birds – Page 29 – Seabrooke Leckie

Hammerhead, harpoon-tongue

We’ve had a Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus) hanging around the house for the last week or two. For the most part it’s remained some distance away, up high or hidden by leaves, hard to observe but easy to detect through its tap-tap-tapping as it chips away bark looking for insects. Hairy Woodpeckers have always struck me as being less common than the smaller Downy Woodpeckers, as I find I don’t encounter them nearly as often when birding, and I’ve always found it a treat to have one hanging about.

The second edition of the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario includes maps of abundance levels throughout the province for most species (anything that can be regularly detected on point counts), and it confirms this assessment. It indicates that the Downy is at its peak abundance, up to 7 birds per 25 point counts (the standard unit of measurement for the abundance maps) through most of the Carolinian forest region extending southwest from Toronto, and patchily throughout the rest of the province. The Hairy, meanwhile, is encountered at a rate of less than 1 bird per 25 point counts through the same region. Even in the areas where it reaches peak abundance, through the more rugged Canadian Shield, its abundance is still only a maximum of 3 birds per 25 point counts – less than half of what the Downy reaches in its peak zones.

Here in the Frontenac Axis we’re right in one of those peak abundance zones for Hairys (it’s incidentally also a good spot for Downy and Pileated, likely simply due to all the deciduous and mixed forest around here). We hear the other guys around, but the only one to spend much time on our property has been the Hairy. Although the Hairy is noticeably larger than the Downy, without aid of a size reference, the best way to tell them apart is by the bill: a Hairy’s bill is about the same length as his head, while a Downy’s is only half the size of his head and has a rather petite look to it. Incidentally, although the two species look virtually identical, they’re not all that closely related. Their similar patterning is a wonderful example of convergent evolution – two species acheiving the same result by two separate, independent evolutionary paths.

Yesterday morning she was not far off from the deck, and she was unusually low. The sexes are told apart by red at the nape of the crown in males, while the back of the head on females is all black. This is true also for Downys, and virtually all other woodpecker species have some form of dimorphism between the sexes, although the particular feather region in question varies.

I watched her hopping up the tree trunk. There are a few groups of trunk-foragers, which have all developed their own special niches. Woodpeckers are borers, in that they’ll drill holes or chip off bark to get at the bugs sequestered underneath. They hang upright off the side of the tree to do this, using their sharp little claws to grip the bark and their stiff tail feathers like a prop. Hopefully you’ll never have occassion to handle a wild bird, since that probably means it’s run into a window or some other human structure, but should you have the unfortunate (for the bird) opportunity to find and handle one, or happen to visit a banding operation where they catch a (live, healthy) woodpecker, take a moment to check out these specialized features. Of all the non-predatory birds I’ve handled, woodpeckers have by far the sharpest nails. In this photo she’s caught mid-hop, pushing off with her powerful feet and leaping vertically, then grabbing the trunk again with her feet.

The other two groups are nuthatches, which have the peculiar habit of descending down a tree head-first as they forage, and creepers, which go the other direction, up and upright. Both of these groups prod in the cracks of bark and under loose pieces, looking for insects that are hiding there. Their different foraging directions means they can exploit cracks that go unnoticed by the other group.

You can just see her tongue between her two mandibles as she probes here for an insect. Woodpeckers have amazing adaptations to their foraging strategy. The first is the length of their tongue. The grubs they target make tunnels into the bark, which the birds chip or drill into the bark to expose. Once they’ve found a tunnel, the grub can sometimes be down the tunnel at the other end. The bird inserts its tongue, which it uses like a spear to snag the grub from the bottom of its burrow. The woodpecker’s tongue has a stiff cartilaginous tip, covered in sharp little barbs, perfect for pulling things back that are out of reach.

And the bird’s tongue is looong. The tongue is a cross between the muscular structure we humans have, and a rigid bony structure. It’s got a long, branching Y-shaped bone, called the hyoid, that splits at the back of the throat and wraps up behind the head, sometimes ending as far forward as the eye socket or nostril, where it’s secured by elastic tissue. There are muscles that are paired with the horns of the Y, affixed to the back of the jaw, and running to the tip of the hyoid bone. Contraction of these muscles pulls the tips of the hyoid bone around the back of the head and back down toward the mouth, and in doing so, pushes the tongue out the mouth. When the muscles relax, the elastic tissue returns the bone to its original position, and the tongue is pulled back in.

