An interesting twist to the Paxton's Bush Great Horned Owls

The pair of Great Horned Owls in Paxton's Bush, on the northern edge of the city of Chatham, has had quite a following over the years. Nesting season in particular has had people far and wide out to view them. For example back in 2013, they nested low down in a cavity created by a broken branch of a Black Cherry tree, and people came from as far away as Toronto to photograph them. Here is a photo I took at the time.

They only used that nest for one season. I guess it was too accessible for the large number of people coming to admire them, so the adults moved to a more remote part of the woodlot and in a higher tree stub. Then a couple of years ago, they moved again, closer to the south side of the woodlot. This is a photo of last year's owlets peeking over the top of the nesting stub.

 They were at it again in the same place this year, but not really all that visible yet. This next photo is one I took a few days ago, and the only way to determine that it was occupied by the owls was by looking carefully at this little slash opening near the top of the stub. You can see a few barred feathers of the adult either incubating or tending the young.

I remember commenting to Marie on our visit there last week that the tree stub looked very fragile, and wondered how much longer it would be useful.

We got the answer on Sunday. It was very windy with wind speeds reported at one point as 60 km/hr with gusts in excess of 80 km/hr, and the tree stub came crashing down. This next photo is what it looked like today.

A closer look showed some of the nest contents. The first photo shows some feathers of an American Crow which had become a meal. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the nest in the cherry tree above had a few crow feathers clinging to the edge of the broken branch cavity. There is no shortage of crows to feast on!

 Right close by was this little rodent, which quite possibly had been delivered to the young owlets before the nest tree came crashing down. The meal went untouched, at least by the owlets. Presumably it will be feasted on by various invertebrates over the next few weeks including maggots (the larvae of flies) and beetles.

Although the destruction of this nest could have had a tragic ending, the quick action of some neighbours has increased the success of the nest considerably. With the help of staff from the Bluewater Centre for Raptor Rehabilitation in Lambton County and others, the youngsters which were approximately two weeks old, were checked over for any injuries, then kept warm until a new nest could be installed later that day.  This next photo shows the new nest, a little higher up and in a nearby tree, a Silver Maple, that is far better condition. The laundry basket is partially filled with pine needles and anchored by two by fours so that it looks fairly sturdy. Apparently while this was going on, the adults were in a nearby tree keeping watch, but never made any attempt at protecting the young or harassing the humans. And shortly after the installation was complete and the owlets deposited in the nest, the female came back. I took this photo today, and it is a lot easier to see the adult on the nest than the previous nest stub which was far too deep. It will be quite entertaining, hopefully, as the owlets grow and become much more visible before they fledge, so stay tuned for more photos as this unfolds.

 And of course the other member of the pair is typically perched fairly high up in a nearby tree, ensuring that the local American Crows and Cooper's Hawks don't become too much of a menace.

A bit more background on this story can be found on this link to The Chatham Voice.

Harbingers of Spring

It is finally spring. Not that here in southwestern Ontario we really had a lot of winter to complain about. I guess the most we could complain about was that it wasn't really winter, and it wasn't really spring. Perhaps this past winter will be the new normal.

Regardless, spring has officially been here for a few days now, and it is more and more like it, so is fun to get out to see the hints of things that we associate with spring. Of course some of our favourite natural areas to visit are closed due to the COVID-19 issues, but with care there are still places to check out. Maybe even some of the places that sometimes get ignored more than they should, will experience a little more love and attention from us. The challenge is to find places that aren't getting too much attention so that it is hard to practice social distancing.

I have managed to get out a few times over the last week or so, and I think been fairly successful in maintaining that social distance.

A few days ago I was at St. Clair NWA. Over the course of the time I was there, 3-4 other people were there, but we kept a safe distance. While I was on the lookout for any and all birds I could find, my target species was a Eurasian Wigeon that Blake had seen well out from the tower earlier in the day. Shortly after I started out from the parking lot, several Sandhill Cranes were flying about, mostly in pairs.

 I got to the tower, and 'scoped all the open patches of water I could see. There were lots of American Wigeon and other puddle duck types, but no sign of the Eurasian. I waited, and kept scanning, but no sign of it. After awhile, Kit came along and together we kept looking. And then I spotted it emerging from behind a wall of cattails. It was a long way off, and 'scope views were all we could expect. I decided to try some photos. This one is one of the better ones, and the combination of camera plus lens plus converter, and then cropped heavily to about the equivalent of 80X, shows the rather unimpressive result. But at least it is identifiable.

