Some Natural Areas of Chatham-Kent, Part 7 (Paxton's Bush)

This post will feature another woodland area, a bit smaller than the previous one and even closer to Chatham: Paxton's Bush. It has been known as Paxton's Bush for decades, and visited by many local folks. It has recently been named the O'Neil Nature Reserve. It is great to know that this site is now in municipal ownership and accessible. The first photo shows its location, being east of Baldoon Road and north of Oxley St. The 'O' is Oxley Mid-Wood Park and the 'T' shows the entrances at the corner of this park, as well as the Thornhill Park on the lower right of the woodland.

There is a trail system through this woodland of approximately 12 hectares (20 acres), some of it official and is known as the Rotary Eco-trail, where there is a good fine gravel base.....

....and there are a few unofficial sections, which can be a little muddier depending on the weather conditions.

It is always fun to explore this site in late April and early May, as the spring wildflowers are at their prime. Some examples are:

Bloodroot

Spring Beauty

Jack-in-the-pulpit

Spring Cress

It is also an excellent time to find birds. With so few woodlands in this part of C-K, any woodland can be an attraction for migrating birds. There are currently about 110 species of birds known, which is excellent considering its small size. Being so accessible makes it easier for birders to check it out. On one mid-May day in 2017, I had 19 species of warblers in only a couple of hours!

Some migrant species are:

Black-throated Blue Warbler

Magnolia Warbler

Black-throated Green Warbler

Blue-headed Vireo

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Scarlet Tanager

Wood Ducks, as well as Mallards, can be found here. I don't know if the Wood Ducks successfully nest here, but the creek system going through attracts them on occasion.

Locally, one of the best known species is Great Horned Owl. A pair has been here for many years, and it was in 2013 when the pair nested in a cavity created by a broken branch of a Black Cherry tree. The bonus was that it was quite low and very visible just a short distance from the trail, and gave some amazing views. It got lots of media coverage and people from quite a distance came to view and photograph them.

Since that time, the owls have chosen broken tree stubs quite a bit higher and a lot less visible, but it is still a regular thing to see the adults, and eventually one or more young, perched high up in a tree.

The forest here is fairly typical of most southwestern Ontario woodlands, made up of Sugar and Silver Maples, Basswood, Sycamore, Black Cherry, etc.

Black Cherry

Black Cherry

A less common tree species is Common Hackberry. It is often found along southwestern Ontario rivers, but is less common inland. Its bark is one of the most identifiable characteristics.

Common Hackberry

Hackberry

Bird bands (not the musical kind!)

No this isn't about The Byrds, The Eagles or Counting Crows. It is about the feathered kind.

Birds are frequently on the move, whether it is to their breeding grounds or their wintering ground. Of course resident species don't migrate great distances, but they may move a few kilometres. As observers in our own little part of the world, we can see these changes over the months as our lists of birds observed change. Over the past couple of weeks waterfowl, and in particular geese, have been arriving in larger numbers.

At the other end of the size scale, birds such as Horned Larks are now arriving.

But where do these birds go and how does one discover the routes they go, and distances they travel? One of the main ways is through the banding process....called 'ringing' in Europe.....that is putting lightweight aluminum bands with a specific number on it.

One of the pioneers of bird banding was Jack Miner, who had an intense interest in Canada Geese,and established the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary near Kingsville, Ontario. He apparently wasn't the originator of banding, but certainly popularized it. His biological understanding of predator-prey relationships and the balance of nature was weak, to say the least, but that is another story. His passion for Canada Geese and establishing sanctuary for them was amazing, and his efforts to discover their migratory movements were instrumental in early conservation efforts towards wildlife in general.

The banding process has basically been the same ever since the early 1900s: put an aluminum band on a bird's leg, with an individual number imprinted on it so that if it is recovered at some point in the future, some basic data can be obtained: how old that bird might be, where it came from, where it ended up, maybe even how long it took to get from one point to another. Of course if the bird is shot, or meets its demise in some other way, the information is limited. If the bird is captured at various points along its routes over several months or years, there is an immense amount of data that can be obtained.

