Natural Areas of Chatham-Kent, Part 12 (Erieau Rail Trail)

The Erieau Rail or Marsh Trail is another excellent area to explore and it is just a short distance away from the previously described natural area, McGeachy Pond. Both are shown in the following image. McGeachy Pond is the triangular area along the lake in the upper part of the image, and the Erieau Rail Trail is shown as the linear blue line. This is part of the Waterfront Trail system.

 It is sometimes noted as the Erieau Marsh Trail since the trail goes by marshy areas at the edge of Rondeau Bay. The trail is actually on an old railroad bed. The railroad connected Chatham with Rondeau Bay more than a century ago, when at the time it was believed that Rondeau Bay would be an excellent shipping port since it was so well protected from a more turbulent Lake Erie. However it was eventually realized that Rondeau Bay was too shallow for the increasingly large ships so its role as a major shipping harbour quickly fell out of favour. Nonetheless, the railroad bed ended at Erieau, and ships and barges could enter the harbour to that point. The railroad through Erieau was located on what is now a boulevard between the two one-way streets. I remember as a kid, seeing piles of coal which had been unloaded at Erieau. Now that spot is a trailer park and marina for mostly recreational water craft.

The railroad was abandoned several decades ago, and became an unofficial trail for hikers and birders. It was only a few years ago when it became an official trail thanks to many local residents, stewardship groups and the like.

It is notably different from the McGeachy Pond area, with a greater amount of treed area along the trail. That makes it especially good for attracting migrant birds. The following four species of warbler are examples of birds that occur only as migrants. To date there are 194 species of bird that have been recorded here.

American Redstart

Black-and-white Warbler

Blackburnian Warbler

Palm Warbler

There are many other bird species that use it as either a breeding or feeding location.

Eastern Towhee

 A pair of Great Horned Owls are often seen, and occasionally nest in the immediate vicinity.

Great Horned Owlet

Marsh Wren

Swamp Sparrow

Yellow Warbler

The adjacent wetland makes the trail an ideal spot to see water birds.

Common Tern

Great Blue Heron

Red-winged Blackbird

 Some water birds are very furtive, such as the Sora, a member of the Rail group (and therefore fitting along this Rail Trail). They are more often heard than seen, and even when they are seen it is usually only a brief, partial look like this next one.

 On occasion, they can seem to be quite bold. I watched and photographed this one from the observation tower for an hour in 2017, and it was apparently unconcerned about my presence.

A larger and less common rail species is the Virginia Rail.

Part way along the trail is an observation deck, giving excellent views of the adjacent wetland and this corner of Rondeau Bay. This next image was taken from the observation deck. There is a small pond right below the deck, and in late summer one can see a cluster of pink flowers at the edge of the cattails.

 The pink flowers are those of Swamp Rose Mallow, an rare species in Ontario, but relatively widespread around high quality wetlands here in the southwest.

 There is a Wood Duck nesting box at the edge of the pond, but so far all I have seen using it are Tree Swallows.

With relatively little open area along much of the trail, it doesn't seem to have the same diversity and abundance of butterflies like the McGeachy Pond area has. But species that like more wooded areas, such as this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and others, can be found.

It is a good spot to find the Eastern Fox Snake, an endangered species in Ontario. While it can be a large snake, well over a metre in length, it is not dangerous. It moves slowly and may vibrate its tail in leaves to sound like a rattlesnake if it feels threatened, but is quite harmless. Even though they are there, the chances of seeing one is not very high.

It is a wonderful spot to see a diversity of wildlife along a relatively short trail, and has many photo opportunities from sunrise on.

Sunrise looking north east from the observation deck

It's snowing geese!

