Crested birds, and some turkeys

Bird feathers, colours and their arrangements are always intriguing. If one has been to the tropics, the variety is even more impressive. But I don't want to sell our local birds short: they are amazing in their own right.

Birds with crests are noteworthy. For some species the crest seems to be an important part of their courtship and display, which is obviously important for the species survival. This includes some species of waterfowl such as male Red-breasted Merganser and Hooded Merganser, where the fully displayed crest is most prevalent during the pair bonding period.

Red-breasted Merganser

Hooded Merganser

For so many other species of birds, the purpose of the crest seems to be less obvious, but undoubtedly has some role. Some of the most likely crested birds to be encountered in southern Ontario include the following.

Belted Kingfisher

 The crests of Cedar Waxwing and Northern Cardinal vary from time to time. Sometimes they are almost flattened, and other times they are quite erect. When a Northern Cardinal wants to be less visible, something that is hard for a bright red bird, its crest is almost invisible.

Cedar Waxwing

Northern Cardinal

 The crest of the Pileated Woodpecker will vary a bit also, but often is quite upright.

Pileated Woodpecker

 It seems that the crest of a Tufted Titmouse is invariably quite noticeable and seldom lowered.

Tufted Titmouse

 The crest of a Blue Jay is often upright, but then this species often seems to be excited and vocal, except around their nests. Anywhere around the nest site, they will be very silent and furtive. I have had a pair nest in a tree in our front yard on occasion, and they went unnoticed for several weeks, which is surprising given how raucous and vocal they usually are.

Blue Jay

This leads me to discuss another fact about bird feathers. There are a couple of ways that colours appear. One is via the actual pigment in the feathers, and the Northern Cardinal is an example. However most birds that are blue, and some that are green, are not the result of either a blue or green pigment. It is the result of the refraction or bending of light rays passing through microscopic structures of the feather's melanin which is unique to the species. This filters out certain wavelengths, allowing certain colours to come through. Hence the colour of a Blue Jay's feathers, as well as other blue birds such as the Indigo Bunting, is the result of this light refractive process, not the pigmentation.

On a completely different 'birdy' note: Here is the bird of the day.

Happy Thanksgiving to any readers from the USA!

More Townsend's Warbler plus Ross's Goose

The Townsend's Warbler which was first noticed last Saturday (but quite likely had been around for awhile) continued into Monday. It looked quite content loosely hanging around with a small group of kinglets and chickadees. The crowd of searchers was not as large as on the weekend, but still, at least a dozen folks arrived and successfully saw the bird. Most were retirees, not surprisingly. Getting good photographs, however, was a different story. The bird was active and typically was in the upper half of any tree it was found in, sometimes right at the top. Combined with the bright overcast skies, the light and distance was challenging.

I used the 5D3 with the 1.4X converter on the 500mm lens this time, knowing that under poor light conditions it would perform much better than the crop sensor of the 7D2 which I used for photos taken on Saturday for the previous post. Even at that, I had to use a lot of tweaking of the high resolution RAW images to make the best of them. If I was adept at photoshop, I might have considered replacing the overexposed white sky for a more pleasing sky blue background, but taking the photos as natural as possible has always been my preference.

Up until this day, I had never seen the warbler in any tree but a coniferous one. That wasn't really surprising, since the bird's normal habitat is the coniferous forests of the Rocky Mountains, where it forages and nests in the upper reaches of conifers. So I was a little surprised to see this bird spend a few moments at the very top of this leafless deciduous tree. It certainly gave less obstructive views, but again, the over exposed sky did not help. For camera aficionados, this next photo was intentionally overexposed in the camera by 2 1/3 stops, and then had the contrast, etc adjusted on the computer just to get a bit of detail in the bird. It was a pretty drastic crop as well, going from 5760 pixels on the long side down to 1200 pixels, which resulted in going from a total of 22,118,400 pixels down to 960,000 pixels. That is a 96% crop

One of the other highlights of this rarity arriving here is to re-connect with folks I hadn't seen in years. Some of these included folks from the GTA while another one was a former prof of mine. I took a wildlife biology course from him back in about 1974, and had a few discussions with him at the time about the Rondeau deer herd. I hadn't seen him in more than 40 years, so it was interesting to chat for a bit.

While a few of us were watching and waiting for the Townsend's, we got word that a Ross's Goose was just out in the lake a short distance away. As it turns out, it was actually within the park boundary, associating with several hundred Canada Geese that were resting on the lake in a no hunting area.

When we first saw it, it was clearly a small goose.

Without seeing the head and facial characteristics, it would be difficult to separate this from a Ross's X Snow hybrid, which happens fairly regularly in the wild. After a bit, it did get its head up and looked around briefly.