If you part a woodpecker’s feathers on the back of its head you can usually see the hyoid bones and muscles under the skin there. Humans have a hyoid apparatus, too, but ours is very much reduced and not used in the same way (ours is mostly support, and a base for some muscles). Because of the length of these hyoid bones wrapping around the back of its skull, a woodpecker is capable of extending its tongue twice the length of its head, useful when the prey is buried deep. Check out some of the photos that Hilton Pond Center has posted at this link – pretty amazing. The incredible structure and mechanism that operates the tongue (also described on Hilton Pond’s site) are sometimes used as an example against evolution, on the basis that such a wonderfully complex system couldn’t have evolved on its own. Really, though, it’s just a bigger, fancier version of the tongue structure found in chickens. A baby woodpecker starts out with hyoid horns that resemble a chicken’s, and they grow into woodpecker-length as the baby grows.

The other adaptation a woodpecker has evolved has to do with the hammering. Can you just imagine the sort of headache you would have if you had to do this for your dinner every day? A woodpecker’s beak, when it’s hammering against a tree, is moving at about 7 meters per second – the equivalent of about 25 km/h or 15.6 mph – which would be sufficient to cause brain damage in humans when met with an abrupt stop (the force of which would be about 1000 times that of gravity). Most animals, ourselves included, have brains that sort of “float” in the brain cavity, surrounded by a thin layer of fluid and membranes, which allows the brain to keep moving and “crash” into the bone when the skull suddenly stops, causing bruising and brain damage. A woodpecker’s is tightly packed inside the skull by spongy bone that protects it, so it stops when the skull stops. This page notes a couple additional secondary adaptations that also help in reducing the impact of the impacts.

But what about it’s beak? Here the bird is using it to chip away some loosened wood. The beak is used as a multitude of tools, including crowbar and chisel, but it’s mostly used as a drill (or hammer, depending on how you look at it). Surely the force of such constant and repeated impacts (up to 20 times per second) would weaken or shatter it. With a normal bird’s beak it probably would, but woodpeckers have special grooves that run at an angle to the direction of force, which strengthen the structure. It’s like trying to stand a piece of paper up on its thin side. Put a crease in it and it’s suddenly got much more strength and rigidity.

I watched the Hairy work the trees for a bit. She was remarkably docile, and seemed unperturbed by my being there. I ran off well over 100 photos of her poking about the trees, but won’t share them all here. Here’s a few more from the collection, though.

She stops for a quick preen. Here she’s reaching back to a little gland that’s at the base of the tail, on their top surface (at the bottom of their back), which has the fancy name of uropygial gland, but the more casual name of oil gland or preen gland. If you look at it up close (again on that unfortunate window-strike, or the luckier banding capture), it looks a bit like a wart, yellow and slightly greasy looking. It produces an oil that’s incredibly important to birds for waterproofing. When you see a bird running its beak through its feathers it’s doing one of two things. If it’s simply working the feathers then it’s reorganizing all the barbs and smoothing them out so they create a flat surface (ruffled barbs disrupt aerodynamics and mean the bird burns more energy when flying; also they can allow more heat/temperature loss). However, if it’s reaching around to its tail regularly, it’s squeezing the gland to produce oil that it then works through the feathers for waterproofing.

She showed interest in this cavity. I thought it was a little late for her to still be nesting, but not impossible, and it would explain why she’d been hanging around the area so closely.

She paused and looked around, then looked inside again, before going in.

The hole was fairly deep, and she slipped down, first just her tail feathers protruding, then disappearing entirely.

She was only gone a moment before her head popped back up, though. She did this twice during the span that I watched. Neither time did she seem to go in with food. The second time she came out with what appeared to be a wood chip. I didn’t hear any cheeping, and baby woodpeckers are notoriously noisy, so if there were any in there I would’ve heard. But she wasn’t staying in, so she must not have eggs. I had to conclude that she didn’t have a nest after all, but maybe was scoping out potential sites for next year?

Then she checked out this little knot. And pulled out a grub. Maybe she was just looking for food after all.

I’d been watching her a good twenty minutes or so, running off constant photos, curiously following where she went and what she was doing, when she headed up this slanted branch. She swung around to its underside, and then as she twisted her head to probe into a crack in the bark…

…I could see red in his crown! Yes, all along it had been a boy. Young males, males that were hatched this summer, won’t have that red nape yet, but they will have red speckled through the crown as this one does. It’s funny that I didn’t notice it at all in the 20 minutes prior. Especially since, once I got all the photos onto my computer, it was incredibly obvious in so many of the photos. I had to pick through them carefully to make sure I chose ones that didn’t show any red for the images above! Females can actually show a bit of red in the crown as juveniles, but it’s rarely extensive (this is on the intermediate side of extensive, and it could be hard to call this either way, but I’d lean toward boy). I’ll blame my lack of attention on the lighting. Or being so caught up in watching his behaviour. Or something.

