Category: birds

I love the magic and mystery of discovering birds’ nests during the winter that you must have walked by a dozen times or more during the summer but never knew were there. In this case, I probably walked by this one half a dozen time, at least, even since the leaves came down, and still never spotted it. It’s strange how something so large and, once you know it’s there, so obvious can blend in so well to its background if you’re not looking for it. Not only well-camouflaged in the summer, but through the bare winter months, too.

I found this nest alongside the rail trail on a recent walk down there. It was only a few feet from the trail, and one would think the colour in the dead leaves would have drawn my eye to its tree, but it never did. One might also have considered the trail’s edge to be an odd place for a nest, given the regular disturbance it would receive, but I find a surprising number of them in close proximity to it. Ease of access? In any case, even on the “busy” summer weekends I’ve yet to see many people using it. I rarely encounter anyone else at all while out walking, and when I do it’s usually just one individual or group.

This one belonged to a Red-eyed Vireo. There are six vireo species that nest in Ontario, though one of them only reaches the very southern parts of the province. All of them build nests of a similar style: instead of resting on the branch, the cup is suspended between the two branches of a fork, the threads deftly woven around each twig.

While we do have a few species of vireo in our area, a couple of clues tell me that this was made by a Red-eye. First is the habitat, which is mixed-deciduous woods, and the landscape, which is moderately disturbed. Warbling Vireos prefer riparian habitats; Blue-headed like a strong coniferous component; and Yellow-throated like primarily deciduous. Red-eyed and Warbling are also a lot more tolerant of disturbance in the landscape than the other species, which like more uniform tracts of forest.

And the second clue is in the materials used in the nest’s construction. This one has so much birch bark woven through it that it’s nearly white. While all of the vireos might include a little bit of birch bark, usually only the Red-eyed ever uses so much (though it should be noted that not all Red-eyes will use this much). A third is the height of the nest: Red-eyed Vireos often use younger trees, and so are necessarily lower to the ground than the other species usually are.

A couple of years ago, just before we moved from the lake house, a Red-eyed Vireo began building its nest in a small tree half a dozen feet from our living room window. It took her (only the female builds) about four days to complete. Dan captured some of it with his video camera and compiled it into a video. It’s pretty neat, especially to watch the bird snuggle in and make sure it’s a good fit.

On Tuesday the temperature was warm enough that with the sun beating down on the roofs of our house and shed, the snow was melting and dripping off in small rivulets, which turned into icicles when it reached the cooler, below-freezing air. When Dan came in from tossing the ball in the front yard for Raven, he pointed out the chickadees on the shed roof.

They were coming to drink at the trickles of snowmelt at the edge of the roof. Only the chickadees; I suppose because only the chickadees possessed the acrobatic ability to cling to the wooden edge below the tin roof as they sipped the water. Or perhaps the other species just hadn’t noticed, or figured it out, or plain weren’t thirsty, because I’d have to think that the goldfinches, at the very least, would also have been able to hang there. Still, it was just the chickadees, but it was a steady parade of them during the time I was watching.

Some would land on the snow first and then hop to the wooden edge, while others would fly straight to the perch. It was hard to see exactly where they were taking the water from, but they would lean forward for half a second, and then as they raised their heads again it was possible to observe their open bill, a characteristic posture while a bird is drinking. Whether they lean forward to scoop water out of a puddle, or collect it by some means such as this, the bird will let the water run into the concave hollow of their lower mandible, then tip their head up and allow it to trickle down their throat. This is what they’re doing while their bill is open.

In the winter water is hard to come by. Most of it is tied up in solid form, whether it be snow or ice. A few creeks and streams with faster moving water might remain open, but by and large there’s mainly two ways a bird can get water: by ingesting (and melting) snow, or by taking advantage of drips created by the sun doing the job for them. The latter is definitely the better option, because it takes a lot of the bird’s energy to melt snow. Or rather, it takes no energy at all to melt the snow, but it takes a lot of energy to prevent the body temperature from falling as the heat is drawn away and used to melt the snow.