After I left the NWA, I checked a couple of nearby fields, hoping for some more photo ops of the Sandhill Cranes. I was not disappointed.

They were working their way along the edge of the field towards the road, and then decided to cross it. I guess they were trying to emulate a chicken? They made it successfully, unlike numerous 'coons and 'possums that have left their carcasses scattered along many roadsides

Next I headed towards the Tilbury Sewage Lagoons, but other than a few Canada Geese, there wasn't much to see, so I drove to the mouth of the Thames River. There were thousands of gulls! The highlight was this nice adult Lesser Black-backed Gull, which I was able to photograph right from the vehicle. Social distancing was not an issue.

 Most of the gulls were flying and as you can see, the sky wasn't the greatest background. This adult Ring-billed Gull was resting on the pier quite close by, so I 'shot' it. We take them for granted due to their abundance, but I think even a ring-bill in fresh breeding plumage is quite attractive.

There were several sub-adult Bald Eagles near the river mouth, but not too close.

I made a visit to Rondeau the day before it, and all provincial parks, were officially closed due to the virus. I was out mainly for a long walk, but got this photo of a female Wood Duck. The male was nearby but not in a photographable spot.

The new Bald Eagle nest that is just barely visible from the South Point Trail had a white head showing, so they are officially incubating. And along one of the trails near a slough, I saw my first of the year Northern Ribbon Snake.

I swung by the Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons on the way home that day, and got this quite distant shot of the Greater White-fronted Goose that has been hanging around.

Yesterday was one of the nicest days we've hand for weeks, maybe months. Sunny, temperatures approaching 12C or more, and light wind. I headed out to Clear Creek Forest Provincial Park. Although it is officially closed like all Ontario Provincial Parks, there are no staff or facilities, so with care I ventured out. There were a couple of other vehicles parked along the road where the one trail is, so I chose a part of the park where there wasn't anyone at all around the old gravel pits. I came across a pair of Eastern Bluebirds, which cooperated nicely, although there often were a few branches from nearby shrubs obscuring the view.

I saw several Mourning Cloak butterflies, but they were very skittish and I only got a couple of distant shots, and not with the angle of light I would have liked.

Along one of the creeks traversing this part of the park was this next view. There are a lot of deer in this provincial park, and while hunting is not permitted, I did see a makeshift blind not far away. This carcass had been picked clean.

My final stop for the day yesterday was an out-of-the way woodlot that I check out a few times each year. As is always the case, I have never seen anyone else there other than the time I led a spring nature walk there several years ago.

Shortly after I first entered the woods, I noticed a large raccoon scampering off through some brush. No big surprise really as I thought I had spooked it, but then I noticed something else, even larger, a little way behind. It stopped briefly and I realized it was an Eastern Coyote. I got a couple of shots, shown here. Not the greatest, as both I and the camera had difficulty nailing the focus due to the many shrubs in the way. But you take what you get.

It soon realized I was there, and so after a few seconds it took off in the opposite direction. I noticed it bounded away in a rather odd manner, and I seemed to notice that one of its front legs was either injured or even partially missing.

I wandered through the woods for another hour or so, and although I never saw the coyote again, it probably saw me. There weren't many birds to see, but I did manage to see a couple of Eastern Comma butterflies, and one eventually cooperated with a nice view.

Some greenery was emerging from the leaf litter. I noticed a few Wild Leeks starting to show.

Mega bird rarities of the Rondeau checklist area

Back to the rare birds series, and here is hoping that the production of this blog post is a little smoother and less problematic than the previous post! Nonetheless, I need to do a bit of revising since some of my birding friends have pointed out some things that I should have considered in my first version. Thanks, guys!

With 365 species of birds on the Rondeau checklist, there are some birds that are extremely rare, with maybe only one or two appearances in spite of the intensity of birding there over the past century or more. There are some species that I just don't have any photos of that fit into this mega rarity category, including species such as Passenger Pigeon or Eskimo Curlew, obviously, but also others that are not extinct and would include White-collared Swift, Thick-billed Murre, Northern Gannet and Northern Wheatear. The swift was seen by a single observer. The murre and the gannet were way before my time at Rondeau, and when the Wheatear showed up, I was out in southern Alberta. Maybe someday I will get have the privilege of seeing these species and get photos as well.

