A birdy blog post

 Time to give some of the birds some profile, since May is well known for peak bird migration.

As usual, most of my outdoor excursions are at Rondeau, with St. Clair NWA and Mitchell's Bay North Shore Trail getting some of my time as well. However May is a more challenging time for me these days, as it was two years ago that my wife and best friend was on a significant decline, resulting in her passing away on May 26. I'm still getting used to the new normal without her :-(

Getting out into some of the places she and I explored have been good, although there are mixed feelings to deal with.

Black-and-white Warblers are a relatively early warbler to appear.... 

...and Blue-grey Gnatcatchers are as well. They are hard to get photos of as they flit about fairly constantly.

Chestnut-sided Warbler

One of the most abundant species of shorebird in the spring is this next one, Dunlin, and it is easy to get many photos of them as they can be fairly tolerable.

Flycatchers are becoming more abundant, such as this Eastern Kingbird.

One of the highlights, bird wise, in the last couple of weeks was the appearance of a Lark Sparrow at the north end of Rondeau. I was out that day, and heard second-hand information on it, but never tracked it down. This is a photo of one I took a few years earlier, at Erieau.
 

House Wrens are abundant, and you hear their chattering throughout the park and elsewhere. I came across this pair, with the male busy chattering away...

....and presumably the female was gathering nesting material.

Greater Yellowlegs continue to show up along wetlands and lake shore edges....

...and Great Egrets are in increasing numbers, especially not far from their nesting islands out in Lake St. Clair.

A short distance from home is a woodlot well-known for harboring a pair of Great Horned Owls. This first photo shows an adult perched high in a tree, watching over one of its recently fledged young, shown a little lower.

Yellow-rumped Warblers, next, continue to be one of the more common warbler species to see.

A friend of mine along Lake St. Clair has feeders out, and Yellow-headed Blackbirds that nest in some of the outer cattail islands are regularly seen.

In the more wooded parts of Rondeau, things like a few Veerys can be seen...

...as can a relative of theirs, the Swainson's Thrush.

  Back to shorebirds for a sec, here is a Least Sandpiper....

...and a Semi-palmated Sandpiper.

Sandhill Cranes continue to be found, or at least heard, fairly regularly in large areas of wetlands.

Right near this Sandhill Crane was a Common Gallinule, a species one hears in wetlands more often than actually seeing them.

A recent hike around Tulip Tree Trail resulted in getting a good photo of this Scarlet Tanager...

....and earlier, a Red-headed Woodpecker...

...as well as a Red-bellied Woodpecker....

...and Rose-breasted Grosbeak.

Magnolia Warblers migrate through in low numbers, as they are headed for much more northern breeding sites.

  

  Always a highlight in spring, is to come across a Prothonotary Warbler or two. This cooperative male was seen along Bennett Ave in Rondeau, and I got lot of photos of it as I watched it with some friends, for more than an hour and a half. I may be devoting a special blog or two on this species in the future especially as it pertains to Rondeau.

On another hike along the west South Point Trail, I had this male Pileated Woodpecker almost fly into me, but it veered off and perched on this tree trunk. It didn't seem to want to move off very quickly, so I waited patiently and after watching it for about 8-10 minutes, it flew off a bit, but just a short distance to a dead tree trunk with its nest hole. I watched as it poked its head in and out 2-3 times and then crawled right inside. The nest hole is not in a very good location for future photography attempts, but I may try.

Baltimore Orioles are heard frequently throughout the park, although this female wasn't saying anything...

...but just moved around a bit to give my camera different views.

Northern Harriers usually are seen flying low over wetlands, but this one was fairly high and flew right over my head, showing the very white under wing of this male.

Elsewhere in wetland edges one can find Lesser Yellowlegs...

....and the much smaller Least Sandpiper.

One of the shorebird highlights for me was to see as many as 4 Wilson's Phalaropes at the Blenheim Sewage Lagoons. The well marked female, show first, was not willing to come very close to me....

...but I had a couple of the less vividly marked males come fairly close by. Seeing one or two is considered good, so to see at least 4 was definitely unusual. Someone a few days earlier had seen as many as 14! Many years ago I found a nest of this species at the lagoons, as far as I know, the only nesting of this species within the Rondeau checklist area.