In the second photo, the rounded head, the straight feather line at the base of the fairly stubby bill,  the lack of the grin patch and the bluish colour at the base of the bill all point towards it being a Ross's Goose, or at least if there are any Snow Goose genes in its make-up they are very minimal.

Ross's Goose has become a bit more regular throughout Ontario over the past couple of decades, and they seem to show up in Chatham-Kent annually now. However I think this is the first time I have seen a Ross's Goose within the park boundary.

West meets east: Townsend's Warbler

A text message arrived this morning, just as I was getting ready to head out somewhere in southern Chatham-Kent. My initial plan was to get to Erieau, hoping that the ENE winds would have exposed enough algae along the main pier to attract the interest of a migrating Purple Sandpiper or Red Phalarope. But the text message from Jim Burk and Steve Charbonneau changed all that: Jim had found a Townsend's Warbler in the subdivision just outside the Rondeau Prov Park gates. This is very much a western species whose Canadian breeding range is restricted mainly to BC and the Yukon, with a fringe along the Alberta part of the Rocky Mountains.

When I got there, no one was around right away, but Jim came back shortly after and the Townsend's Warbler was re-found in the red cedars. The very brief views did not allow for any photos to be taken. As time went on and more people showed up, the group of kinglets and chickadees which the warbler seemed to have been loosely associated with had gone quiet. After an hour and a half or so, I decided to check the north part of the park by the campground, where red cedars are abundant, thinking that it was possible the Townsend's had moved on. The birds there were quiet as well, and after a little while, I got another text message stating that the Townsend's had re-appeared in its original location. So back I headed, and this time the group of birders had grown to more than a dozen, all looking intently at the bird. It was flitting high up in the red cedars, mostly in bright sunlight but at times in the dark recesses of the cedars. The views through binoculars were excellent, but the contrasty conditions made it challenging for the digital camera. But some of the photos turned out okay.

 Although technically this was not inside the park boundary, it was only about 200 metres outside, and is well within the park's checklist area. This represents about the 5th record for the park. I was fortunate to have found the first one back on May 11, 1984, at the west end of the old Dillon Trail.

Although not conclusive, this bird is likely a fall male adult. This next photo shows a fairly dark throat, not as dark as a breeding plumage male, but certainly fits the fall male. Females typically have a pale throat.

White stuff

The onset of winter-like conditions, even though it is officially more than a month away, drew me out to explore the former Dover Township today, especially in the area between Chatham, St. Clair NWA, Mitchell's Bay and the Bear Creek area. In past winters, this area has been known to harbour a dozen or more Snowy Owls in the winter. I was hoping to find my first Snowy Owl of the season, hence my new header for this blog.

Although most people consider Snowy Owls to be a winter time phenomenon, if the birds are abundant but not able to find adequate food sources farther north, the weather can drive them to this area much earlier. For example there are records at Rondeau Provincial Park as early as October 31.

It was close to record cold and breezy and there was some white stuff, but no Snowy Owl to be seen. However the brisk winds usually cause them to sit on the ground and flatten themselves quite a bit, to escape the worst of the wind. Given all of the corn stubble around, an owl could hunker down and be missed quite easily.

I did see other white things, including snow flakes. But of greater interest was a large number of Tundra Swans, recently arrived in the area.

There were several flocks scattered between Pain Court and St. Clair NWA. I estimated at least 1500, some of which were fairly close to the road. There were birds coming and going almost constantly, so it was hard to get a true estimate.

 There were a few young-of-the-year birds, not surprisingly, looking quite gray by comparison to the white adults.

There were at least three Snow Geese, white phase, although since I saw them from a distance in flight only, I couldn't be absolutely sure that they weren't the much rarer Ross's Geese. I find that Snow Geese more often than not, are associated with flocks of Canada Geese, whereas Ross's Geese can be found with either Canada Geese or Tundra Swans. There were no Canada Geese in the vicinity of the swans. Then again, many birds that are reported as Ross's Geese are often hybrids between Ross's and Snows. I didn't get any photos of them, but it would be worthwhile to keep an eye open for them again.

I covered a lot of back roads. I did see a handful of Snow Buntings on the wing, the first of the season for me, but again not surprising considering the cold, wind and snow flurries.

A Great Blue Heron was hanging out at the edge of a partially frozen canal, out of the wind and in the sun.

A small group of Hooded Mergansers were winding their way carefully along the brushy edge of another canal.

But no Snowy Owls to be seen......maybe next time. In the meantime, it is nice to see such a large group of Tundra Swans back!

Mostly birds on the move

Southern Chatham-Kent, especially Rondeau, has been worth spending some time at. Not because of the weather, since it has been overcast, windy and rainy for much of the last few days, but this is a time to catch up with some mid-autumn migrants.

