The limey green season

I love this time of year at Rondeau, when the vegetation is such a vivid green, the breeding birds are in full song, the mosquitoes are almost non-existent, or at least tolerable, and on weekdays, there is hardly another person in the park. The trails, indeed almost the entire park, is all mine :-).

One can really appreciate what the natural world has to offer, when you are in it by yourself. The only sounds, sights and smells are those of nature. You aren't distracted by human chatter, passing vehicles and such.

And it can be a real opportunity to see wildlife when it is less inhibited. Just recently I was walking along the trail shown in the first two photos, Spicebush Trail, and there is at least one pair of Pileated Woodpeckers that have a territory overlapping this trail's area. I had been photographing wildflowers since there was a profusion of them, and during the middle part of the day the birds were quieter. So the only lens I had was my 100mm macro lens, on a full frame camera, which had very little telephoto effect. I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye and there, ripping into a rotting log, was a female Pileated Woodpecker. They are not typically tolerant of humans, but this one was an exception. She could see me, I was sure, but made no move to fly, so I cautiously crept closer, getting a few photos as I got closer. The one shown below was taken with my macro lens....I was no more than about 3 metres from this bird and as I got closer I wondered if I would have to use my macro feature! In all my years at Rondeau, this is the closest I have been able to approach.

After watching her for a few moments, she moved off to another rotting log a short distance away. And I went back to shooting wildflowers, which are abundant in this early spring season, but still revelled in the encounter with this magnificent bird.

Violets are extremely common, and there are several kinds. Some violets have flowers on the main stem that also has leaves, such as this Smooth Yellow Violet.

Other species have the flowering stem separate from the leaves, such as this Wooly Blue Violet.

Similarly, the Long-spurred Violet has flowering stems on separate stems from the leaves. They are easily distinguished by their much paler colour and the very long spur at the back.

Wildflowers didn't use to be so lush and abundant at Rondeau, due to the extremely high number of white-tailed deer. At one point there were about 600 deer overwintering in the park, and when the first bits of greenery showed, the by now ravenously hungry deer devoured the fresh plant material....it was a welcome change from dry twigs all winter! But it played havoc with the wildflowers. Back in about 1978 there were two deer exclosures constructed, to demonstrate the impacts of a high population of deer browsing. The response of wildflowers from no deer browsing pressure in those exclosures since that time has been dramatic.

This first photo shows typical spring wildflowers and greenery inside the deer exclosure.

For this next photo, I turned around 180 degrees and took a shot showing what the wildflowers looked like in the unprotected area.....same camera, same lens.

The exclosures are just south of Bennett Ave and also just south of Gardiner Ave. They can be viewed by the public, although the trails to them aren't as obviously marked as they once were, so take a look for yourself next time you are in the area. It is dramatic!!!


Some wildflowers are easily recognized by most people. Trilliums, for example. But these next few photos show trilliums that you probably have never seen before.

This is actually a Red Trillium. I don't have the Photoshop capabilities to produce something like this :-). I had never seen one with six petals before. I have seen trilliums with four petals on occasion, but never six. This individual occurred along the Spicebush Trail in 2013. It did not reappear in 2014.

This is also a Red Trillium.....very rarely a yellow colour form will occur. I have only seen this on 3 occasions. This one was growing right next to a typical Red Trillium as shown in the next photo. Interestingly I first found this individual in 2013, and the same one appeared at exactly the same spot in 2014.

Other typical spring wildflowers are as follows:

Wild Blue Phlox

Wood Anemone

The next one is a species that you have walked by on numerous occasions if you have been on Spicebush Trail, but chances are you have never noticed it. It is known as Mitrewort, and is quite diminutive. This first photo is an overall shot, and you can see a spike of tiny white flowers. The whole plant is often less than a foot high, with two small paired leaves.

As one gets a closer look, the intricate details become obvious.

 And if you get really close, you may be amazed at the level of detail in this tiny flower, which in real life measures only about 3 mm in diameter! I took this with a 100 mm macro lens at minimum focus, and then put on all three extension tubes (an additional 68 mm) to increase the magnification. Then I cropped it heavily on the computer, to illustrate the detail seen here.

You really have to get on your hands and knees to see this beauty, and even then it is handy to have a hand lens. The macro world is fun and fascinating to explore!

As I completed the loop of the Spicebush Trail, the very southern section had another Pileated Woodpecker show up, and he was quite agitated. Actually he was agitated before he got close to me, but I don't know what about. This is the male, as the red crest extends from the beak to the back of the head, whereas in the previous image showing the female, the area closest to the beak is brown, not red.

