Birding in the lull between the storms

As one of our favourite bloggers would know well, the weather of the last weekend was kind of challenging for even getting out of the house, let alone birding. So the last couple of days was a relief, just before the next cold and snowy weather arrives.

The Thames River is quite iced over now, and that means it is time to check the warm water outlet of the water treatment plant, just downstream from the Keil Drive bridge at the west side of Chatham. Sure enough, there was an opening in the ice of about 10 metres by 50 metres, with lots of ducks on the ice around it, or in the water. When it is about the only open water anywhere along the river, occasionally other ducks will stop in, such as Wood Duck, any of the three mergansers, Redhead, Ring-necked Duck or Green-winged Teal. I've even had an immature Black-crowned Night-Heron there. But on this day, it was mostly Mallards, with a few Am Black Ducks, and a gaggle of geese. The only other species of waterfowl was a Northern Shoveler.

 The ducks must have been getting hungry. You don't often see Mallards going after fish, but I guess they will snack on whatever comes along. The challenge is to keep it once you catch it. This female Mallard caught it and got chased out of the water by another couple of Mallards. Once on the ice, there were several others waiting to pick up the chase. I lost track how many times this fish changed beaks before getting eaten.

 The shoveler was often partly obscured when it had the side profile I wanted.

Northern Shoveler, upper right

 Another waterbird was in the area. This female Belted Kingfisher was reluctant to leave the area of open water, not surprisingly, but never landed less than about 50 metres away from me, so this is a greatly cropped photo.

There are still a handful of ducks at Erieau, but with some construction going on where the fish tugs are, they were seldom very close.

Canvasback

All of the snow we've had lately means the plowing of roads, resulting in some nice scrapes in the grass right alongside the road. This is quite attractive to small birds. It was not unusual to see a dozen or more Dark-eyed Juncos mixed with Am Tree Sparrows and a few other species, including Song Sparrow, Fox Sparrow and quite a few Chipping Sparrows. Chippies are certainly not common winter inhabitants, and some winters it is difficult to find even a single one. The roadsides between Rondeau Prov Park and Morpeth were definitely the place to be looking for them in the last day or so. As many as 13 were seen on one occasion. I never saw any more than 6, but anytime a vehicle went by, and especially a snow plow, the birds scattered quickly and were sometimes slow to return to the road side.

Rough-legged Hawks have been few and far between for the winter so far. But this last storm has brought a few into the area. I was following one along the road for a little ways, hoping to get a good flight shot showing its telltale white banded tail and black wrist spots. I got a flight shot, but it was not worth keeping. The bird landed at the top of a White Pine, and I got this photo. It isn't all that different looking than any other large buteo type hawk in this situation and pose.

 Fortunately as it took flight, it showed the typical underwing pattern.

Not far off was this large flock of Wild Turkeys. Turkeys have been a little hard to pick out on the landscape these last few weeks, with no snow cover. This flock was about half a kilometre from the road, and without the snow, I might have missed them altogether. It totalled at least 35 birds, about half of them on one side of the wide hedgerow and half on the other, with an unknown number in the hedgerow itself.

A Ph. D. student from Trent University is using eBird data to assess the usefulness of eBird posts in determining the overall population size in Ontario. It is nice to be able to contribute a bit of data for the research.

As I was approaching Blenheim, I noticed first one, and then another, Turkey Vultures soaring. They weren't high up, but both were moving towards the southwest, probably heading to their over night roost. I got a couple of quick shots, of a black bird against a very bright grayish-white sky....certainly not the ideal conditions for photographing them.

Winter gulls are often worth looking through. There haven't been many along the lake these last few weeks, but landfills and the immediate vicinity often attracts them. The Blenheim Landfill is handy for this purpose, and a couple of days ago when I was driving by there was a good sized flock in a field nearby. They weren't all that close to the road, but I managed to scan through the myriad Herring Gulls and a surprising number of Great Black-backed Gulls to find a couple of less usual species. There was at least one Lesser Black-backed Gull, which I did not get a photo of, and at least one adult Glaucous Gull, which I was more successful at. Before I was able to check the flock more intensively something spooked the gulls and they all took to flight, landing in the same field but a lot farther back.

Glaucous Gull facing, just right of centre

Yesterday birders had several Glaucous Gulls here in the mid-day period. I swung by there about three hours later, but there was not a gull to be seen. That's the problem looking for things that have wings :-).