The long and winding road

That’s certainly what our road is – long and winding. It was our first introduction to the area as we drove up to view the house, and all of our visitors comment on it as well. The road seems to go on for much longer than you expect it to before you reach your destination, and it’s the twists and turns in it that really make it feel that way. If you were driving up from town along a straight road it would probably go by pretty quickly.

The combination of the gravel surface and the winding route slows traffic down, though, what little there is that traverses this road. The crunch of gravel under tires can also be heard for quite some distance before the car is actually upon you, so even though the shoulder is fairly minimal, it’s still a great road for walking down. Blackburnian and I had gone out a couple times for short walks down the road, but only a short distance.

For the most part, the hiking I’ve done along the road only passed by forest. Near our house the landscape is nearly entirely forested, with the exception of a few scrubby areas underneath the power line corridors, or around the scattered houses along the road. The forest seems fairly young, though, with few large, old trees growing in it. Further evidence of its history as agricultural land early last century are the split-rail fences that line the road, tucked into the edge of the forest. These fences are found throughout the area, and I really like them, I think they add a lot more character than newer wooden board fencing does.

Yesterday as a break from work I decided to walk down as far as a large open field that I pass regularly when driving in to town. With some stopping and birding and photography along the way it took me about half an hour, which was a nice easy hike.

Further south toward town you come down off the shield and the land levels out. There’s lots of agriculture and pasture down there, but once you’re up on the shield it’s mostly forest and lakes. There are a few areas where enough land has been cleared (or was already naturally cleared) to create a reasonably-sized pasture. These areas aren’t common, though, particularly in the area around our house. So I’d been eyeballing these meadows thinking what interesting things might be happening there that I’d like to check out.

Overlooked when just driving by but more obvious when walking, the fields had no trespassing signs posted that discouraged me from hopping the fence and wandering through the grass. Also rather discouraging were the blankets of poison ivy that lined the road edges. I know that I don’t react to poison ivy, but I also know that you’re not guaranteed of continued immunity forever, and I’d rather not push my luck.

So I couldn’t get really close to the American Goldfinches in the fields, but the long lens on the camera meant I could at least get a photo. There were a few pairs of goldfinches moving about among the thistle stands, feeding on the seeds that would be maturing about now. Goldfinches would for the most part be at the height of breeding right now, and this is why – they delay their nesting to coincide with the maturation of thistle heads, which provide fluffy down for nest lining and abundant food for the adults and young.

Where the fencing ran along the edge of the road there were a few tangles of shrubs and grapevines that provided good cover for birds. The goldfinches would pop in these occasionally, and I encountered a shy American Redstart who wouldn’t stay out long enough for me to get a photo. I also played hide and seek with this young Common Yellowthroat. He’d hop around inside the grapevine tangle and periodically poke his face out where I could see him. He seemed generally unconcerned by my presence, providing I didn’t get too close.

After some patient waiting, he flew up to the top of one of the fenceposts, where he posed long enough for me to run off a few shots of him. Being right next to the road, I was able to get some nice clear photos that the other birds I encountered weren’t obliging enough to provide for me.

After spending some time watching the goldfinches in the field, I turned around to start heading back, and back to work. Just as I was nearing the corner of the field I happened across a large flock of birds. I couldn’t tell what most of them were, so I started pishing to draw them out. Well. That did not go over well with this guy. I assume there were little Indigo Bunting fledglings somewhere nearby and he was getting upset over my presence, and further aggravated by my pishing. He sat there and chipped and chipped at me for a bit, before retreating to a shrub a bit further back. You can actually see in this photo he’s eating a seed at the same time as telling me how upset he is with me.

The chickadees, on the other hand, are more curious than upset. You can almost always get a flock of chickadees to come in to check you out when you pish at them, and they’ll come in remarkably close if you’re standing in vegetation – almost too close for me to focus on with my 300mm lens. Eventually, once they determine that it’s just some crazy kook making weird noises with her mouth, they move away and carry on with whatever they’d been doing at the time.

