I had planned on posting on my blog last evening. However from about 6 p.m. until sometime over night, our internet and land line was out of commission. A cell phone call to the provider got the wheels in motion to sort out the problem, and at some point over night everything was back to normal. It is amazing, and somewhat concerning, that we rely so much on internet, even my generation. I didn't join the technical age kicking and screaming, but for anyone who knows me well, I wasn't jumping into it all that enthusiastically like some were. I didn't even get a digital SLR camera until 2006, and I didn't get my own personal cell phone until sometime in 2012 when Marie got tired of loaning me hers when I was out in the field! I grew up quite nicely---at least I like to think I did :-)---without such technological advancements. For example rare bird notifications came by way of personal contact on a land line, or reading a newspaper nature column a week or so after the bird had been observed.
But that isn't the reason for this blog post. No, this time every January is the time when a phenomenon happens across North America regarding bird surveys. And I am not talking about Christmas Bird Counts. It is the Mid-Winter Waterfowl Survey (MWWS). I'm not sure exactly when it got started, but some time about the middle of the previous century. For waterfowl, the continent is divided into 4 major flyways which ducks, geese and swans use for their migration routes. There is some overlap, but banding waterfowl has enabled waterfowl biologists to determine the routes of various species or sub-populations fairly accurately. In southwestern Ontario, the major flyway is known as the Mississippi Flyway. At least part of the intent of these surveys was to establish long term trends of the various species of waterfowl, both in their overall numbers as well as their wintering areas.
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| Tundra Swans |
I first became aware of these MWWS in early 1986, shortly after my career changed from being the Park Naturalist of Rondeau Provincial Park, to the District Ecologist for the Chatham District of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. By early spring, one of the things that crossed my desk were the results of the most recent MWWS taken in January of that year.
Hmmmm.....what was that, I thought.
I looked through the summary for Ontario, and specifically for the area encompassing Chatham District (Essex, Kent and Lambton counties). I was not impressed. I don't have those 1986 results handy as I write this, but it was vividly etched in my mind that conducting a waterfowl survey for this project clearly was not a priority for anyone within MNR. There were less than 4000 individuals of about three species...that was it. Even though I had been the park naturalist at Rondeau for about 13 years prior to this and there was always some waterfowl there around during the time specified for these surveys, I had never been contacted to provide information, or even knew it existed.
Apparently someone who happened to be out near a portion of the waterfront of the district made a passing attempt to identify and count the birds they saw, but clearly there was very little effort put forth. As a Christmas Bird Count participant for St. Clair National Wildlife Area CBC (I wasn't the compiler for another couple of years), I knew that even within that small area there were more than 14500 birds of 13 species. I also knew that other parts of the waterfront of the district, especially the St. Clair River, the Detroit River and areas around Point Pelee and Rondeau, often had lots of waterfowl in any given year. In fact several of these sites were nominated and accepted as nationally Important Bird Areas due to the major populations of birds, either breeding species or staging/wintering areas. This first photo shows what the sky can be like over SCNWA in late December and into January. Those aren't dust specks on the lens, those are hundreds and hundreds of ducks and geese in just a small piece of the sky.
This next photo shows what parts of the St. Clair River or Detroit River can be like, with many hundreds and even thousands of diving ducks scattered across the surface.
When the ice gets a little more extensive on either river, the ducks are packed in a little tighter.
I talked to my supervisor and we made plans to rectify the situation. So in early January of 1987, it was my 'duty' to go out and do a more thorough survey during the week long count period. It took me the better part of three days to cover the shorelines from lower Lake Huron in Lambton Co, down the St. Clair River, the accessible parts of Lake St. Clair, down the Detroit River as well as the accessible parts of Lake Erie.
It was a tough job, but someone had to do it :-). I did have some help for areas specifically around Point Pelee, and even when someone was available in subsequent years, to look around the Pelee Island shoreline.
That first year helped to augment the area's reputation for wintering waterfowl. Including the ~34000 birds on the SCNWA CBC over 50000 birds of 21 species were submitted for the tri-county total, so it was a good start. For 25 years, until I retired at the end of 2011, I was the coordinator for the MWWS for the tri-county area of extreme southwestern Ontario. During those years the efforts were shifted to include at least some, or even all, volunteers to ensure as complete coverage as possible without relying on paid staff.
