next weekend — maybe Burlington, if the weather isn’t too cold.
The birding community has been buzzing about this one this week, and regular reports to ONTBIRDS have been tracking his every move. Thankfully he stuck around until the weekend, and today I drove up to Brampton for a look at this rarity — only the second ever record for Ontario. Phainopeplas are tropical relatives of the waxwings that range across Mexico and the extreme southwestern U.S., so he’s a long way from home.
One sunny spring afternoon when I was eleven, I rode my bike down the road to my grandparents’ farm. As I coasted down the laneway and entered the farmyard, I was startled by a sudden explosion of small, black birds erupting from every nook and cranny of one of the empty poultry barns. Intrigued, I hopped off of my bike and retreated to a nearby shed to await their return. One by one they reappeared, clinging momentarily to the barn wall for a wary look ’round before vanishing into their cavity nests. They were glossy and short-tailed and yellow-billed, and I had no idea what they were.
At school the next day, I took a trip down to the library to peruse their small collection of bird books, where I found a copy of the Golden Birds of North America. Taking it with me down to my bedroom that evening, I flipped through its crowded pages until I came across an illustration of a glossy black bird with a bright yellow bill — making the first of what would become many bird IDs from that trusty guide.
That’s right. My spark bird was a European Starling.
No, really.
Starlings are not well loved here in North America. The first starlings were introduced in 1890 in New York’s Central Park, by an organization seeking to bring all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to the new world (or so the famed story goes). From that initial group of 60-100 individuals, the population exploded to over two hundred million in a single century, making them one of our most common birds — the quintessential ‘junk bird’ of North American birders. They are noisy and gregarious, building their messy nests in attics and barbecues and commonly congregating at enourmous urban roosts that plaster the vehicles below in droppings. As aggressive cavity nesters, they frequently out-compete native birds and have severely contributed to the decline of numerous passerine and woodpecker species.
And yet, I continue to have a strong affection for the birds. There are comparatively few species that can survive in urban environments, and fewer still that prosper. In a world where many creatures have been squeezed out of their ancestral homes, starlings have found their niche among us. Cheerful and adaptable, they can always be relied upon on even the most bitterly cold winter mornings to greet the sun with an exhuberant performance that most birds would save for warmer seasons. Their massive roosts are accompanied by astonishing displays of synchronous flight, thousands of birds moving as if they were one. And, years later, I still fondly remember them as the species that sparked what would become a lifelong interest in birdwatching.
Oh, and I never did return that Golden field guide.
I’d been looking forward to the weekend, as I’d planned to spend most of it outdoors getting some watercolour studies done for an upcoming painting, as well as attend several lectures at the Quantum to Cosmos festival in Waterloo. Unfortunately I ended up coming down with a case of the flu, which kept me cooped up indoors for the entire weekend (although my inner science geek forced me to suck it up and get out for last night’s World’s Beyond Earth panel, with the help of some ibuprofen). So here’s some of last weekend’s work instead.
On Sunday morning I hit the Arboretum, where I found numerous late fall migrants. I’ve always found Grackles to be such sleek and elegant birds, with their long, wedge-shaped tails and iridescent plumage (though most people seem to regard them as nothing more than a common nuisance).
I snuck out during a small family gathering at my parents’ in the afternoon to check out the old stomping grounds. I flushed a Northern Shrike while walking up the trail — I’m always glad to encounter shrikes, but not so glad to witness so sure a sign of the approaching winter. He stuck around long enough for a single sketch (featuring the back of his head).
An aging Quaking Aspen near the edge of the willow marsh (the only one remaining of four old aspen that used to exist around the property) has always been a magnet for migrant blackbirds, and I found a mid-sized flock of Red-wings and Rustys in its branches. Fall female Rustys sport my favourite blackbird plumage — dark masks and glossy burnt sienna feather fringes against a fierce yellow eye.
And lastly, a colour study of late fall milkweed from along the trailside — my favourite botanical subject.
Late last month, I took a week of holidays up at the family cottage near Wiarton. Birding wise, I definitely could have made a better choice when scheduling my vacation. We’d just finished three weeks of gorgeously sunny, calm weather and not a drop of rain, the sort of conditions that let migrants stream south unhindered. Only a handful of warblers remained, and it was just a little too early for the sparrows and thrushes to start coming through in number. The woods were deathly silent, and the smattering of passerines I did manage to find spent their time high in the canopy and well out of view.
Black-throated Green Warbler
I was lucky enough to encounter a pair of displaying male Ruffed Grouse while slowly driving my car down the bumpy lane that leads out of Bruce Caves Conservation Area. After a brief tussle, the two went their separate ways and meandered off into the woods.
With little else going on along the trails, I took my equipment down to the shoreline, where the loons were beginning to gather on the bay. I’ll take them any day.
Regardless of how the birding is … it’s always so hard to go home again in the end.
The thing I like most about Ovenbirds is that they notice you. Most wood warblers wouldn’t bother to give you the time of day, busy as they are poking about for insects and chasing off rivals high in the canopy. As celebrities of the birding world, they generally aren’t particularly gracious to their fans.
But Ovenbirds are different. They live fairly quiet and unobtrusive lives, creeping about the leaf litter in deciduous woodlands and occasionally breaking the silence with a forceful TEACH! TEACH! TEACH! (Yes, I know that teacher! is the accepted phonetic representation printed in nearly every field guide, but I’ve yet to ever distinguish that second syllable!) Stir one up, and they’ll quickly flit out of view — but they won’t go far.