The Chipping Sparrows were also curious about what was going on. In fact, the only birds to really be alarmed were the buntings. There were lots of chippers about, they seemed to make up the bulk of the flock. It’s interesting that they’ve been the most abundant sparrow in our area, it surprises me a bit. I would have expected Song or White-throated to be more common in our predominantly forested area, as I think of chippers as shrub birds, but I guess early successional forests have a lot of undergrowth that would suit them well, too. We’re also in the primary hotspot for Eastern Towhees in the province, but have only heard one since we arrived; I expect we’ll see more when they start to migrate.

In with the chickadees and chippers was this lone Black-and-white Warbler. She came in and checked me out initially, then, as the chickadees did, decided I was of no real concern. However, instead of moving away again, she sat on her branch and preened for a while. A bird’s feathers are its lifeline; they’re necessary for flight and for insulation (warmth in cool weather, cooling in warm weather), as well as social signals that indicate the bird’s status and health. Because they’re so important, birds will spend hours every day doing nothing but preening their feathers to make sure they’re in good working order.

August really is the slowest time of the year for birding, so I’m encouraged by the activity I saw there yesterday, of primarily post-breeding dispersals. Once migration starts I’ll be interested to see what else turns up along those hedgerows and in the fields. I’m also looking forward to seeing what breeders we have around when everyone returns to set up shop next spring.

The loony bin

When Blackburnian and I were out boating yesterday evening, we came across a pair of loons who were exceptionally obliging for photographs. While we cruised slowly by in the boat, the remained on the water, looking reasonably unperturbed. At the closest we were about 20 feet away. I ran off a series of photos, trying to make the best of the opportunity in the less-than-ideal lighting, from a moving boat. A little while later, presumably the same pair flew overhead as they made their way from one end of the lake to the other. Again, very obligingly, one of the individuals circled around and flew nearly straight over the boat, the setting sun glinting off his wings and body.

More than any other, the bird that characterizes the northern landscape to me is the Common Loon, Gavia immer. It’s probably because these birds aren’t encountered during the breeding season in southern Ontario, so I only ever see them when further north, in combination with their vociferousness, which means they’re more likely to be detected than other species. In truth, the species is actually encountered further south than I may have guessed; the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario, published last winter, indicates breeding records for Common Loons as far south as the Prince Edward County area on Lake Ontario in the east, and and a spot perhaps 20 km west of where my parents live to the west. In fact, only the southern couple hundred kilometers of southern Ontario don’t record the species.

Their abundance, as mapped by the same Atlas, is much lower in southern Ontario than it is elsewhere. Highest abundance in the province is found in a few pockets in northern Ontario, particularly in northwestern Ontario. Up there, in 100 square kilometers (about 24,710 acres or 36.6 square miles) one may encounter as many as 8 birds per 25 randomly-completed point counts (the Atlas’s unit of measurement for mapping abundance). Their abundance is higher there because of the profusion of lakes and water bodies. In southern Ontario their abundance is lower, generally averaging no more than 1 or 2 birds per 25 point counts, with strongest abundance corresponding to the areas around Algonquin Provincial Park and the Frontenac Axis. The Frontenac Axis is an area of the Canadian Shield, the rocky, rugged granite landscape, that extends south to eventually join up with the Adirondacks in New York.

The loons are commonly seen here on our lake and surrounding area. We’re on the edge of the Frontenac Axis, and the landscape reflects this collision of the two regions, the granite Shield and the flatter limestone that dominates most of southern Ontario. We have the deciduous forest of the south along our road, but across the lake, in Frontenac Provincial Park, there is quite a bit of mixed forest, with a strong component of coniferous trees. The region is also characterized by many lakes; indeed, Frontenac County also has the casual name of “Land O’ Lakes”. And the lakes are full of fish.

A pair of loons needs on average about 70 hectares (173 acres) per pair to raise a family. That’s an immense amount of lake, and so usually there’s only one pair per lake. In areas where the lakes are small, a single pair may claim ownership of more than one. The reason for this is in their diet; not only finding, but being able to catch enough fish of a suitable size to feed two adults and raise a couple chicks to adulthood requires a large area to forage in. In areas where fish are abundant, the loons’ territory may be smaller; where fish are scarce the territory will be larger. The Atlas reports the range of territories, as recorded in a 1973 study, to be anywhere from 7 to 200 ha (17 to 494 acres), which is a pretty broad range. In any case, the pair of loons that we’ve observed on our lake, our neighbouring lake, and flying overhead, are most likely all the same individuals moving about between the different water bodies.