But here are 17 species that I would place in the mega rarity category that I do have photos of. Some of them will appear near the end, in what I consider a "mega-mega rarity" category due to their very unexpected presence. A quick note here: as often as possible I have included photos of the birds actually seen at Rondeau, but in a few cases, which will be noted, they were taken elsewhere.

This first photo is of a Cinnamon Teal. There are about three records for the Rondeau area, and two of them are from birds that were shot during the autumn waterfowl hunt. Identification of them in the autumn is much more challenging, and it is possible that there are records that have been missed. There has been only one record of this species in the spring breeding plumage, in the 1990s. The photo here was taken in southern Saskatchewan in July, 2018, with a single bird surrounded by Wilson's Phalaropes.

There have been a few, scattered records of this next species, Glossy Ibis. In fact one of my earlier birding memories at Rondeau was seeing 4 of these out along the South Beach while on a birding trip with the park staff, back in about 1966. The bird shown here was taken in May, 2019, at the Keith McLean Conservation Lands just outside the park.

Lark Bunting, shown next, has only been recorded on 2-3 occasions. I have not seen this species in the Rondeau checklist area, but did see one in Essex a few years ago. This photo was taken in July, 2018, near Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan.

 Little Blue Herons show up in Ontario from time to time. However there have been very few records for the Rondeau area, less than half a dozen. The one below showed up along the causeway just outside the park in late August, 1982 and stayed around for a little more than a week. There have been a few records since, usually in late summer, but nothing that I have come across since 2000, where one was seen from August 26 until September 14, during which time it was reported by numerous birders.

 There have been a few records of this next species, Sabine's Gull but it is often very hard to come by. Records across Ontario are not plentiful, but with all of the waterbirds that come through Rondeau, it is a bit surprising that we only had the first record in November, 2007 following some stormy weather. I didn't see my first one in the Rondeau area until 2015, shown below. It was seen in the Erieau area, and the south beach of Rondeau is in the distant background here.

This next species, Sage Thrasher, could almost be considered in the mega-mega category. Prior to this one that occurred in April, 1981, I believe there had only been one accepted record for Ontario. I discovered this bird well out along the Marsh Road while I was trying to track down a Louisiana Heron. I did not immediately identify this bird, and even after I got several far more experienced birders to check it out, (e.g. the late Norm Chesterfield, Alan Wormington) and we all scratched our heads, did we decide it was a Sage Thrasher. The bird stayed around for at least three weeks along the southern half of the Marsh Trail, and since it was the first real opportunity for Ontario birders (and many birders beyond Ontario) had a chance to see it, there were probably well over a thousand people who trekked out to look for it. It isn't the greatest photo as it has been scanned from a slide. Due to its rarity and celebrity status, I didn't want to venture too close and risk scaring it. Of course the photo equipment I had at the time was not as high a quality as I eventually acquired. The likes of the late Dennis Rupert and Jim Flynn, both expert photographers with high end equipment, got better photos. An interesting little side story to this bird record is that because of its fairly extended presence, about a month later I had the opportunity to spend an hour or so birding along the Tuliptree Trail with none other than Roger Tory Peterson and one other Ontario birder.

 While the bird in the previous photo was the second Ontario record, Chatham-Kent, and specifically Rondeau, was to enjoy the presence of other Sage Thrashers over the next few years. This next photo was taken at the southern end of Rondeau in the early summer of 1985, of a bird that was only present as far as we know, for a couple of days. A few years later, a bird showed up in the winter in the Wallaceburg area. And in 2008, I had one on the Christmas Bird Count out on the Marsh Trail! I think I can safely say that I am the only one who has seen 4 Sage Thrashers in Chatham-Kent.

Members of the Flycatcher family are well known for their sometimes erratic migration, and they can show up most often in the late summer. Our first record for this next one, a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, was in 1987 not far from Blenheim. Another record was in the early 2000s just outside of Rondeau, which is the bird that I saw briefly. The bird shown here is of a nice adult which I photographed in southwestern Missouri in 2009, a place where they are much more likely to be seen than in southern Ontario.