We tend to think of bird baths as summer things, basins of fresh water that we maintain so the birds can splash and bathe. But in areas where there aren’t many open water sources, a bird bath can be an invaluable addition to your birdfeeding setup. Either buy a bird bath heater or agitator, or otherwise carry out a bowl of hot water twice a day to keep the water open. The birds will thank you for it. Dan and I don’t actually have a winter bird bath; since I’m not prepared to carry out water I’ve been waiting until we have some spare money I could use to buy some electronic gadget to do the job for me. Preferably a solar-powered one. This one, for instance, just uses the thermal energy of the sun to trap heat using a black cover. If you’re the handy type, you could even make your own.

Is there any harder time of the year for a northeastern naturalist than February? Even the slow-down of November is better. February is tough. By February, I’ve mostly exhausted the easy winter subjects and have to hope for encounters of wildlife or other unexpected occurrences to keep my interest up. By February, I’m getting really tired of the cold and the snow and the paucity of living things. I do like winter; I don’t think I could move to someplace like Florida where snow is virtually unheard of. I’d like to have a little bit of snow to enjoy. I could just use about a month less of it than what we get here in eastern Ontario, I think. But I love this landscape during the other 11 months too well to want to move simply for the sake of a shorter winter.

My posts have been slogging a little bit the last couple of weeks because of this winter wall, but for the first time since Christmas I actually have a backlog of topics right now. It’s gotta be a sign that spring’s just around the corner. And in fact, it will probably be only three weeks until the first moth of spring appears at our porch lights. The migrant birds will start returning around then, too. Three weeks; it’ll be here before I know it.

As perhaps a herald of warmer days to come, I was treated to my first “migrant” bird on the weekend. I was walking Raven down the road (the afternoon temperatures being above freezing and the snow therefore wet, such that snowshoes wouldn’t work well) when we flushed up this American Robin from the shoulder of the road. There, the snowplow had exposed the frozen grass and mud and the mild, sunny afternoon was working to melt away what thin layer was left. The ground would still be mostly frozen so he wasn’t hunting for earthworms, but it’s possible that some other invertebrates such as spiders might have been crawling about in the relative warmth. He wouldn’t let me get close enough for much of a photo, and naturally I’d only brought my short lens. But you can tell it’s a robin. Can even tell it’s a male robin.

We tend to think of robins as migrants, but not all of them head south, and those that do may not end up going far. It could be that this bird has been hanging around the area and I just haven’t run into him, or he might have moved just into town or someplace where foraging was a little easier. I doubt he came from very far, in any case. The true migrant robins probably won’t return till March at the earliest, as well. The cluck of the robin is such a warm-weather sound to me, it seemed out of place while there was still a foot or more of snow on the ground.

That same afternoon, on the way back up the road, Raven and I popped into the 100-acre woods briefly. I didn’t go far, but we followed the trail in a couple hundred meters. One of our neighbours uses the trails on the property for snowmobiling, and the heavy machine had packed down the snow sufficiently that I was able to walk on it even without my snowshoes. I’d paused near one of my favourite groves of hemlocks to let Raven bound around off trail when I heard a muffled squawk and some heavy tapping coming from the forest. Finally, after a bit of scanning, I located this Pileated Woodpecker several dozen meters away. He was working away on a dead snag, and continued there for a few minutes while I watched. It’s been at least a couple of months since I’ve seen one of these big beauties, so I was delighted by the sighting. Even if both my binoculars and long lens were at the house.

And finally, as if those two encounters weren’t treat enough, two days later I was walking back up the driveway with Raven when we flushed this Barred Owl from the pines that buffer our house from the road. At this time of year owls are starting to mate. I’ve heard a Barred Owl calling at night on a couple of occasions when putting Raven out at night, before bedtime; late winter they seem to be the most vocal. They also seem to be more active during the daytime. When I visited my parents a couple of weekends ago there were two separate Barred Owls perched on the roadside wires, scanning for rodents (naturally I hadn’t bothered to take my camera, not expecting to use it). This one perched in the tree a dozen meters away at most, looking very unperturbed. I took a few photos with my short lens and watched it for a couple of minutes, then decided to try going back to the house for my long lens. Unfortunately, in the four minutes I was gone the bird moved on.

At this time of year, so many great bird sightings practically back-to-back was exactly what I needed.