I love the loon’s crisp black-and-white pattern, punctuated with a blood-red eye. Unsurprisingly, given its appearance and haunting, lonely call, the species is a prominent figure in many cultures. Native American tribes have different stories that feature the loon, from the Chippewa tale of a loon that created the world, to those of British Columbia who believed the call of the loon predicted rain (this wouldn’t be difficult; loons call all the time, and it rains all the time in BC). The tale of how the loon got its necklace is a frequently-told one in the Ojibway and many other cultures, and I remember reading a children’s book about the story.

In modern culture, the loon is found on the Canadian one-dollar coin (called the “loonie” for this reason, not because we’re crazy to add yet another coin to what we carry around in our pockets), which was introduced in place of the paper bill in 1987. It was also found on the $20 bill of the previous Canadian currency design series (which was “birds of Canada”). The loon is the provincial bird of Ontario, and the state bird of Minnesota. And of course, the loon is the cottage country bird.

Loons are good fliers, mostly due to the stamina they have from making a living by diving for their food. Despite this, loons have exceptionally high wing-loading – a term that refers to the aerodynamics of the bird and the amount of lift created by the wing in flight (specifically, how much weight, or load, is placed per square inch of wing). A bird with low wing-loading means the wings create more than enough lift to keep the bird easily airborne. A bird with high wing-loading has just enough lift to get themselves off the ground and into the air. Like with the oceanic alcids, a loon’s wings are designed more for efficiency when diving, and the birds are so borderline when it comes to wing-loading that the loss of even a few wing feathers may be enough to render them flightless. During their spring moult prior to the breeding season they drop all of their flight feathers at the same time in order to reduce the amount of time they’re flightless (in the meantime they escape threat by diving, which is the reason they can get away with such a moult pattern – most birds moult feathers sequentially so they can still fly away from danger). Like a jet on a runway, loons need to get up speed to generate enough lift to take off, and can’t take off from land; instead they either need to face into the wind or “run” along the water’s surface as they flap to generate lift.

Loons are better divers. They use their feet to propel themselves underwater, and use their wings for additional thrush and for steering. A loon’s feet are set well back on its body to maximize efficiency underwater, much further back than the average bird, or even the average waterbird. As good as they are for swimming, this placement means a loon’s legs are nearly useless out of water. Loons have trouble walking on land because their legs aren’t centered under their center of balance. There are a handful of reports of loons making overland migrations, mostly young birds travelling from a quiet but fish-depauperate lake to a choppier or busier, but fish-full, lake a short distance away, urged on by their parents who must have decided it was too much work carrying fish back and forth to the youngsters.

Generally speaking, however, the furthest a loon will travel along land is usually the short distance from the water’s edge to its nest, which is built either on floating mats of vegetation or close to the water along the shoreline. Because of this close proximity to water, loon nests are especially vulnerable to storms and boat wakes. Nests are more frequently found on smaller lakes that are less likely to have a lot of boat traffic, particularly speed boats, but also which aren’t as prone to driving waves that build across long open expanses of water. Our lake would be perfect for them. A Common Loon’s diet is made up of small fish of many species: pike, perch, bass, sunfish and trout. Between our lake and the one next door, we’ve got all of those, in seemly good abundance. Loons prefer clear-water lakes because most of their hunting is done by sight, and our lake has excellent visibility.

This is one of my favourite shots of the pair. Loons are such majestic birds, and rarely fail to stir some emotion through either their striking plumage or haunting call. Their populations in Ontario have been fairly stable over the last 20 years, and possibly even increasing a bit in the south. Bird Studies Canada organizes a citizen science project called the Canadian Lakes Loon Survey that helps in monitoring numbers and breeding success. Botulism outbreaks periodically occur among populations causing widespread mortality, with the most recent major outbreak being in 1999-2002. Acid rain has also been determined to be a factor in breeding success, as it reduces fish population levels and also can cause heavy metals and other pollutants to leach from the surrounding landscape and build up in the food chain. There was a period where lead shot from hunters, and lead weights from anglers, was causing loon deaths from lead poisoning. The birds ingested the pellets mistakenly thinking they were pebbles, which the birds use as grit to help aid digestion, breaking down the hard bones and exoskeletons of their prey.