Over the years there have been some changes. For example put a large coloured band with its own combination of numbers and letters (called alpha-numerics) on the neck of a goose or swan, and that bird can be identified from a distance, assuming the observer has decent optical equipment. Colourful neck collars used to be quite common a few years ago, and it was typical to scan through a flock of geese or swans and see several neck collared birds....orange with white letters/numbers was the most common in this area, but sometimes you could see collars of blue, white or black. In looking through those flocks these days, one does not seem to see collars as often, in my experience.

No collars on these geese!

That doesn't mean birds aren't being banded.....quite the contrary. There have been some creative ways to be able to follow birds. For example: Great Egrets. Since they aren't hunted, they aren't going to be shot and have the leg band turned in, and they aren't going to fly into mist nets which bird banders have set up to capture, band and release birds. Fortunately Great Egrets are large birds, so a colourful wing tag, with a visible number & letter code is sometimes used.This bird was banded at Nottawasaga, along the south shore of Georgian Bay on June 26, 2014, when it was too young to fly. I noted it along a creek just south of Petrolia, in Lambton, on September 22, 2014, so it was just a few months old. In the first photo, part of the blue tag is covered up, but the second photo show the code more clearly: 95K

Last fall while searching for a couple of Snow Geese that were hanging around with a large flock of Canada Geese in parts of Chatham, I noticed a Canada Goose with two leg bands.....an aluminum one on one leg and a larger, brightly marked plastic one on the other.

The aluminum leg band number would be hard to read unless you had the bird in hand, but the yellow plastic band is quite legible.

So if you come across one of these bands, what do you do? I'm glad you asked!

You can submit it to the bird band reporting website at: this link. I have done this at various times over the years, and it is always interesting to get a bit of the history of the banded bird. A few weeks after I submitted the information for this observation, including the photo, I received an email with a Certificate of Appreciation from the government agency that holds the database for all banded birds.

Part of the email included this message:

 The North American Bird Banding Program

Bird banding is important for studying the movement, survival and behavior of birds. About 60 million birds representing hundreds of species have been banded in North America since 1904. About 4 million bands have been recovered and reported.

Data from banded birds are used in monitoring populations, setting hunting regulations, restoring endangered species, studying effects of environmental contaminants, and addressing such issues as Avian Influenza, bird hazards at airports, and crop depredations. Results from banding studies support national and international bird conservation programs such as Partners in Flight, the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, and Wetlands for the Americas.

 It turns out that this goose was banded near Long Point, on June 26, 2015, and it was too young to fly when it was banded. I observed the bird on November 11, 2016, so it was about a year and a half old.

Speaking of Long Point.....the Long Point Bird Observatory is the oldest bird observatory in the western hemisphere, being established in 1960. Initially established to band birds and monitor local migration, it has expanded its focus considerably over the years. It has been known as Bird Studies Canada for several decades. It is by far the most knowledgeable and involved non-government (and arguably government) agency in all of Canada when it comes to bird research & conservation, monitoring, banding, education, coordinator of citizen science, etc. The knowledge, commitment and enthusiasm of their staff is nothing short of amazing. A mere blog post cannot even begin to cover the wide-ranging role it has in these areas, so I encourage anyone interested to check out their informative web site via this link.

And keep an eye open for bird bands!

Avocet and other shorebirds

Fall bird migration has been underway for several weeks now, and one of the best places to observe it right now is at sewage lagoons.

The Blenheim Sewage Lagoons were not very productive for shorebirds in the spring, as two of the sprinkler cells were totally dry due to some maintenance, and the other two cells were mostly void of water due to the dryness of the season.

Fortunately for birders, this has improved.....and just in time. Two of the sprinkler cells that had maintenance done since the spring now have lots of water....almost too much. But the other two cells have a bit of water, so there is something for everyone...short-legged and long-legged shorebirds are welcome!