The nesting season has already gotten underway, as I showed a bit earlier regarding the Great Horned Owl and the House Wren gathering nesting material.

Canada Geese are early nesters as well, and there are lots of families of them in the local wetland areas.

Next is a bit of an unusual sighting. It is of a Yellow Warbler building a nest in a maple sapling, well in the interior of the Rondeau forest! Normally this species nests near wetlands and in shrubby areas, but this one didn't want to follow the crowd.

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Avocets and other mid-July birds

 A recent stop at the Blenheim sewage lagoons turned out to be quite worthwhile! I hadn't been there for a few days, as the ongoing heat and humidity encouraged me to stay close to home much of the time, but this day was different. Definitely a little cooler with a pleasant breeze. And something quite interesting had just blown in.

 A flock of American Avocets was there, in the far southeast cell where there is a nice muddy flat and some shallow muddy water. As it was mid-morning, the light wasn't the best from the initial vantage point, and this is the best I could get, just in case they took off and I didn't have any other chances.

Walking cautiously on the dried mud, which was soft and full of cracks, I wandered more to the east to get a better angle of the light. It was still a little harsher than I liked, but through processing, was able to get some quite satisfactory photos.

At one point the entire flock of 12 got up and flew, appearing to go right out of sight, so we looked at the other shorebird diversity that was there. But in less than10 minutes, the Avocets returned. Not wanting to disturb them to flight mode again, we quietly backtracked and left them feeding.

Earlier I indicated that this flock had recently blown in. As it turns out, Blake had a flock of 12 flying in from Lake St. Clair, over the Mitchell's Bay area, about 3 hours earlier. It is quite likely that the ones he had seen, kept on flying until they found some wetland with shallow, muddy water, to their liking. 

 As is typical of sewage lagoons at this time of year, there are usually a few more things to take note of if there are some shallow, muddy edges. There were several Semipalmated Plovers, but I didn't get any photos of them. Lots of Killdeer, of course, and others of various types. At one point, under a bit breezy conditions, some swallows rested from their aerial flight on the gravel path.

Tree and Barn Swallows

As I approached the sprinkler cells, two large corvids were up and about, giving a typical hoarse croak of Common Raven.

A few Least Sandpipers were scattered about.....

....as were a few Lesser Yellowlegs...

...and a couple of Pectoral Sandpipers.

It is always nice to see a few Short-billed Dowitchers.

This Tree Swallow was sitting on a sheltered perch, taking a rest from chasing insects that were probably taking shelter from the breezes themselves.

 On another occasion, I went to the Mitchell's Bay North Shore Trail. With its openness it is always a good spot to go to keep away from mosquitoes and fewer deer flies, and with a few birds to note. This adult Bald Eagle was a long way off, keeping an eye on fishermen and whatever else that were out on the lake. I tried to get around the trail a little farther to get closer, but it would have none of that and took off.

Great Egrets are almost always around, and some even cooperated for some telephoto photos. I think there were at least 6 within view, although they moved around a bit.

 A Common Gallinule was perched up in the Arrowhead and Pickerelweed squawking and complaining about something.

 

In the recently harvested wheat field, this pair of Sandhill Cranes was investigating some open area.

And this Song Sparrow was singing its heart out, so the nesting season, at least for it, is still under way.

 Red-winged Blackbirds are almost always fairly abundant, and especially now when so many young have hatched. Many were out in the wheat field as well, likely looking for a bit of grain that hadn't been taken in.

And in other news....the Nessus Sphinx Moth that I photographed at home a few days ago, and is now my feature creature at the top, showed a slightly different look in one of the photos that I eventually got processed. This one shows a Great Golden Digger Wasp grasping on to the tail end of the moth! Not sure what its intent was, and it didn't last long, so perhaps the wasp figured it had tackled something too large for itself.

At Rondeau, I had noted a female Prothonotary Warbler taking nesting material to a natural cavity in one of the sloughs. I had hoped that it would make use of it, as there was a male nearby, and I prefer photographing this species at a natural cavity. But even after watching this spot periodically over the course of several weeks, it was apparent that nothing was happening here. Perhaps it found a better nesting cavity farther up or down the slough.

And this immature Red-tailed Hawk was being harassed by a small group of Red-winged Blackbirds. In this incident, it was the little guys that won the confrontation.

'Til next time....

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