Raptors, a rare egret and swallow and an unfortunate incident at Rondeau Prov Park

 Cattle Egrets are hard to find most years, and earlier this year that held true in Ontario. Even a reliable location in the Mitchell's Bay area where one or more has been present almost annually, did not turn up any this year. But in the last month or two, they have been relatively abundant, having been seen in numerous places across southern and eastern Ontario. While in places like Florida they seem to be attracted to golf courses as well as livestock pastures, one was seen as far north as Smooth Rock Falls, northwest of Cochrane, on a golf course!

It is quite likely that this influx of Cattle Egrets is the result of the strong southerly winds, including hurricanes, that have been a periodic event over the past couple of months.

Here in Chatham-Kent, there have been observations in the vicinity of the Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons, and more recently in a pasture with cattle, a bit north of Erieau. It is possibly the same bird, but no one knows for sure. At any rate, this most recent bird, still present as of yesterday, Nov 16, can often be easily seen from the road, although sometimes it is mixed in with the cattle farther back and hard to find. On occasion it will even venture out of the pasture onto the grassy road allowance, as in the case of the header photo as well as the third one down.

This next one is hardly cropped at all.

I got these photos on one of my trips to Erieau, searching for what ever I could find, but in particular, looking for one of the Cave Swallows that put in an appearance. But the Cave Swallows must have put a tracker on me to avoid me, as while looking wherever they had been seen, it seemed that I missed them by 2-10 minutes, or showed up just after I moved to another spot. Even birders who had traveled a fair distance arrived and saw one almost immediately. At one point I even spent two hours in one spot, where they had been seen 'reliably' about every half hour or so, but without success. Such is birding....

Fortunately I did not need it as a lifer, or even a species for my CK list. I have seen them irregularly on about 4 occasions over the years at either Erieau or Rondeau, including the time at Erieau where I found them roosting on a piling underneath a walkway in the vicinity of the fishing tugs. Here is a photo of that event, back in October of 2010, showing two Cave Swallows.

I decided to give it another try on the following day, and after some watching and waiting, I did see one of them fly by. Swallows are normally quite active in their flight, dipping and diving, but this one seemed to be rather slow and unenthusiastic. Perhaps it was feeling the effects of nothing to eat in the colder than normal weather, with temperatures just hovering a bit above freezing. Surely there were few, if any, insects to feed on.

While at Erieau on the day that I missed the swallows, I did see other things, and got some photos. For example there were at least 4 adult Bald Eagles flying in the vicinity from time to time, asometimes quite actively interacting with each other. I'm not sure whether they were defending their territory or undergoing some type of courtship actions.

Continuing on the topic of raptors, I spent a few hours at a site along the north shore of Lake Erie just west of Rondeau, hoping to catch sight of migrating raptors since the wind was more or less in the right direction. I did see a few, including lots of Red-tailed Hawks.....

...and a few Sharp-shinned Hawks, among others.

There were also a few American Crows on the move. They don't like anything pointed at them, so they quickly move away.

There were also a couple of small groups of Evening Grosbeak. It is another good year for this species to be moving into, or even continuing on and out of southern Ontario. I did not get any photos. They are usually flying low, barely tree top height, and fairly quickly and directly unlike the soaring flight of most of the raptors.

I spent a bit of time at Rondeau on a couple of occasions since my last post. The Eastern Screech Owl seems to have taken up residency in its regular American Beech tree just off of Bennett Ave. If one stays on the road, the bird does not seem to mind, but if you make any move to go off the road and get a closer photo, it will back into the cavity so that it is barely showing. Therefore a long telephoto lens and a heavily cropped photo seems to be the only way to show it. This photo was taken with the equivalent lens of 11X and cropped to about 40X.

 On one of my visits there was a strong east wind blowing. Wave action is imperative in shaping the sand spit, sometimes does so rather dramatically. At this time of year there are typically many species and individuals of water birds on the move. A careful look at this first photo if you click on it to enlarge it, will show a couple of lines of ducks off on the horizon, but very faintly.

On occasion there will be a flock relatively close, such as these Red-breasted Mergansers. It is not uncommon to see several thousand flying by over the course of several hours.

Some gulls, on the other hand, will occasionally be very close to shore or even overhead.

Bonaparte's Gull

And that brings me to the unfortunate incident at Rondeau. 

For anyone hiking anywhere along the southeast beach dunes of the park, you undoubtedly have noticed some changes.

Park staff counted 81 trees that had been cut down. Most were in the 5-15 year old category, but there were at least 6 oaks in the 40-80 year old category. Given the challenging growing conditions on this beach dune system, it takes a lot of energy for trees to grow here.

How did this happen? 

It seems partly due to poor communication between the federal gov't overseeing the Coast Guard, and staff in Ontario Parks. I don't know all the details, but for some reason the crew from the Coast Guard assumed they had permission to come onto provincial park land to clear trees that in their minds, might be interfering with views of the light beacon. The light beacon has been a feature of the southeast part of the park for many decades, as an aid to boaters needing it as a navigational aid after dark. While it is still important to some extent, with all of the satellite stations high in the sky providing accurate location information even down to about 5 metres of accuracy, the light beacon is not nearly as important as it once was. Nonetheless, this crew entered the park and proceeded to cut over 80 trees of various species and sizes. It is possible one or two of the trees may have temporarily interfered with a sight line from out on the water, but it would have been very temporary, and there certainly was no need to cut down any more than two or three at the very most, and even that would have been overkill, literally and figuratively.

The damage has been done, and it will be many years before any of the trees recover, if they do at all. Some will sucker up, especially one or two of the non-native species, but that only compounds the problem.

In discussing this issue with various park staff, they are understandably livid over this, and rightfully so. It seems there isn't anything that can be done at this point, and those piles of tree trunks and branches will be a reminder of this unfortunate incident for years to come, as things deteriorate very slowly in this very dry environment. Hopefully if the Coast Guard needs to step foot on Rondeau Park property at any time in the future they will discuss what they would like to do, in writing, and get proper approvals by Ontario Parks if it is warranted.

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