In the last couple of decades these lead products have been banned from a number of jurisdictions, although in many places lead shot has been banned from use in waterfowl hunting, but is still sold in the form of lead sinkers for angling. Fortunately, even in areas where there is no ban, hunters and anglers voluntarily choose non-lead alternatives. Unfortunately, the lead that was put into the environment over recent decades will remain there for a long time, ban or no ban, and will continue to poison birds for a while even after it stops being used. Recent events regarding the poisoning of seven California Condors this summer, due to lead shot in carcasses they scavenged, has given the issue national publicity, and will hopefully result in more proactive choices by sportsmen and women, and potentially further bans on the product, as well.

We’re glad that we have a pair of loons here, and that they seem to be doing well. Adult loons take off not long after finishing breeding, but young loons stay near their nesting grounds well into the fall, so we can look forward to having them around for some time yet.

I and the Bird #81

Editor’s note: Apologies for the late posting of this edition! I moved to a new home (see my previous post for more details) last week and we didn’t anticipate that it would take us a week to get the internet situation sorted out with the company, who seem to be a bit disorganized. We finally got things running today, which put the crunch on me for the post. But better late than never!

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. There are writers, however, whose words can convey more than a single photo ever could. Bloggers include these both and cover the whole spectrum in between.

If you think about it, blogging is a bit of an art form. Figuring out what you want to say, and how best to say it, what approach will grab the interest of your readers, but also contain all the information you want to share. Knowing what needs to be included, and what should be discarded. There is no single best way to produce an excellent post, but they all do have something in common – interesting content.

Blog carnivals bring together interesting content, in this case about birds, from many different blogs into a single central location, but the posts included in each edition are as varied in style as the subjects they cover. In this edition of I and the Bird the subjects range from hornbills in Malaysia to a trip to the optics factory, and posts from mostly photos to mostly text. There’s something for everyone and all different tastes.

It seems to me that a blog carnival is a little like an art gallery, with pieces from many different artists all brought together into one space for the visitor to peruse and contemplate. Take your time to enjoy the artwork, in whatever form it takes – this gallery never closes.

Title: Eagle Island
Artist: Eileen, Cicero Sings
About the piece: Eileen shares a close encounter
with a magnificent Bald Eagle.

Title: Plain-pouched Hornbill: Migration or flocking?
Artist: Ingo, Bird Ecology Study Group
About the piece: Ingo discusses the flocking behaviour of
Plain-pouched Hornbills to fig trees in Malaysia.

Title: Evolution of the Enigmatic Eclectus
Artist: GrrlScientist, Living the Scientific Life
About the piece: Looking at the selection pressures that drove the
dramatic dimorphic colouration of the Eclectus parrot,
and their unique mating system. Also check out
GrrlScientist’s post on conjoined Barn Swallows.

Title: Eveninghawks
Artist: Rick, Aimophila Adventures
About the piece: Noting an interesting field characteristic
in the Lesser Nighthawk.

Title: The Winter Wren is multiple species!
Artist: Nick, Biological Ramblings
About the piece: Recent research indicates that the eastern
and western populations of Winter Wren are two
separate species; Nick tells us why.

Title: The Mega-Avi-Fauna of Africa: Kori Bustards (Ardeotis kori)
Artist: Shawn, for Biological Ramblings
About the piece: Shawn shares his encounter with the magnificent
Kori Bustard, one of the largest birds of Africa.

Title: The Thrushes
Artist: Jennifer, Confessions of a Reluctant Birder
About the piece: Jennifer is better known for her blog A Passion for Nature.
Despite the title of her new companion blog, she seems
anything but reluctant when it comes to birds.
Here she presents an identification quiz to the
six thrushes that breed in southwestern New York.

Title: Brandt’s Cormorants
Artist: Mary, Mary’s Corner of the World
About the piece: Mary takes us on a trip out to Fisherman’s Wharf
near Monterey, California, to look for Brandt’s Cormorants
– and finds lots!

Title: Down memory lane.
Artist: Duncan, Ben Cruachan’s blog
About the piece: While recovering from a bug that put him under
the weather, Ben recounts memories of some interesting
birdy encounters he had while out walking with his dog.

Title: Making Emma happy – part 1
Artist: Amila, Gallicissa
About the piece: Amila picks up a couple of friends who are visiting
Sri Lanka and takes them out on a birding and
natural history tour of the local landscape.
Not only do they see some really neat birds,
but the other critters they find are equally fascinating.

Title: A New Field Guide to the Birds from The Smithsonian
Artist: Greg Laden
About the piece: Greg reviews the recently published Smithsonian
bird guide, and its pros and cons.