With the warm spell of a few days ago, the waterfowl returned in considerable numbers. Geese in particular are getting a lot of attention, but not the usual Canada Geese. We've had a ton of Snow Geese, including lots of the darker morphs known as blues, to enjoy. Numbers as high as 200 have been seen, but since there are so many and they are often on the move to some extent, it is hard to know exactly how many are around. I know that number pales in comparison to the tens of thousands that show up in extreme eastern Ontario in the fall, but it is a very good number for this area. The only time I remember a larger number in the Rondeau checklist area was back in the very late 1960s, when there were a couple of thousand that came through for a few days in the fall. A hard north east wind had blown them off their usual course, and they were making use of the corn stubble fields in the south Chatham-Kent area. They would fly almost right over the house that I grew up in on their way from the bay to the corn fields. That was back in my hunting days, and a couple of my buddies and I were successful in getting two or three birds.

On Tuesday of this week, they were coming to their usual field along New Scotland Line, which they had been using for at least a week. Often they were a kilometre or more back from the road, but every once in awhile, at some point in the day, they would come fairly close....sometimes less than 100 metres from the road. They did this on the second time that I stopped that day. Just as I pulled off the road, I noted several groups of them headed straight for me, and some landed as close as about 80 metres! Unfortunately, it was a dull, snowy, drizzly day, and even at that relatively close distance, the images were not as clear as I would like. But you have to take what you get.

And when they got close enough, and I looked at some of the images more closely on the computer, I realized I had captured some of the Ross's Geese as well as some Snow X Ross's hybrids.

Snow Geese

Snows and Ross's and Canadas

 There could be as many as 4 or 5 Ross's or hybrid Snow X Ross's in this next image.

A Ross's Goose looks like a smaller version of a Snow Goose, with the following differences: smaller of course, about the size of a large Mallard; shorter legs, a rounder head, a stubbier bill, no 'grin' patch on the beak; bluish purple colouration at the base of the bill; a more vertical feather line at the base of the bill.

Of course unless you see things really clearly and from the best angle, not all of those characteristics are necessarily visible. A photo only shows that singular fraction of a moment in time when the shutter clicked, and you can't get multiple angles from one photo. To make things even more complicated, Ross's Geese hybridize with Snow Geese, so any or all of those characteristics can be more like one species than the other.

Unfortunately these images which were taken on that snowy, drizzly day are less than clear. But they do seem to fit a decent version of a Ross's

 This next one shows the closest goose to be about the size of a Mallard, shown in the foreground at the right. It maybe a little pudgier, but most characteristics fit compared to the Snow Goose just behind it.

 And a similar one with a Mallard and Snow Goose for comparison.

There have been Greater White-fronted Geese at the Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons, which I showed on my previous post. And lots of ducks on the mostly open water of Rondeau Bay, including large rafts of Canvasback.

But that was earlier this week, and with the arrival of very cold weather again, it is a different story out there. A trip today, under brighter and clearer conditions was in order. The bay is mostly frozen. The swans were still around, but widely scattered along the far edges of the ice. The Snow Geese were all packed in to a tight group, but a long way out. This group was at least a kilometre away from the closest viewing point at the end of the LTVCA trail. I counted 142 Snow Geese, although there likely were a few Ross's and hybrids mixed in, but too far away to tell.

 These shots aren't quite as sharp as I would like, partly due to the distance and there is some thermal affect from the sun reflecting off the bright snow and ice. But it was partly due to the camera.......

A side note: late last fall, I was experiencing some auto-focus problems with my Canon 7D2, which sometimes resulted in it stopping to focus altogether. It was only by turning the camera off, taking the battery out, waiting a few minutes and putting things back that it worked the way it was supposed to, at least temporarily. So in early January, it was sent in for repairs under warranty. I got it back last week, only to discover that it now failed to show any information in the viewfinder regarding ISO, shutter speed, f/stop, etc. So back it went to the repair facility. I got it back yesterday (Wednesday), so it was a quick turn-around, and today I wanted to try it out. It seems like everything is back the way it should be, but I now need to go through the Auto Focus Micro Adjustment, which is a really useful way to fine-tune the focus and match the individual camera to each lens. Going through the AFMA steps will be done soon!

Tundra Swans in flight, Snow Geese on the ice

 

I included a trip to Erieau, thinking that the increase in ice cover would concentrate ducks in the harbour area. There were a few American Coot hanging in there, with 17 seen. The numbers have been dwindling over the last little while. It is a far cry from the ~4000 that were there in late December! With the arrival of even more cold weather in the next few days, who knows how many of these few will survive!