Last Friday there was a bit of sun, and some brisk north to northeast winds. Perfect for Golden Eagles, I thought, so I spent some time in the campground of Rondeau, which is now closed to camping until next April. There is lots of good views of the sky, and I had seen Golden Eagles from this location before, but not today. The only eagle I got was this immature Bald Eagle. I later found out that during the hawkwatch at Hawk Cliff farther east that day, they had 43 Golden Eagles go by! Hopefully some will still make their way by Rondeau.

I was surprised at how little raptor action there was, but I was kept busy with a few other species. American Robins were numerous, feeding on the abundant crop of Red Cedar berries.

They frequently came to a puddle on the road for a sip of water.

 At times, they were sharing the puddle with Cedar Waxwings.

 Pileated Woodpeckers are not normally found in the open campground, but presumably since the camping season is over....why not? There was a pair busily digging in a willow tree for some nourishment.

 Both Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets are quite common, but hard to photograph. This Ruby-crown paused just long enough this time.

 A few Rusty Blackbirds were also making use of the puddles.

 And what would a campground be without a Raccoon? This fellow was looking a little winsome, since his normal source of food was gone until next spring.

On Saturday morning, I met up with Steve Charbonneau and Blake Mann for a couple of hours at daybreak at the Dog Beach access, scanning for waterbirds going by. It was very overcast and quite windy, but at least the brisk east wind off the slightly warmer water kept the temperature at about 9C, not the 3C it was when I left home. Birds were fairly plentiful, but hard to photograph under such dark and windy conditions, especially since most of the birds were out beyond good camera range. We did get a few loons, and all three scoter species, along with a few other ducks. Two Long-tailed Ducks flew by, but I only got one barely decent record shot.

 There were several small groups of Red-breasted Mergansers zipping by.

A couple of Bald Eagles came by....the bland sky made it challenging.

Several flocks of Sanderling as well as a few Dunlin flew by, with some of them landing briefly on the shoreline for a snack.

A bit of time was spent later along both the South Point Trail as well as the campground, but with the wind, birds were not abundant. On the way home that day I decided to check out the Erieau pier area, since the east winds were favourable to provide shelter on the west side of the pier. It would be a good time for a Purple Sandpiper or Red Phalarope to show up. At least one Purple Sandpiper was seen heading that way a few days ago, but neither the sandpiper nor the phalarope were noted on Saturday. I only got 4 Dunlin at the edge of the pier. This image has been cropped, but I didn't crop the feathers on the bird's forehead....it was like that already!

Today was cloudy to begin with, but the winds were moderate from the north, and there was a promise of some sunshine as the day went on. I decided to set up along one of the open road areas near the Morpeth Cliffs, hoping that raptors on the move would be blown down close to the lake shore and follow it along. Turns out it was a good decision. Over the course of almost three hours, I ended up with eight raptor species (including Turkey Vulture....technically not a raptor, but it migrates along with them) plus the two Sadler brothers and a flock of about 15 Tundra Swans that appeared to have just arrived from points farther north. Highlights included Peregrine Falcon, Red-shouldered Hawk and lots of eagles! In fact of the 160+ birds I noted passing by, I got 13 Bald Eagles and 6 Goldens! A lot of the raptors were moving quickly, or at quite a distance, which made getting decent photos difficult. I would guess that the two Golden Eagles below were at least one kilometre away, perhaps two. So some were at least greatly cropped record shots.

Cooper's Hawk

Golden Eagle (subadult)

Golden Eagle (juvenile)

Red-shouldered Hawk

Things were quietening down by around 2:30 so I decided to check out the Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons on the way home. There was the usual complement of Canada Geese, a couple of Cackling Geese, Snow Goose, some more Tundra Swans, Norther Shoveler, etc.
And for anyone planning to drop in there, some construction activity is going on, so part of the northern lagoon area was inaccessible.

Rear view of Snow Goose (blue phase)

Pond Pelican

At around 5 p.m. this afternoon I noted a Steve Charbonneau post on ebird about an American White Pelican hanging out at McGeachy Pond, just outside of Erieau. It had been reported a bit earlier to Steve by Dana Cofell. Although it was a dull, heavy overcast day with the threat of rain, I decided there was time to head out and see it, even if I didn't get any photos. It might be gone by tomorrow!

McGeachy Pond typically has one or two big white birds present throughout the year when it isn't frozen: Mute Swan. My initial scan of the pond showed these. But a large white bird was resting on a muskrat house with its back to me, and it wasn't apparent first what it was in the distance and dull light. It didn't help that it had its head down and its back to me. It could have easily been passed off as a Mute Swan.

Taken with Canon 5D3, Canon 500mm II lens and 1.4X converter

It eventually stuck its head up and looked around, giving a decent view. It was very late on a very dull overcast day and the rain was beginning. I had to turn the camera's ISO up to 6400 to get this photo. In film days, one hardly ever went above 200 ISO unless one was satisfied with a poor quality record shot. Digital photography has made photos like these possible at unreal ISO settings!