Title: Golden Whistler
Artist: Trevor, Trevor’s Birding
About the piece: This stunning little bird showed up in Trevor’s yard.
He shares his observations of its visit.

Title: Alfred Hitchcock Sky
Artist: Wren, Wrenaissance Reflections
About the piece: Wren shares photos of a surreal experience
reminiscent of Hitchcock’s film.

Title: Another Rescue
Artist: Liza Lee, It’s Just Me
About the piece: A Pygmy Nuthatch finds itself lost inside Liza Lee’s kitchen
and she recounts its rescue and release.

Title: Roger Tory Peterson Month
Artist: Eddie, Birdfreak.com
About the piece: Eddie declares August to be Roger Tory Peterson Month,
in celebration of one of birding’s founding fathers.

Title: Robo-birding
Artist: John, A DC Birding Blog
About the piece: John discusses new technology that might provide
a solution to surveying areas that are typically difficult
for humans to reach, in order to better understand bird
distribution, abundance, and population trends.

Title: Beach, in greys and blues
Artist: Susannah, Wanderin’ Weeta
About the piece: An overcast day at the beach and Susannah
and these four are the only ones at the water’s edge.

Title: Hummingbird Festivals
Artist: Rob, Audubon Birdscapes
About the piece: Hummingbirds are one of the most broadly popular
bird groups, and Rob gives some of the festivals organized
to celebrate and enjoy North America’s smallest bird.

Title: Mad Birding Skills
Artist: Rob, The Birdchaser
About the piece: All of us know a birder with Mad Birding Skillz
and wish we could have even a little of that prowess.
Rob explains why he isn’t one of those birders.

Title: A Muse of Evanescence
Artist: Julie, Pines Above Snow
About the piece: Julie reviews the book A Summer of Hummingbirds
and reflects on Emily Dickinson’s influence on
other poets and people.

Title: Birding ‘The Muck’
Artist: Drew, The Nemesis Bird
About the piece: Drew takes us along as he birds a local wetland
colloquially known among birders as “The Muck”
(a very unflattering name for such a beautiful place).

Title: Corey and the Optics Factory
Artist: Corey, 10,000 Birds
About the piece: Just like Charlie visiting Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory,
Corey gets to peek behind the scenes at the North American
Swarovski Optiks headquarters – as close to a
birder’s dream factory as one might get.

Title: At home with the birds
Artist: Seabrooke, The Marvelous in nature
About the piece: Aside from explaining the circumstances behind
why this I and the Bird is a little late getting up,
I also discuss a bit about our new home, including the
abundant birdlife that we share the area with!

Thanks for touring this art show!

The next gallery exhibition will be hosted by Kathie over at Sycamore Canyon. Send your submissions to Kathie at kathiesbirds1 (AT) msn (DOT) com by August 19, or to Mike at 10,000 Birds.

At home with the birds

Well, here I am, finally! I didn’t intend to be gone quite this long, but through various mix-ups, miscommunications and snags, we only just got our internet hooked up today. We opted to go for a bundle deal with one of the primary companies around here, and have been rather unimpressed with how things have gone. Our phone was hooked up two days late, and our satellite television still isn’t working quite right (we have a service person out today to have it looked at). Hopefully the last of all this will be sorted out today.

But, we made it, without incident, and we’ve otherwise settled in. We unpacked the last of our boxes yesterday, and there’s just a few last tidying-up details to take care of. It’s certainly feeling like home already. We’re just loving the location. Although it’s a bit further from town than we’d probably originally have considered, it’s still an easy, reasonable drive for once- or twice-a-week trips for supplies. If we were the commuting sort, it would be an average commute in to the “big” city (big being a relative term; compared to Toronto, virtually all of Ontario’s cities, with the possible exception of Ottawa, are moderate in size).

The scenery and wildlife make it all worthwhile, however. Right across the lake is a provincial park, and the non-park shore has a pretty low population density itself. It’s not a small lake, at about 3.5 km long, but there’s only a couple dozen buildings along its outer shore. There’s hardly ever anyone out on the lake, at least that we’ve noticed. This weekend was a holiday long weekend for most people, and even then, while there was an increase in boaters, it still wasn’t busy, by any means. During our housing search we checked out a couple of other places that were located on lakes, but they were very busy, and noisy. Not our speed, really.