There have been a handful of records for Yellow-crowned Night-Heron in the Rondeau area, but for some reason, none in the last two decades. This first photo shows an adult that appeared along a slough on the Tuliptree Trail in May of 1990 and was seen by at least a few folks.

 This next one is a photo of an immature bird that spent some time in a slough just south of Gardiner Avenue and was seen by many over the course of the day or so it remained.

 Western Grebe is a species that for some reason is not often encountered in the Rondeau area. In fact this is the only record, and it occurred off the south beach of Rondeau in mid June of 2013. I trekked out the South Beach to get this photo. It was also seen by a few birders from Erieau, but only with 'scope views. This species likely passes through on rare occasion but is just missed, as it is seen with more frequency at the eastern end of Lake Erie and the western end of Lake Ontario.

The next few bird records are what I would consider to be "Mega-mega" rarities, although it is a personal choice as some of them aren't really any more rare than ones in the first part of this post.

There are relatively few records of Black Skimmer anywhere in Ontario. I believe there are no more than three, including the one shown here. It was present at Erieau and the south beach of Rondeau for several days in September of 1981. I think the only previous Ontario record was a flyby along Lake Ontario, and only seen by one or two birders. The bird here was seen by many especially since one could drive up to the edge of the pier and 'peer' across the channel to see it surrounded by various gulls.

There is only one or maybe two records for Brown Pelican at Rondeau. I have not seen it in the Rondeau checklist area, although the one shown here I photographed in Chatham-Kent at Wheatley harbour in late August, 2013.

There is one record for Burrowing Owl, a bird which showed up at the McGeachy Pond area back in late June of 1977. It was around for a couple of weeks. I saw the bird, but did not get any photos. The photo shown here is one I took at Grasslands National Park, in southern Saskatchewan, in June of 1986.

 The following dead specimen is of Cassin's Kingbird. I found it along the southeast beach in late November of 2013. Although it is now on the park's checklist, no one can count it since it was already dead when discovered. As mentioned previously, members of the flycatcher group are known for showing up well out of their range following, presumably, a mis-direction in their migration. I seem to recall that this bird was only the second or third record for Ontario. I think there has been one since.

 Still on the mis-directed theme associated with flycatchers, this next one fits as well. It is a Say's Phoebe, a western species found in late September of 2018, in a farm yard a bit north of Erieau. Interestingly this was the second one of this species for the Rondeau area, and credit goes to the Burks, Jim and Keith, who found both of them. The first one was in another farm setting only a couple of kilometers or so east of this one. I only got some distant photos of the first one, so will use photos of this second sighting which turned out much better. Way to go guys!

I'm not sure how many Western Tanagers have been discovered in southern Ontario, but they are very few and far between. The one shown here occurred at the southern end of Lakeshore Road at Rondeau in mid-May of 2011. Fortunately it was in prime time for many birders, so although it didn't stay around for a long time, it was seen by a fair number of birders.

During the general mid-summer lull of birding, this next one was discovered in very early July of 2012. It is a Magnificent Frigatebird, and it was present in the Rondeau area for a few days. The best views were from a boat off shore of the South Beach (thanks Ric & Anne!) as it perched at the top of an Eastern Cottonwood tree for several hours. It was apparently first seen a few kilometres east of Rondeau during some Canada Day celebrations the day before. There have been a very few records of this species showing up briefly in southern Ontario in the years before and after this record. It is likely that such birds got caught up in some severe hurricane type storms that arrived from the south and got blown well north of their normal more tropical range.

Last, and certainly not least, of the Mega-mega rarities is this next one: Great Kiskadee. It is not a species known for meandering beyond their normal range of the extreme southwestern USA and Mexico and even farther south. So for this one to show up and cooperate/tease/tantalize thousands of birders for a week to ten days at a time, off and on from early September until early December of 2018, was nothing short of phenomenal. It is the first Canadian record, and since it spent its entire known time at Rondeau in the north end, including the beginning of the Marsh Trail, and the southern end of the campground, birders who put in a bit of time were guaranteed to have satisfying to excellent, if not crippling, views.

There will be a couple of articles in an upcoming issue of Ontario Birds, the official publication of the Ontario Field Ornithologists, so for any member of OFO, be on the lookout for it. One article has been written by Laura Rainbow Dragon, the finder of this incredible bird, while I have written a related article discussing a bit of background on this species and some extralimital records.

