Local Lovelies

 

I am now frantically trying to get caught up on my blog from the past few weeks before leaving for a couple of days on Amherst Island with Ann, as we all know what that means!

Late last week, John, Doug and I scoped out parts of Durham Region for the Pickering Naturalists' Feeder Tour (the same one that got semi-snowed out in the end) but this Barred Owl was an absolute treat to see at last, a first for me so close to home:



A week ago today I saw these locals down by the lake, beginning with a Song Sparrow:

A pretty White-throated Sparrow with snow on its beak:

A male Northern Cardinal enjoys a sunflower seed...

...as does a female:

So you know that I was off to a slow start if I was photographing feeder birds, right? Well, that all changed fairly quickly as I left Hall's Road, catching a glimpse of a Rough-legged Hawk on the wing coming in for a landing right next to where I was parked!

It always amazes me how they can balance themselves so precariously on these tiny branches, but of course they weigh a lot less than one would think:

 

...settling in at last for better views of the hunting grounds:

 

Could it get any better? Yup. My final stop for the day in south Whitby included Northern Harriers, both males and females:

I thought yet another Harrier had joined in on the action, flying straight at me, when I realized it was a young Red-tailed Hawk! Due to my incredible photographic skills By some miracle I succeeded in getting both of them in focus, and in the same frame now that will NEVER happen again   

...the Red-tailed Hawk eventually landed on the top of the pole right next to my car:

So the day wrapped up with lots more action in the end for what started off as a slow day!

This past Tuesday I bit the bullet and hauled myself over to Second Marsh in Oshawa to search for the Barrow's Goldeneye that had been reported for almost a month now. It was quite the trek along the creek in the snow and ice ssshhhhhh, but it paid off in the end as I found the sucker my latest Lifer out on the lake all by my lonesome, amongst dozens of Common Goldeneyes. Fortunately I took Skip's advice that he had learned from Geoff: instead of looking for the white crescent marking in front of the eye (versus the round one on the Common), focus on the bird with the different back and sides. The Barrow's Goldeneye is blacker above with white spots, with a black spur at its shoulder. The advice worked like a charm and I easily picked it out of the crowd, thanks, Skip and Geoff!

My next stop was at Oshawa Harbour where I ran into Jean, and it was from here on that we played tag for the rest of the afternoon as we both followed the shoreline of the lake back to Whitby. Jean found the King Eider for me she is truly amazing! amongst the Canada Geese at the north end of the channel, and we grumbled to each other as we did our best to enjoy distant views of him  through our scopes, but at least it warranted a "tick" for a year bird.

Also in the channel was a White-winged Scoter for the year...

...and of course several Long-tailed Ducks:

Jean and I connected again at the harbour in Whitby, but I missed her at Hall's Road. Too bad for her, because on my way out the Rough-legged Hawk was in its usual tree, what a thrill, as well as an ahah moment for me! This time I witnessed its take-off, versus its landing from last week:

...all of these photos are worth double-clicking on to enlarge to see more of this beautiful raptor in all its splendour!

My final Local Lovely for the past few weeks is this Northern Mockingbird thanks, John that's feeding on buds:

My 2011 Year List is now 58, and my Winter List at the midway point is 77 species.

Snow Bunting Blindness!

Yesterday, thanks to Skip, I had the privilege of spending the day with David banding Snow Buntings, can you imagine how I suffered through that??? OMGOMGOMGOMG

Before meeting Skip in Caledon, I enjoyed a spectacular sunrise in the country:

Don't let it be said that we birders are in a rut when it comes to our Tim Horton's pit stops, here's absolute proof that we're always open to supporting the competition who knew??!! :

 Skip makes sure there's no room for confusion as to where the drive-through entrance is:

So armed with our hot beverages from Eddie's I'm sorry but it just doesn't have the same ring that "Timmie's" does , we arrived at Susan's beautiful country home on the outskirts of Fergus where bird bander David had already set up his ground traps for Snow Buntings.

A Master Bander, last year David banded a total of 15,036 individual birds of 101 different species, setting a new record for Snow Buntings, banding  8,101 of them! In fact one of his banded Snow Buntings from a year ago was seen in Greenland three months later, this bird had travelled 3,286 kilometres!

