Late winter explorations and hints of spring

 Spring is teasing us a bit more lately. I've been out exploring a few places around Chatham-Kent, intermixed with things going on at the home front.

I often have stopped in at the warm water outlet along the Thames River right at the downstream side of Chatham. The cold weather had kept the opening in the ice quite small up until a few days ago. There has been a periodic change of water bird species, but not a lot of diversity this late in the season. One of the things I always look forward to in a cold winter is the great photo ops of even some of the more regular species.

Of course the ubiquitous Mallard is the most abundant....

...and the female Bufflehead continued for awhile.

The numbers of Redhead has varied from 1-10.

Canada Geese are always somewhere around Chatham in winter, numbering in the several hundreds. There seems to be a constant movement of small groups from one location to another, and this provides some great photo ops.

Pied-billed Grebes are seldom very common in winter, but this one has persisted for weeks now.

With the recent warm spell and moderate rainfall, the Thames River drainage has resulted in a significant change. The once frozen over Thames River is completely open, with only a few scattered bits of ice clinging to the shoreline. Therefore waterbirds are widely scattered, and unless there is a prolonged cold spell (I hope not!!) that will put an end to photography at this location.

Hints of spring are showing up on the landscape. Killdeer have been reported in various locations over the past week or two. Red-winged Blackbirds are always a good sign, although given their general abundance over the next few weeks, will cease to be as much of a novelty as they are now. I saw more than a dozen along a shrubby corridor not far from one of the larger marshes in Chatham-Kent a few days ago.

American Goldfinches were frolicking in a nearby cedar hedge. Some of them were looking a bit more colourful than they were a few weeks ago. They are a far cry from their vivid breeding plumage, but any change is a nice hint of what is to come.

A quick check of a Wood Duck box at St. Clair NWA resulted in seeing the resident Eastern Screech Owl show itself.

 Horned Larks are fairly abundant, scattered far and wide along roadsides and fields.

I stopped in at the cemetery along Owen Road, where there are numerous cedars amongst the hardwoods. A Red-breasted Nuthatch, not an abundant species this winter, was there to greet me and posed politely for me.

I've only been to Rondeau on a couple of occasions lately. House Finches are fairly common in certain localities.

But the birds can be quite few and far between at this stage of the winter. On my most recent visit, yesterday, I wanted to take advantage of trekking along the west South Point Trail. Trails in general have been tricky lately, as the snow packed surfaces have turned into very uneven ice, making hiking a bit of a challenge. So with the recent mild weather and rain, a lot of the ice was gone, and the walk to the south end of the park was quite enjoyable, although the birds were few. The ice formations along the lake can be interesting and photogenic.

A bit of milder weather and the brisk winds that March is known for will spell the end of these types of features in fairly short order. There were a few open water spots barely visible with the binoculars, and a few rafts of waterfowl were scattered about, mostly scaup and Redhead, along with some Common Mergansers. But the bird highlight was to see at least 6 Bald Eagles perched on some of the ice mounds well out in the lake, while two more, both adults, soared overhead.

FYI, I am planning a short series featuring some changes in the birds of Chatham-Kent over the last century or more. I have an unpublished manuscript by A. A. Wood, entitled The Birds of Kent County, Ontario, which he prepared back in the 1940s. It was based on his research of notes and articles from birders over the previous 75 years. In reading some of the descriptions, I found it interesting to compare with today. So stay tuned!

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Bison Birds

The American Bison was historically called buffalo. That is a misnomer, as buffalo are actually old world species, but when European explorers first arrived to North America and encountered these huge animals, they named them something that they were familiar with.

 Bison once roamed in the millions, mostly across the wide open plains of middle and western North America. There is some historical record of them even in extreme southwestern Ontario, in the vicinity of what is now the Windsor area, as there were hundreds of hectares of tallgrass prairie before settlement. But that is the topic for another post.

Bison were well adapted to the cold, fierce winters of the mid-western part of the continent. Their winter coats were densely hairy, as this image shows, with the front end of the animal being the most densely hairy.

This was incredibly useful when facing the wind, which they typically did, to withstand the cold.

After the winter weather, they lost much of the dense hair towards the back of their bodies as shown next. Even so, the front end of the animal still retained a lot of dense hair. 

 Bison were always known to roam widely. The huge herds would have a home range of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres or more of open grassland. This next photo shows a single bull bison on a huge grassland at Grasslands National Park in extreme southern Saskatchewan. At the time I took this photo, in July, the bulls are usually well away from the cows and calves.

 It was said by early explorers that bison always moved into the wind as they were foraging, especially during the more inclement weather. This resulted in their long-range movements, and was advantageous in that a large herd of bison, numbering in the thousands, would eat off much of the short-grass prairie, but by keeping on the move, they would find new grasslands and give the areas they moved from, a chance to regenerate in time for a following season. Sometimes they would feed intensively on areas that had burned off via a prairie fire, and was regenerating with lots of tender fresh, green fodder.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, OK

And that brings us to the Bison bird.

Most birds build their own nest, lay their eggs in it and raise their young.  This next photo shows a typical eastern grassland type bird nest. It is that of a Song Sparrow, and at the time of taking this photograph, it did not have a cowbird egg in it.

 But the Bison bird is a species that depends on following Bison, for the insects they disturb by their hooves during their movements as well as the seeds they break off of the grasses they are moving through. So the birds must follow the movements of these herds of Bison, and don't stay in one place for several weeks while they build a nest, lay eggs and feed the young to the point of the next generation being able to fend for themselves. No, these Bison Birds adapted so as to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, with the new host raising the young of the Bison bird.