I met this bird while hiking the Bruce Trail access point found down the road from the family cottage, a steep path that climbs the face of the escarpment that shelters Colpoy’s Bay. I’d paused on my way up to ID some passing migrants (and, I’ll admit, for a breather!), when my attention was drawn by a faint fluttering of wings in a nearby cedar. Such small sounds are the manner in which Ovenbirds most frequently give themselves away. I’ve learned to be mindful of rustling leaves whenever I’m walking in the woods, as it’s a common indicator that I’ve just flushed one of the little warblers.
He peered out at me from within the foliage, first with one dark eye and then the other, as if filled with an insatiable curiousity. Eventually he dropped down to the ground, where he strut about, tail cocked, resembling a proud barnyard fowl more than he did a wood warbler. Ovenbirds don’t hop like most other warbler species — they’re walkers, a result of their preference for poking about the leaf litter.
One almost gets the sense that all of this strutting around was just for my benefit. Very well, Ovenbird: I’m impressed. And perhaps just a little bit amused.
Walkingsticks are truely bizarre organisms, looking like a piece of the forest floor sprouted legs and tried to crawl indoors. I found this one on the sliding door of the cottage Friday night, and he hung around the deck for most of the weekend. I haven’t seen once since I was a kid — though not uncommon, their superbly deceptive camouflage ensures that they are rarely spotted.
This one is a Northern Walkingstick (Diapheromera femorata), a species ID I credit entirely to one of Seabrooke’s recent posts over at The Marvelous in Nature. I find the whole process of insect identification to be entirely overwhelming, and have contented myself with the ownership of a small Peterson guide for tackling a few common lepidopterans. In the photo above, the walkingstick’s forelegs are held straight out in front of him, extending the length of his twiggy disguise (I know just enough about insects to identify this one as a male, as evidenced by the claspers at the tip of his abdomen).
I don’t often sketch bugs — they have miniscule features and many tend not to move around much, traits that encourage very fiddley work if you’re not careful — but I was inspired to do so by some excellent field drawings I recently came across by Laura Gillis of YellowCatArt. Besides, who knows how many years it’ll be before I spot my next walkingstick?
Every time I visit Mountsberg Conservation Area, I’m compelled to go get a few sketches of this bird. His name is Conan, and he made his living as an urban predator in Toronto before suffering a permanent wing injury (likely the result of being hit by a car) and ending up at Mountsberg’s raptor centre.
I love those colours and those markings, that stern little falcon face, and that periodic bob of the head while watching something that’s captured his interest.
I try to take him seriously, but cute and fluffy isn’t very convincing.
There’s a path that runs along Eastport Drive in Burlington, far more overgrown than most city trails. It winds its way along the shoreline to a small platform overlooking Hamilton Harbour, although the view is largely obstructed by trees and vegetation. It is not a peaceful place: behind you is the heavy drone of traffic crossing the towering Skyway Bridge, and before you is the incessant cacophony of hundreds of terns, cormorants and gulls crowding little islands of concrete and gravel. The smell is also less than pleasant, as seabird colonies tend to be, but the opportunity witness the hustle and bustle of so many breeding birds is worth it.
I came by a few weeks ago, slipping in a page of sketches before wisely fleeing the rumbling thunderheads that had swept in while I was absorbed in my work. I returned on Sunday to find that the small groups of bob-tailed tern fledglings had dispersed since then, and many appeared to have perished (the cause of so many strewn bodies was not evident). A few adults were seen brooding again, one bird sheltering both an egg and a day-old chick from the blazing sun.
There is little to no shade on the islands. This particular hairless primate wonders why they didn’t venture into the water to cool off, although such an activity may have little practical value to a buoyant and well-oiled bird.
The cormorants were sunning themselves on the far side of the island. I love sketching these birds. Smooth feathers and round shapes. Perfect.
Saturday morning I headed out to Grass Lake. The local Sandhill Cranes had been spotted several times recently engaging in courtship behaviour — unexpected for this time of year, I would think, but having never witnessed the famed crane dance I was only too eager to take advantage of their out-of-season amourousness.
The cranes were not visible when I arrived, so I took a stroll down Shouldice Road to see what I could stir up. The fields had been cut since my last visit, and there was no sign of the Bobolinks, or Meadowlarks, or even the Savannah Sparrows. But as I reached the end of the road I caught the weak, insect-like song of a Grasshopper Sparrow (one of Grass Lake’s specialties). He was quite caught up in his own performance, fluttering one wing or the other continuously as he threw back his head, thrust out his chest, and let loose with a disappointingly frail and pitiful buzz.
Grasshopper Sparrows are one of the more cryptic members of an already secretive clan. While most birds will pop up to a nearby high perch when flushed, this species would rather drop to the ground and scuttle off unseen. They are also rather particular about their desired breeding habitat, and so it’s not often that I encounter them here in southern Ontario. I’ve been birding long enough that, with most of the species I come across, a quick first impression is enough to identify the bird without tallying field marks. With sparrows, however, this method only seems to get me into trouble. A singing bird is much easier to identify conclusively, and I took the opportunity to make a few careful field notes to help out with my more ambiguous future encounters.
