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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Mid 'Winter' Birding?

 OK technically, early to mid February is mid-winter, but with temperatures sometimes being like late March or even early April, it has felt anything but winter. I don't mind not having to shovel snow, however.

We did have a bit of snow in mid-January, and so the Mourning Dove nest that was occupied in late summer.....

....was now looking like this.

 But since then, I am sure even some of the not-so-regular winter birds are even a bit confused. Things like American Robins have been fairly widespread, even plentiful at times.

Killdeer are beginning to show up in widespread areas. Perhaps some of them never really left southwestern Ontario.

Areas that typically are partly to totally frozen over, such as the Thames River at Jeannette's Creek, just upstream of where it outlets into Lake St. Clair, is mostly wide open.

No Great Egrets here like has happened occasionally in the past, but typically three or more Great Blue Herons are hanging out within sight of the boat launch.

When the river is mostly frozen over, but with some open spots remaining, there can be a concentration of water fowl. And when that happens, there can be a concentration of Bald Eagles perched on trees along the river, keeping and eye open for an available injured bird to swoop down upon. On one occasion when these conditions occurred, I counted at least 28 eagles from this vantage point!

Elsewhere in wetland areas that are sometimes open and sometimes frozen over, there are lots of waterfowl using them. The Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons are productive, but mostly for Canada Geese. However there is often a much rarer goose species mixed in amongst them, such as a Snow Goose. In this case it is a young blue-phase Snow Goose, showing the mostly dark body and blotchy white head....

...as well as a Greater White-fronted Goose, or Speckle-belly, with its orange bill, white at the base, and brownish feathering with black bands across the belly.

Both species are smaller than the average Canada Goose, so sometimes are hard to pick out when they are at a distance or mixed in with a lot of other geese. If the head of the White-front is not visible, sometimes the orange legs are. This next photo shows all three species together.

Canada Geese are by far the most abundant.

In other wetland areas, and sometimes in roadside ditches, one can come across various duck species. I came across these Northern Shovelers near Bear Creek.

The males are quite striking.....

....this one is going through its plumage development, and in a few weeks will likely look as crisp and clean as the other male.

Along another roadside ditch I came across a pair of Wood Ducks. They are often quite skittish, even though the hunting season is over, and the female was a short distance away so I didn't get her photo. But I manages a couple of quick shots of the male from the vehicle as follows.

While I was out roaming around the former Dover Twp, I encountered this Snowy Owl. I had checked this spot on numerous occasions over the past few weeks, as this general area often has one or more Snowies, but this year they have been hard to find. This is my first one of the winter.

It is barely a record shot, as it was several hundred metres from the road. With my telephoto lens combination, and further cropping, it is shown at about 100X magnification!

I've been to Rondeau a couple of times in recent days....no big surprise there. Birds have been quite widely scattered, and not always photograph-able. I managed to get this White-breasted Nuthatch as it scurried around a tree trunk....

 

 The long-staying Red-headed Woodpecker continues in its usual little wooded patch at the corner of C-K Rd 15 an Wildwood Line.

 

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