Skunk's Misery, Clear Creek Forest and butterflies!

I decided to spend a bit of time inland today. The overcast skies work well with forest photography, so I had a couple of places in mind: Skunk's Misery and Clear Creek Forest.

Skunk's Misery is a large complex of woodland area at the conjunction of Middlesex, Elgin and Lambton counties and the municpality of Chatham-Kent. The bulk of it is in Middlesex. Much of it is privately owned, but the County of Middlesex and the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority own a significant amount. The forests are extremely lush at this time of year.

There are various stories about how this place got its name. The one that I hear the most is when several decades ago, a petty criminal used to hide out in this rather large almost impenetrable forest complex, but when he was finally apprehended by the local constabulary, the officer was quoted as saying it was one heck of a skunk's misery of a place.

Even though much of it has been cleared over the decades, what remains is still a fairly massive area. Much of it is wet, which makes it a haven for mosquitoes. They were out in full force today.

One of the endangered species that occurs here is Eastern Flowering Dogwood. It can be seen in open areas and along the woodland edges.

The white 'flowers' at this time of year are quite noticeable, but by the end of May, they will have finished flowering.

The white parts aren't really the petals.....they are sepals, and the actual petals are tiny to the point of being almost inconspicuous. By fall, there will be clusters of red berries.

One of the reasons this dogwood is endangered is due to an anthracnose that arrived via horticultural dogwoods. In very open parts of the woodland, the Eastern Flowering Dogwood is hanging on, but in areas of denser forest, it is believed that the higher levels of humidity enable the problematic anthracnose to thrive, to the detriment of the dogwood.

One of the highlights of today's visit was the presence of butterflies. I have seen very few butterflies so far this spring, so I was delighted to see four species for the first time this year: Giant Swallowtail, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Spicebush Swallowtail (no pics....it was too active an on the move) and Juvenal's Duskywing (I'm not 100% certain of the correct ID of the duskywing, but it is what it appears to be).

Giant Swallowtail

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Juvenal's Duskywing

They all seemed to be happy along and on the gravel road. I'm not sure what they were sipping, but they didn't seem to want to leave. I wonder how butterflies got along without roads :-).

Clear Creek Forest
Clear Creek Forest is a provincial nature reserve a bit north of Talbot Trail (Hwy 3) east of Rondeau Provincial Park. There is some impressive older growth forest in one small section above the creek valley.

Self portrait

The photo above, taken via a delayed exposure, is the largest American Beech tree on this site, and likely one of the larger ones in Ontario.

Very few people know about this place, or visit it. The creek valley is quite wet, but the upland area, other than a few vernal pools or depressions, are mostly dry. The main forest type at this point is American Beech, Sugar Maple, Basswood and Black Cherry. A narrow trail follows the upland edge and leads to an attractive overlook of the creek. Due to the sandy/gravelly substrate and the well shaded conditions, it is one of the few places in Chatham-Kent where a cold water stream is present, which would support a different variety of fish than most warm-water drainage ditches in the municipality.

Due to the relative quiet, birds such as Ovenbird, Wood Thrush, Red-eyed Vireo and Scarlet Tanager were heard in full song without the competition of traffic and other human origin noises.

Yellow-headed Action, and more....

The presence of the colony of Yellow-headed Blackbirds, along Angler Line just south of Mitchell's Bay, is such a treat. One wants to make the most of it, as they are quite likely to be in more remote and inaccessible locations next year. So for a few hours today, I decided to check them out again.

The cattails are growing quickly, so there is no telling how that will affect the visibility of these colourful birds. At the moment, they can be quite visible, sometimes perched on last year's stems of Phragmites, right along the road side.

I had really been trying for the perfect shot.....adult male with the wings out and curved, against the bright blue sky. I got one, sort of.....

Close, but not as in focus as I would like. They don't often get up that high in the air, spending most of the time at cattail level or just above, but with more cattails in the background. There was a brief time when one or more got higher, as a raptor floated by, causing many blackbirds to sound the alarm and go up to let the hawk know it better not come any closer. Turns out it was a Cooper's Hawk, which afforded some decent views and photo ops.

Both Red-winged Blackbirds and Yellow-headed Blackbirds exhibit fairly aggressive territorial behaviour, making for some interesting interaction.

The red-wings like to show off their brilliant red epaulets. Research has shown that the brighter and more vivid the red is, the more dominant the male will be in a colony. Some researchers, many years ago, captured some dominant males and painted their red epaulets with some dark water-based paint. The result was that during the time the red was covered up, the dominance of these males dropped to almost zero. But when the black paint washed off and the red was more visible the birds once again returned to their dominant position in the colony.