The weather in winter is always a factor. There were a few years that either:
-volunteers were unavailable;
-the severe cold of an early winter resulted in almost no open water and relatively few birds; or
-on one occasion fog was so bad for a few days one could hardly see the water at times, although I remember hearing them through the fog.
Under such conditions the numbers were not reflective of the number and diversity of birds that were likely around. Over that 25 year period we had a low one year (1995) of barely 13000 birds of 20 species, to a high another year (2007) of over 205500 birds of 33 species (including American Coot). Nonetheless even taking into consideration the poor years due to the conditions mentioned above, we averaged almost 60000 birds of 25 species. Clearly it was a big improvement over the years prior to 1987.
One of highlights that I recall was seeing and photographing a Harlequin Duck along the St. Clair River at Sombra, which at one point was resting on a post underneath a boat house and it was so dark I needed a bit of flash to brighten up the photo. Another highlight, although not of a waterfowl species, was while surveying at the south end of Walpole Island we came across a somewhat bulky raptor sitting in a tall shrub at the edge of a cornfield. It was puzzling at first as it looked bulky enough for a Red-tailed Hawk but clearly wasn't. When it took off and flew very rapidly and powerfully just a metre or so above the ground it became clear that it was a Gyrfalcon, my first for the tri-county area.
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| Harlequin Duck, Sombra, 2015 |
I passed the torch to someone else when I retired (thanks, Brett!) who continues to coordinate it. I still participate as a volunteer surveyor, as well as contribute the results of the SCNWA CBC.
And that leads me to the next part of the purpose of this post. This past Thursday, Marie and I went out and did my usual stretch of the survey. That included just west of the mouth of the Thames River at Lighthouse Cove, along the south shore of Lake St. Clair to the eastern edge of Windsor, where someone else picks up the waterfront to continue through Windsor and down the Detroit River, etc.
(Note: none of the photos on this post were actually taken during this
outing, as the majority of the birds were not close and it would have
taken much too long to work to a closer vantage point.)
We chose Thursday since it seemed to be the best day of the survey period for travelling and viewing, unlike the weekend which is looking like a washout much to the chagrin of certain birders/bloggers who are more or less restricted to weekends.......
Lake St Clair was completely open except for a fringe of ice along the shoreline. It was windy, and the increasing winds actually helped us tally a good number of birds. The winds were brisk out of the southeast, which meant any forested edge of the lake shore provided some shelter from the waves and white caps farther out. It was at Tremblay Beach Conservation Area where I first noticed this. There was a huge raft of birds out along the edge of the ice, spread in both directions as far as one could see. Any ice that was on the lake had piled up along the shore, so that a scope was necessary to identify and count the birds. It turns out that there were at least 2200 Common Mergansers here, with dozens more streaming in every minute from more northerly and exposed parts of the lake. It was probably an underestimate as there were always some birds which were diving. Somewhat surprisingly there were only a half dozen or so of three other species: Bufflehead, Red-breasted Merganser and Common Goldeneye.
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| Common Merganser, male |
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| Common Merganser, female |
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| Common Mergansers |
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| Red-breasted Merganser |
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| Bufflehead |
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| Common Goldeneye |
We continued westward, checking the lake where we could, but with all of the residential development that lined the lakeshore for almost the entire way, it was impossible to see everything. We did see a few small groups of Tundra Swans feeding/resting in some harvest corn fields along the way.
However for those places that were accessible, the waterfowl were present only in very small numbers. That changed a bit when we got to the Belle River marina. It provides a very good view both east and west for several kilometres so the scope is really handy here. There were a lot of Canada Geese, and a few dozen of several duck species, including more Common Mergansers, some Mallards, Common Goldeneye and a single Redhead. Our limited section of the survey resulted in 2711 individuals of 8 species, but I expect there will be at least 25 species for the overall tri-county area. Even just for the SCNWA CBC a few days earlier we had almost 62000 individuals of 23 species.
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| Canada Geese |
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| Mallard |
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| Redhead |
It had also been the intent of surveyors to keep track of Bald Eagles observed, especially in the early years when this species was in extremely low numbers and, at least in Ontario, listed as
Endangered. It has rebounded considerably in the last 2-3 decades, fortunately. We only saw two adults on this day, one adult out over the lake and another at a nest in north Essex, but undoubtedly there were more around, since the SCNWA CBC had 39 birds.
That's it for bird surveys for now!
