Dickcissel, Wilson's Phalarope, BC Night-Heron, Least Bittern, Tiger Beetle and lots more!

I thought it was time to change the header, giving the Red Squirrel a rest. It is still around the park, but Prothonotary Warblers are one of the most sought after species to find. I got many photos of this cooperative male earlier in the spring. 

I've been out to various places in Chatham-Kent over the last few days. It is a great time to be out before more of the hot, humid weather is here to stay, with summer being just around the corner in spite of quite a few recent days giving hints of things to come.

Going to Rondeau is a regular destination of choice for me as readers will know. What is a little more appealing in the warmer weather is the effect of breezes off the water keeping things a bit cooler. And now that the spring birding frenzy of May is past, the trails are a little quieter.

A small type of plant that catches people's eye is first: it is American Cancer-root. 

Certainly not a rarity, but special in their own way is the species shown in the next two photos. It is the Brown-headed Cowbird, a species not everyone can appreciate due to their laying eggs in other bird's nests. I wrote about this in a previous post entitled "Bison Birds". 

Male

Female

More to people's liking is the Cedar Waxwing, next.

On the sunnier days of spring, before it gets too hot, the Common Five-lined Skinks are out and about. The first photo is of a first year skink, sometimes called a Blue-tailed Skink for obvious reasons.

A female skink is next.

Eastern Kingbirds are regular nesting species here.

I came across a Green Heron along Tulip Tree Trail. Sometimes its crest is raised.....

...but more often it isn't.

Of course Tulip Tree Trail has many Tulip Trees, and they are in flower now.

Little Wood Satyr butterflies are flitting about along trails...

...and a much smaller little creature is the Six-spotted Tiger Beetle. They are quite plentiful along most trails, but often are flighty so don't give a good view. This one enabled me to get quite close even with my macro lens!

A little farther north of Rondeau, I encountered a colourful bird hanging out at a sizeable grassy field. It is a Dickcissel, generally considered an uncommon species but which has been increasing in the last few years.

Inhabiting the same grassy field is this more common Savannah Sparrow.

Continuing a little farther north again, this time at the Blenheim Sewage Lagoons, there has been somewhat of an invasion of a fairly rare bird: Wilson's Phalarope. On one occasion when I was there, I came across 10 birds, all of which seemed to be mated pairs. This first photo shows a pair, with the female on the left and male on the right. In this species, the females are more colourful, and it is the male that does most of the work on incubating the eggs!

On another occasion, they were very cooperative for my camera, and I got this great close-up of a female.

I had hoped that at least one of the pairs might have stayed to nest, but as of the last couple of days, it is apparent that all have left. I remember back in about 1980, there was a pair that nested at the lagoons, and I got a photo of the male on the nest. Maybe next year.....

With the significant changing of the water levels of the sprinkler cells, it is less attractive for shorebirds, and at my last visit I had a mere 3 Semiplamated Sandpipers, a single Least Sandpiper, and the occasional Spotted Sandpiper, along with a handful of Killdeer.

Semipalmated Sandpiper

For any regular, or even periodic, birders checking the lagoons, you might have seen this truck working away. It is a special vehicle owned by Republic Services, and it was on site to suction off some of the oily sheen that was covering one of the lagoons. It so happens that my son is with Republic Services, and travels widely across southwestern Ontario in particular providing environmental clean-up services at various industrial sites, etc. He was operating this truck, and he told me he was going to be there for several hours, so I stopped by and saw him in action.

Continuing northwards again, I have been to St. Clair NWA on several occasions, as it is a great place to see and hear nature in action.  Black-crowned Night-Herons used to be a bit more commonly seen, but for some reason they are less numerous now. I did manage to get this photo of one flying relatively close by on one evening.

 Sandhill Cranes are fairly regular fly-overs, sometimes giving good photo ops.

June is egg-laying time for many turtles, so I wasn't surprised to see several Common Snapping Turtles roaming about the trail looking for a place to dig a hole and deposit their eggs.

Great Egrets are scattered about...

...and there are at least a few Least Bitterns inhabiting this NWA. They are much more often heard than seen, so I felt fortunate to get this photo of one as it flew by and disappeared into the cattails.

White-tailed Deer are periodically seen right on the trail...

...and on once occasion I saw this doe and her two fawns roaming along the edge of one of the more distant islands.

 

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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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