There are lots of Killdeer, of course. It is not uncommon to see 30-50 birds scattered about. Least and Semiplamated Sandpipers are building in numbers, both species of yellowlegs are present and an occasional Stilt Sandpiper, more common in fall than spring, is around.

Stilt Sandpiper with smaller peeps

A small number of Pectoral Sandpipers are appearing.

Pectoral Sandpiper

Short-billed Dowitchers are around in small numbers.

Short-billed Dowitchers

Yesterday morning, an American Avocet was reported. It is one of the larger, and more striking shorebirds, in my opinion. Some shorebirds can be quite challenging to identify....not so with the American Avocet! It is much more common in the mid-west, where it breeds in the vicinity of sloughs on the mixed grass prairies. But after breeding, when birds tend to wander, sewage ponds may look for all intents and purposes like a prairie slough, so on occasion when an avocet might be passing through the area, sewage lagoons will attract them.

I got a text from Garry Sadler that the bird was still there in the late afternoon, so I decided to head out and try for it, as I don't see them every year. And there it was. This one still has some of its brownish-orange colouring of a breeding bird, but that will disappear in a few weeks as it turns to pale gray and the rest of the bird will be black and white. The amount of curvature in the beak leads me to believe it is likely a female, as the male has less of a curve. It is a bit hard to tell for sure, as the amount of curvature appears to change depending on the angle one views it.

American Avocet

The bird was a bit skittish, and didn't allow me all that close. In spite of the appearance of these photos suggesting I was quite close, my camera and telephoto lens combination was the equivalent of a 22X binocular, and the image was cropped about 50%. Also I was on the lower side of the berm with just my head showing, but even at that the bird was reluctant to stay right where it was.

After a short time, it decided to move elsewhere in the sewage lagoon complex. I watched it as it flew over the larger ponds, and it was on the southern shore of one of the other ponds last time I saw it.

Will it stick around? Who knows......but one year one remained in the general area long enough for me to find it at Long Pond in Rondeau during our Christmas Bird Count!

Monarch migration, etc

Monarch butterflies are iconic symbols of a late summer phenomenon, notably their fantastic migration behaviour as they begin a southwestern journey to their wintering grounds in the mountains of Mexico. As they head southwest through Ontario, the Great Lakes are a major blockage, so they travel along the shoreline and build up in numbers at points along the lake shore, such as Long Point, Rondeau and Point Pelee. Some will continue to travel southwest until they cross the Detroit River. If the numbers build up at one of the major sandspit points, they wait for suitable weather, such as a good wind from a northerly direction, to carry them across the lake.

It wasn't that many years ago that some huge numbers were recorded from some of these points. I have read of astounding numbers, such as half a million butterflies, leaving Point Pelee and heading across the lake on a northerly wind in a matter of hours.

What do bison, Passenger Pigeons and Monarchs have in common? A serious and in some cases, fatal, loss of numbers.

Sadly it appears that we may never see those numbers of butterflies again. Think about the many millions of bison that formerly roamed the mid-western parts of the continent. Or the billions of Passenger Pigeons that at times darkened the skies as they passed overhead. The bison population was salvaged from complete annihilation, and remains in protected areas across parts of the mid-west. Several state/provincial and national parks and private agencies have various sized herds they manage.

This first image depicts part of the ~2500 bison herd that roam freely across part of the almost 30,000 acre (12,100 ha) Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northeastern Oklahoma, owned by The Nature Conservancy.

The next two images feature bison from Prairie State Park, where a herd of about 130 bison occur within this almost 4,000 acres (1,600 ha) park in southwestern Missouri.

The Passenger Pigeon is, as you undoubtedly are aware, extinct and at the beginning of this month we unfortunately marked the 100th anniversary of when the last known Passenger Pigeon died, in the Cincinnati Zoo. (No, I'm not quite old enough to have acquired any personal photos of Passenger Pigeon.)

While the two examples mentioned here don't necessarily seem to fit with the situation of the Monarch, the comparison is eerily relevant. Monarchs were present by the countless millions not that long ago. A National Geographic magazine of the 1970s described them as so numerous on their wintering grounds, that branches of the trees where they were roosting would break under the cumulative weight!