The birdlife here has been amazing, and we’ve only been here a week. We’ve tallied 63 species so far at our home, on the lake, or within a short walking distance along the road. To put that in perspective, our yard/neighbourhood list back in Toronto was less than 30 after five years of living there. August is perhaps the quietest time of the bird-season (April through October), when all the breeders have stopped singing, but the migrants haven’t really started to arrive yet. And in winter, while the diversity is lower, they’re coming to your feeders and are easy to observe. We anticipate some great birding through the rest of the year. The park has a checklist of 170 species to date, so we still have lots yet to see!

Red-eyed Vireos are abundant, in any flock of birds there will be at least two or three of them. For the first few days after we arrived, there were Red-eyed Vireos hanging around in the trees just off our deck. At first we just saw the adults, but shortly a fledgling showed up with them. This photo was taken from the deck, looking down into a little shrub the family was sitting in. Also in the trees around the house has been a regular family of chickadees. Young chickadees are very vocal, loudly begging for food from their parents, so we can always tell when they’re outside.

A few mornings ago, Blackburnian was on his way down to the dock with his morning coffee when he heard some commotion along the road, a mixed flock of birds moving along the trees of the road edge. He grabbed his binoculars and went out to check them out. Among the flock was a family of Cerulean Warblers, and, knowing that I’d like to see them, he came back in to get me. Ceruleans are an endangered species in Ontario, sparsely distributed through the southern part of the province and only found in certain local patches. However, in these areas they can be locally common. One of the spots recognized as being among the best places to find breeding Ceruleans is not too far east from us, and we’re at the western edge of their eastern Ontario stronghold. It’s a great place for them; around here there is extensive forest cover, because of the low population density and the rocky landscape, which makes farming impractical.

Although this isn’t a great photo of it, this was one of the birds I was most pleased to catch a glimpse of. It actually sat rather obligingly for a little while in this open spot on the branch, catching the morning light nicely to illuminate his bright colours. It’s a Yellow-throated Vireo, and it’s a bird that’s been on my jinx-bird list (those birds that seem to elude you no matter how hard you try to find them) for quite a while. I had heard a few singing before, but try as I might I’d never been able to see one. I hadn’t actually expected them to be breeding this far north and east, I tend to think of them as a Carolinian species, but consulting my recently-published copy of the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario, I see that they actually occur in a strong band along the southern edge of the Canadian Shield, as well, and their largest pocket of high abundance in the province is actually the Frontenac Axis.

Black-and-white Warblers are also abundant in the area, if not quite so much as the Red-eyed Vireos. I haven’t seen any adult males, with their bold black throats, but I’m not certain whether that means the birds I have seen are females and immatures, or if the adult males have already moulted into their winter plumages. There’s a surprising diversity of warblers in our area. Back in Toronto and area we had a small handful of species that might breed commonly. So far here we’ve tallied 10 species of warblers, all of which would be local breeders, with the potential of another 10 or 11 that we haven’t encountered yet.

The first birds we observed at the house were a pair of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds on our first viewing of the place. One of the first things we did outside once we moved in was to fill up the hummingbird feeder. The previous residents had a feeder in place, but it didn’t look like they’d been keeping it filled. It didn’t take long for the hummers to find it. Since they did they’ve been regular visitors. They decided quickly that we weren’t any serious threat, and will often feed while we’re only half a dozen feet away.

And finally, the quintessential cottage-country birds, Common Loons. We didn’t notice any when we were viewing the house, but we were only here for an hour or so each time. Once we moved in they became quite apparent – but more by their calls than by spotting them. They call regularly every evening and periodically through the rest of the day. They seem to be done breeding, and move often from our lake to any of the many others in the area. On the same morning that we were out looking at the Cerulean family, a family of five Common Loons flew overhead, calling to each other, as they moved to the lake on the other side of the road.

We also noticed a phoebe had built a nest on the security light above the deck stairs, and occasionally hear one singing in the area. I was worried that we wouldn’t have scrub and meadow birds around here and that I’d miss birds from my parents’ like the Eastern Phoebe, Eastern Kingbird or Indigo Bunting, but they’re all here. There are Osprey and Red-shouldered Hawks frequently seen along the lake edge. We also have some more northern birds that I was hoping to get in the area, such as White-throated Sparrow, Common Raven, or several of the warblers. We’ve heard Red Crossbills on a few mornings, though it’s hard to say if they’re post-breeding dispersals or early “winter” irruptives.

And that’s just a small sampling of things! The rest of the local wildlife is just as varied and abundant… but that’ll be another post.