There are a few other species which I would love to feature as part of this series, including Tropical Kingbird, Black Rail, Lazuli Bunting, Gyrfalcon, Bell's Vireo, Bewick's Wren, Swainson's Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Painted Bunting, etc. but I have yet to get photos of them. Perhaps in a future post if I am so fortunate to photograph them!

If you 'write' it, will they come? (revised)

First of all, apologies for the way the initial version of this post behaved. I had several people contact me to say that only one of the 15 images would show. I don't know the finer points of how this site works. In more than 460 posts, I have never had this happen before that I am aware of. When I view it on my screen, it seems all is well, but obviously that isn't good enough!

So I will try it again.......



This post will further delay the series on the rare birds of Rondeau. But that is due to the presence of one of those rarities that I featured on one of those posts earlier in the series. Did mentioning it in one of those previous posts have something to do with its current presence? If so, perhaps a few more of those rarities will show up sooner rather than later! Probably not, but one can always hope.

The rare species I am featuring in this post is none other than Purple Sandpiper. It was a couple of days ago, on Sunday, that a report came in from Craig and Katie who had ventured out the South Beach of Rondeau and discovered a Purple Sandpiper feeding along the shore of the south end of the bay/marsh area. Steve and Blake were already in the park and decided to make the trek to look for it. Blake described some of that in his subsequent post, which you can read at this link.

I was not able to get out that day, but yesterday (Monday) looked like a decent day weather wise, and I had the time, so I decided to go. I knew with all of the potential habitat the bird might stick around in the same place or it might not. Such are the risks of birding.

So off I went. I got to the South Beach and the weather confirmed my suspicions: it would be doable, but a challenge. The temperature inland was a balmy 12C or more, but with the quite brisk wind coming off the cold water of the lake at 35-40 km/hr, it was more like 3C. The lake was riled up, so no walking along the firmer sand along the lake side of the beach, just the softer sand a bit inland. There was the usual series of Phragmites stands, shrubby thickets and grape vine tangles to contend with. Fortunately there was wide open space in between these obstacles, and after about three kilometres of these conditions, I arrived at where the bird had been seen on Sunday.

There is a lot of shoreline habitat, but no bird was to be seen. I kept on going towards Erieau hoping the bird was still around, and after awhile, I caught a glimpse of it up ahead. At this point I was probably less than 250 metres from the last wooded part along the South Beach, right across from Erieau and which some folks refer to as Gull Island. It isn't really an island, except for when the lake's wave action breaches and carves out a channel between the lake and the bay.

I got a little closer, and knowing the temperament of the species, I decided to squat down and wait. It started coming my way, probing and feeding on the washed-up vegetation on the more sheltered bay side of the South Beach.

Although it always looked alert, in coming towards me it didn't seem to be the least bit concerned by my presence at all. At one point it came so close, probably no more that about 2 metres of me, that I couldn't get the entire bird in my camera's field of view so I had to reduce the focal length of the zoom lens!

The bird was more than cooperative. It was active all the time, so some of the photos were not as in focus as I would have liked. But of the more than 125 photos I took over the ~35 minutes I spent with this bird, some were definitely keepers. Here are a few:

It was regularly tugging away at a bit of vegetation or something. This next photo shows a stem of some sort, with a couple of small snail shells clinging to it, which was no doubt the reason the bird grabbed on to it.

A question that most of us had was: where did this bird come from? Did it just arrive on spring migration, or was the winter we had, or rather did not have, mild enough and with enough shoreline habitat available to cause it to linger rather than fly off to the southern east coast? I had been out to about this point covering my territory for the Christmas Bird Count last mid-December, and although the habitat was good then, there was no sign of this bird. But there had been an abundance of shoreline and similar habitat around the bay, and most of it was inaccessible, so shorebirds of various species could have been present and just not seen. A Purple Sandpiper had been seen elsewhere around the bay in very early December, so perhaps it just moved out of sight for the next few months. As mentioned in a previous post this past CBC was the first time in about two decades when we did not get any shorebirds at all.

After a delightful time with this relatively rare shorebird, I headed back. That is the western edge of the Rondeau forest way off in the background, about 3 kilometres away.