As time went on, Bison herds diminished considerably, and were at great risk due to the loss of foraging and roaming habitat due to settlement as well as the slaughter of millions of animals for their hides, or just for what was considered 'sport'. Large areas of the Bison's former habitat was turned into grazing lands for other animals, such as beef cattle. Probably the most best known breed at one point was the Texas Longhorn, but other breeds were eventually added. Hence the likely reason for the current name of this bird species. Texas Longhorns were aptly named, and came in various colours. They were the new grazer of the mid-western part of North America, some roaming free and others on large fenced grazing lands.

I'm sure that most readers will have caught on quite early in this post that the bird species I am referring to is none other than the Brown-headed Cowbird. 

male

female

 It is the only North American bird species that demonstrates this 'parasitic' behaviour, much to the dismay of some bird enthusiasts. I admit that I have had mixed feelings over the years, especially when I see a cowbird egg in the nest of a more 'desirable' species such as a Yellow Warbler, Prothontary Warbler, Wood Thrush, or some other species. All three of the aforementioned species have been, or are, considered a Species At Risk. 

Yellow Warbler

Not quite sure if this next image showing the young bird being fed is a cowbird or a young Yellow Warbler. It has some characteristics of being a cowbird, but would be easier to tell a few days after this photo was taken.

  Cowbirds are certainly not at any level of risk. In fact they often can be seen in huge flocks.

 

Presumably when these Bison birds were more or less confined to the wide open spaces of the mid-west, they had fewer potential host species to choose from. But as the eastern forests were cut down and opened up to a more agricultural landscape, these Bison birds adapted and became widespread throughout the east. In fact the cowbird is known to parasitize more than 220 species of birds in this way! As a result of the loss of forests, cowbirds became the dreaded edge species as they would regularly venture into a forest for 100-200 metres, and interior forest bird species nesting within that zone were heavily parasitized. Some ornithologists consider interior forest to be a minimum of 100 metres from any edge, whereas other specialists consider interior forest to be at least 200 metres from an open edge. Currently most forests in southwestern Ontario have been reduced to the extent that there is very little good quality interior forest to prevent cowbirds from entering and impacting the interior breeding bird species. Wood Thrush, now a Species At Risk, is usually an interior forest species, but sometimes can be found near the edges especially when proper interior forest is diminishing.

 This next photo shows an adult cowbird visiting the nest of a Yellow-breasted Chat, an extremely rare breeding bird in Ontario. 

I took this photo in about 1980. This was the first confirmed nesting of the Yellow-breasted Chat at Rondeau, and one of the few in all of Ontario. It was well away from any real forest edge, although a severe windstorm had caused a lot of blow-down which resulted in some shrubby habitat dominated by raspberry. It was great habitat for chats, but cowbirds also made it into the area. Fortunately the young chats in the nest were well along in their development so that if a cowbird laid an egg, it would not hatch before the chats would likely have fledged.

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Water Birds and a Beaver

 Certainly with the limited amount of open water available this time of year, any of it is a major drawing card for birds. Waterfowl in particular, not surprisingly. So I keep checking places like the small patches of open water at water treatment plants and the like.

The warm water outlet for the Chatham water treatment plant, as it enters the Thames River, consistently has several dozen to a couple of hundred water fowl in the immediate area, but they come and go.

A female Bufflehead has been around for several weeks....

...as has at least one, and sometimes two, Common Goldeneye.

Up to 9 Redheads have been present, mostly males, 

but a female or two have been there a bit longer.

Snow Geese are not often seen there, but on one occasion recently there were 14 of them, and showed various plumages varying from pure white, to partial 'blue' phase, to a good solid blue phase.

Mallards are by far the most common, and while they certainly are not rare, they are quite an impressive duck nonetheless. In fact a colleague of mine, who had a Ph. D. and specialized in waterfowl biology mentioned that he thought they were a very strikingly marked duck that never got the adulation they deserved. I agree, and while I like to photograph rare or less common birds, if a common species gives me a good photo op, I will take it.

Even the females are quite attractive in their own way.

A single Pied-billed Grebe continues to hang in there as well.

There are always a few gulls looking for something to snatch away from anyone else.
 

 At the Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons, the open patch of water is getting smaller. But a few ducks are continuing to spend time in the water or on the ice immediately surrounding it. A couple of male Northern Pintail were present for several days....

...but most of the ducks were skittish. As long as you stayed in the vehicle, they were fairly tolerant, but any move to step outside caused most of them to take to the air.

A couple of male Redheads were also there....

...but also decided any movement outside the vehicle was reason to take flight.

Most Mallards were more likely to stay put....

....although a few got up for a little flight once in awhile.

a Mallard returns

 I've been out roaming around the former Dover Twp on several occasions. There is still an occasional Snowy Owl, but most seem to have moved on. Of course with the snowy farm fields, they are definitely a lot harder to spot!

There are still several thousand geese as well as a few swans, especially in the vicinity of St. Clair NWA. Mixed in with the Canada Geese have been a few Greater White-fronted Geese, but I haven't managed to get any photos of them lately. I did get this photo of a single blue phase Snow Goose

.....and snapped a few of the Tundra Swans.

I went to the west end of Rivard Line, just north of St. Clair NWA, where a large-scale water pump continues to keep a bit of water open even in the coldest weather. As is sometimes the case, a Belted Kingfisher can be found, waiting to snatch a minnow from the water. This bird looks to be in fairly good condition, so must have had some success in minnow-catching over the last few weeks.

Oh, and regarding a beaver, I came across this critter one time in late afternoon at the warm water outlet along the Thames. I managed to capture a couple of quick photos before it disappeared under the ice.

Seeing beaver out in broad daylight at any time of year is unusual. Seeing one in winter in broad daylight, and along a stretch of the river within the city limits was a lot more than just unusual, in my opinion. I think this is the first one I have seen anywhere near this location. The population has been expanding in southern Ontario for a few years now.

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