I'm not sure what the Yellow-headed Blackbirds thought about this behaviour. There clearly was some territorial defence-work in action. Here, a male of each species was quite vehement about the presence of the other.

It seemed that, for the moment, the Yellow-headed won this round.

Red-wings were quick to harass some of the other birds.....perhaps in frustration over being beaten out by the Yellow-headeds?

Great Egret being harassed by a male Red-wing

I did manage to get a few other shots of the Yellow-headeds in flight, to show the white wing patch.

While all this was going on, there were other birds of note: a Least Bittern dropped in from a short distance away; an adult Black-crowned Night-Heron flew over; Common Moorhen was heard cackling from the cattails and a probable Virginia Rail called as well. One or more Green Herons flew by from time to time.

A non-bird highlight of this outing was finding a rare species of turtle out crossing the road. A fellow photographer noted it first, and proceeded to get it to the side of the road before an oncoming truck came along.

This little one is a Musk Turtle, quite a rarity in Ontario. It has a high (for its size) rounded shell, and its nose is rather pointed. It is small and spends almost all of its time in the water, hence the mossy look to its back. Due to its shy nature, small size and tendency to spend so much time in the water compared to many other species of turtles, it might not be as rare as its status indicates. Nonetheless, in my ~40 years of field work, I have only seen them on land on half a dozen occasions.


And with that, I will bring this post to a close.

The End!

Although I should point out that unbeknownst to many observers, the feathers under the tail are a bright yellow.

Rondeau area update: May 22 & 23

I've been away for a few days.....maybe you have noticed my absence. Marie and I were in North Bay, visiting our daughter and new son-in-law. I'll post a bit of that trip in a future post.

We got back late in the evening of Wednesday, May 21 and I was ready for my 'Rondeau fix'. So on Thursday morning, I headed to Rondeau. The birds along the north end of Rondeau Road were not abundant, but there were a few warblers on the move: Blackburnian and Magnolia especially, and some of the resident warblers were in full song. There were lots of vireos, including Yellow-throated, and a few Empid flycatchers including Yellow-bellied. Pileated Woodpeckers were around, but not very vocal this day. They have a territory and nest site in this vicinity and so are particularly quiet.

Blackburnian Warbler

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are still around in good numbers...not quite as plentiful as they were a few days ago, however. Presumably some of the ones currently around will remain to nest.

The Spicebush Trail had loads of wildflowers. Lots of different violets, some lingering trilliums, Pepperwort Toothwort and many others. I will do a special post just on some of the wildflowers there. I'll include one of my favourites for now: the White Baneberry, a.k.a. Doll's-eyes, for reasons that will become apparent in a future post.

A Wood Thrush has taken up residence along the west side of the trail, so hopefully some decent pics of adults feeding young may be in store. I also heard a partial song of an Acadian Flycatcher just a bit north of where one has nested in the last couple of years, so hopefully that bodes well for this species.

At the Visitor Centre feeders there was a fair bit of bird activity. Mostly the usual ones, but what caught my eye was this gorgeous adult Red-headed Woodpecker!

It was particularly attracted to the suet feeder and was rather feisty in discouraging some of the other competitors for this type of nutrition.

Later I went to the Dog Beach access, hoping to see some shorebirds, and in particular Whimbrel. Spotted Sandpipers were kicking up a fuss, as were some Killdeer.

Spotted Sandpiper

And then I noted a flock of three largish shorebirds with long down-curved bills come closer....Whimbrel! They landed briefly nearby, but were quickly airborne again.

Another large flock of at least 250 Whimbrel were well out over the lake, and disappeared without coming close enough for even a long record shot.

On the return along Lakeshore Road, I noted a chipmunk in a tree....not the usual place to see them, but they are avid climbers and on occasion I have seen them near the top of a 30 metre high tree. This one was at a better level for photographing, in spite of the heavy cloud cover and poor lighting.

Today I took a quick trip to Erieau, to see if any more Whimbrel were in the area. This species only passes through in a very short time period.....usually no more than about a week. But none were visible today. I did see 6 brightly plumaged Ruddy Turnstones on the far breakwall.

Along the Erieau Rail Trail there was a smattering of warblers, about 8 species in all. Highlights were Canada Warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Orange-crowned Warbler and Mourning Warbler along with some of the more regular migrants and residents. The dull light and shrubby conditions made getting photos particularly challenging.

Wilson's Warbler

An Eastern Kingbird and Ruby-throated Hummingbird were a bit more cooperative.

Eastern Kingbird

Ruby-throated Hummingbird