The wire traps have an opening on the side for the birds to enter, attracted by the birdseed that David has left for them, but they're unable to find their way out of the traps. David makes his way over to see how many customers have arrived at the grand opening of his new restaurant:

The place is so popular that there's already a line-up to get in!

Here I am with David, watching him carefully remove the birds from a secret door on top of the trap and put them in cloth bags for banding. Thanks go to Skip for taking photos of me for a change for the blog but now everyone will see what a total nerd I am:

The Bag Lady:

The bags of birds are lined up outside David's truck for banding. The amount of time they spend inside the truck is limited as these birds from the Arctic are not used to warm temperatures. Now that assumes it was warm in the truck, which it was not....

David shows Skip and I how to safely handle the bird without harming it:

The band goes on the right leg, presumably right-side up for ease of reading the numbers from it later if ever recovered...

 ...checking to see that the band is on properly so as not to injure the bird with any sharp or misaligned edges:

David examines the bird to determine its sex, age, weight, body mass, and wing length, which is all recorded on a spreadsheet. If the bird is already banded, the band information is also duly noted. In some cases, tiny nail-clippings and feathers were also kept for later analysis. The majority of David's birds from Susan's fields are males, for some unknown reason.

BTW, that furry-looking thing under the Snow Bunting is not an animal, it's David's hat!

Here I am shaking like a leaf, holding my first ever Snow Bunting, eventually releasing him back into the wild, OMG! Thanks again to Skip for the photos:

I couldn't wipe the smile off my face- until David told me he was going to let me do some of the banding. And I thought I was shaking before!  When I began my day, all I had hoped for was to perhaps release one of these beauties, but to be given the opportunity to do more than this was phenomenal. Even if I was left-handed, which made for some interesting times when taking wing measurements. And putting the bird upside down into a empty roll of toilet paper to weigh him, then to safely extract him from the roll, yikes! I also learned during the release that a bird lying on its back will not move. Period. Even if you move your hand a bit to give him a hint, he will not fly off, he has to be turned over for take- off!

And to make things even better, Susan prepared us a delicious meal of Julia Childs' French onion soup accompanied by fresh sandwiches, while her German Shepherd "Adonis" chills on the sofa in the background:

  

Skip and I re-joined David outside for some bird photography before heading back to the city. He shared with us that a female American Kestrel had somewhat wreaked havoc on his restaurant, sadly taking out one of the Snow Buntings, but she has to stay alive too, right?? We had hoped to capture her for banding as well, but she lost interest in the area.

Skip and I went insane taking photos, so sit back and enjoy!

To shamelessly steal Skip's comparison, dozens of Snow Buntings adorned a tree. It may be advantageous to double-click on the photos for more detail on these porcelain beauties, then hit the "back" button to return to the blog:

When I enlarged this next photo, I discovered that at least three of the six Snow Buntings were banded, perhaps even by yours truly? Mine would be easily identified by the upside-down bands, as I was hard-pressed to see which side was up since I was so nervous  terrified   petrified  excited the whole time! 

By the time Skip and I left, David told me approximately ninety Snow Buntings had been banded he certainly made up for lost time as I was ridiculously slow with my babies:

It's now a day later and I still cannot wipe the smile off my face! On our way home, Skip told me that I've probably held more SNBU in my hands than most people have even seen, which really has given me something to ponder as I reflect back on this magical day.

When asked what bird species was his favorite, David replied to me: "The one that I'm holding in my hand". How true, now I know what he means!

Many thanks again to Skip, David, and Susan for one of the best days ever!

CBC Numero Dos: Pickering, plus today's Feeder Tour

I began a new year of birding on January 2nd, 2011 with the Pickering Naturalists club for my second Christmas Bird Count in less than a week, and what a fabulous day it was! Glenda, Janice yup, another Janice, can you imagine??  and I entered our count circle around 9:30 a.m. and left it at 4:30, so it was a long day but we had some excellent birds. Glenda did a wonderful job of driving the country back roads while I tested my navigational skills to ensure 100% coverage of our area, while the other Janice kept score of the birds.