Canada Geese were around in small numbers as well.

A highlight was seeing this male Hooded Merganser in the harbour, but it didn't stick around long.

Common Mergansers were, well, fairly common, and by far the most abundant duck close to Erieau with at least 100.

Bufflehead weren't really quite paired up yet, but the males looked dazzling and there was definitely some courtship in progress.

I was hoping that the Harlequin Duck and Long-tailed Duck were still around, and they might be, but weren't showing themselves. With the extreme cold over the next 2-3 days, I expect that the entire bay will be frozen over again, so birds that decide to stick around will be even more concentrated.

And now, I'm off to AFMA my camera.

Gaggles, Teams and a Parliament of birds

What a difference a year makes. This time last year, one might as well have gone into hibernation with the frigid cold and snowy conditions that prevailed. So it is nice to enjoy the present spring-like conditions, making it easy to get around, and with lots of open water to attract birds.

The Shrewsbury dock area continues to be a great vantage point to see waterfowl. I haven't caught up to the Bewick's Tundra Swan yet, but have seen lots of the usual Tundras as well as Snow Geese, including the blue phase. Perhaps the Trumpeter Swans are still around, but they are harder and harder to find with so many Tundras. A large number of swans is referred to as a Bevy, a Wedge (when in the air) or a Team.

Flight of the Tundras

 

Snow Geese mixed in with the Canadas and much larger Tundra Swans

 There are lots of ducks around, including large numbers of Canvasbacks

Canvasback (mostly) and Redhead

There are the inevitable Mute Swans as well.

A trip to the Rondeau Bay area wouldn't be complete without at least a bit of time at Rondeau. Woodland birds are pretty few and far between at this time of year, so I took a hike out the western side of the South Point Trail, out to the lake. I had the place pretty much to myself, seeing only one other hiker.

There is no shoreline ice, meaning that erosion is continuing. Nonetheless, the wave action is creating some interesting icicle features along the shoreline.

The Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons are often attractive to geese, and right now is no exception. There have been as many as a dozen Greater White-fronted Geese around, a species that is always a highlight. I only saw 6 on the occasion that I was there, but the others were likely just over the berm and out of sight. They were mixed with 4 Snow Geese and a bunch of Canadas. Of course they chose to be in the farthest cell, so these images had to be cropped considerably.

Greater White-fronts in the lagoon

Greater White-fronts, Snow Geese and Canadas in the adjacent field

Snow Geese and Greater White-fronts in the lagoon

Today I roamed around part of Dover Twp in the vicinity of St. Clair NWA. SCNWA is always a good spot to find waterfowl, almost any time of the year. However today there were not a lot compared with a few weeks ago when we held the Christmas Bird Count. There were 4-500 Canada Geese ( a large group of which is called a 'gaggle'), about 60 Tundra Swans and a few Mallards and Blacks. I was hoping to pick out a more unusual goose or two, and was able to see a couple of Cackling Geese, which are a miniature version of Canada. At one point not that many years ago, there were about 11 subspecies of Canadas, including some of the really small ones. However a decade or so ago, genetics determined that the four smallest subspecies were distinct enough to warrant their own species status, and the Cackling Goose was established as a full species. They are much smaller than the average Canada, with a shorter neck, and a stubbier bill. There are two individuals in this image, with the center one the most distinctive.

In other meanderings around Dover, I noted a single Snowy Owl along Heron Line just east of SCNWA. It was well out in the field, beside a tuft of grass. As I checked out the area along Meadowvale Line, in the former Chatham Twp just east of Hwy 40, I came across 4 Snowies out in a field, and all within easy sight of each other. A group of owls is called a 'parliament' (not sure why it has a particular political connotation, as owls are believed to be intelligent, and politicians are.....). Just kidding!

They were still a ways off out in the field, but the light was decent and after very heavy cropping, I came up with these two images.

With the weather turning a little more winter-like over the next few days, I doubt that these Snowies will be going too far.