Twenty minutes into our count circle I began to complain about the number of Canada Geese we saw in flight, poor Janice tried to keep us honest with the count while Glenda and I said: "yeah, add another hundred, blahblahblah". One such flock had a Cackling Goose at the lead, so that was our first good bird for the day, and throughout the rest of the day we saw a Peregrine Falcon, several Red-tailed Hawks, a couple of Northern Shrikes, an Eastern Bluebird, lots of Black-capped Chickadees, American Goldfinches, House Finches, American Tree Sparrows, a Brown-headed Cowbird, Northern Cardinals, Dark-eyed Juncos, European Starlings, Cedar Waxwings (no Bohemians, boohoo!), American Robins, a Common Raven, Blue Jays, and both Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers. Thanks to Dan and Stephen, I even attempted a new pishing method that seemed to amuse the smaller birds, even if I did humiliate myself in front of Janice and Glenda by hanging out of the car window making kissy-face noises, yikes :-(

Certainly the BOTD was this spectacular juvenile Bald Eagle that we had originally seen flying low from Westney Road, but then found it again visible from Concession 8 as it circled the area, how beauteous was that, especially as it was only the second day of 2011??!!

My species tally for the day was twenty-five, which was not a bad start for a quiet birding day. We returned to Rosemary and Jonathan's palace overlooking the Rouge to get warmed up, as well as consume obscene amounts of sugar and swap stories with the other participants, and a good day was had by all.

Speaking of which, we all became so enchanted by Rosemary and Jonathan's hospitality that we invited ourselves back there again this morning! Thanks to Doug's jinxing of the annual Feeder Tour by publicly promising Eastern Bluebirds to everyone at Thursday's club meeting, eight of us made a hasty not-so-hasty retreat to the Olivers from the Pickering GO station, braving treacherous road conditions due to overnight snow that had not been cleaned up yet. How bad was it? It was so bad that even the GO bus honked at me as I slowly made my way along Bayley, Street, jeeez.   

So instead of driving country back roads looking for well-stocked bird feeders that John, Doug, and I had already scoped out on Thursday, we found ourselves suffering inside here:

Their beautiful home overlooks the Rouge Valley and has one of the best feeder configurations known to man, so all ten of us in the end suffered through it, sipping on hot apple cider, freshly-brewed coffee, and eventually lunch!

Dan decides to punish Doug for jinxing the day by force-feeding him a chocolate mouse:

On the bird front, we tried to determine their feeding pattern, as there would be a feeding frenzy for half an hour not unlike us with the Oliver's lunch spread, then silence until they eventually returned to the yard. American Goldfinches, House Finches, and Pine Siskins entertained us, as did a few pairs of Northern Cardinals, Dark-eyed Juncos, Blue Jays, European Starlings by the dozens, and both Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers that gave us excellent side-by-side comparisons.

A Cooper's Hawk that flew into the feeder zone was one reason for a mass exodus of the smaller birds, as it perched on a nearby branch, salivating over which bird to take out. A pair of Red-tailed Hawks periodically flew in and out too, giving us some excitement as it pursued one of the feeder birds:

Certainly the BOTD, though, was the Red-bellied Woodpecker, there are four of them that Rosemary and Jonathan care for:

We actually can see the red belly here!

As we had already shamelessly invited ourselves to the Oliver's, we opted to not over-stay our welcome and left after lunch once the snow had stopped once and for all. Many thanks again to Rosemary and Jonathan for their hospitality, and rest assured that you can expect us all back again during the next snowfall ;-)

Mom, Doug and I made a brief stop into Hall's Road on our way home, running into Ann, Chris, and several other nature photographers along the way. The usual suspects were out in full force after the fresh snowfall, including Black-capped Chickadees...

...and these Mourning Doves:

After walking to the hawk watch platform and back, it wasn't quite clear to me who was holding up whom here, mom or Doug:

  

And so ends my first posting for 2011. I had fully intended to do a 2010 recap highlighting my best birds of the year,  but alas, it is not to be, for now anyway.

All I can tell you is this, though:

my 2010 Year List ended with 253 species

my Life List is currently at 277 species

my Winter List is currently at 73 species

Both my Life and Winter Lists include a very special bird seen this week, but you'll have to wait for me to get caught up with my postings next week. Or perhaps the week after that, as I'm out and about with Ann over the next few weeks, and we all know what that means....