Part of a small Monarch roost at Rondeau a few years ago

However in the last several decades, the effects of loss of wintering habitat in Mexico, combined with chemical sprays and the efficient eradication of milkweeds here in North America, have brought the population perilously low. In 2013, the numbers in Ontario at least, were probably as low as they have ever been since the glaciers left! It was almost a novelty to see a Monarch last year. And the Monarch Migration Festival at Point Pelee NP, where just a few years ago hundreds of thousands of butterflies could occasionally be seen in a single day, was cancelled due to the lack of butterflies.

The current year has not seemed quite as dismal. One can normally see at least a few Monarchs on outings to natural areas.  I have noted more than a dozen caterpillars on milkweeds in my yard. The Hawkwatch sites at Hawk Cliff, Holiday Beach and Detroit River Metropark, record Monarch movements just like they do hawks, and sometimes several hundred are seen in one day. With milkweeds being removed from the noxious weed list, people are planting milkweed now, instead of being charged for not removing them from their property.

This coming Sunday, September 21, there is a Monarch Migration Festival going on at Rondeau Provincial Park. From the park's web site:

 "Come out to Rondeau and join us for the day to send off our Monarch Butterflies as they migrate down to Mexico for the winter season! Activities include Monarch Tagging demonstrations, guided hikes, native plant sale and local artisan fair among much more! Stick around for lunch as the Friends of Rondeau will be BBQing up a storm from 11-2:30pm!"

This festival starts at 10:00 a.m. and goes until 4:00 p.m.

Banded Monarch

So whatever your weekend activities entail, whether it is visiting one of the aforementioned Hawk Watch sites to join in with the activities and hawk watching opportunities there, keep in mind the plight of the Monarch and wherever you see one, take time to reflect and enjoy part of this dainty yet resilient critter's migration!

Some hawk migration observations

Hawk migration is just getting well underway these days, as one can see from the various hawk watching reports. Hawk Cliff just south of St. Thomas, Holiday Beach in southwestern Essex County and the Detroit River Hawk Watch in eastern Michigan adjacent to the Detroit River, are the best known and most prolific sites in the region. Daily watches since about the first of September have resulted in between 1300 and almost 2000 birds being recorded passing through so far.

These migrating raptors follow the Lake Erie shoreline, since they don't like to cross large open stretches of water, and exit the province where the water is the narrowest. Hence places along the Detroit River are where the birds are eventually most concentrated.

However before the birds get to the Detroit River many pass through southern Chatham-Kent, and near the shoreline is often a good place to watch from. Winds from the NE-N-NW are typically good conditions to help the birds to move.

Yesterday, Saturday Sept 13, the winds were fairly brisk from the N-NW which is usually favourable. However the heavy overcast conditions were not the best for hawk watching, at least initially, but when the forecast indicated some clearing in the afternoon, I ventured out. But I went to a more local place. The shoreline east of Rondeau and south of Morpeth is one of the better locations. And since a rare Swainson's Hawk had been reported from the Hawk Cliff site the day before, I was hoping I could find it passing through the Rondeau area!

Initially there wasn't much movement. Almost immediately a single Sharp-shinned Hawk flew through fairly low down. I decided to get my camera ready in anticipation of more action. The raptor movement was rather sporadic, which is par for the course. From time to time, there were several birds in view, and then there were stretches of 10-15 minutes or so without a single bird to be seen.

As the sky cleared a bit, the birds got a little more active. Overall in the almost two hours I was there, I observed 34 raptors of 7 species: Sharp-shinned Hawk--14; Cooper's Hawk--1; American Kestrel--2; Broad-winged Hawk--2; Merlin--1, Bald Eagle--7; Turkey Vulture--7.



Photography wasn't the easiest, since much of the sky was still partly cloudy. And the birds were on the move, of course, and mostly quite distant. However I got a few shots.

Sharp-shinned Hawk

Broad-winged Hawk

 This isn't the normal profile one expects of a Broad-wing on migration. However due to the brisk wind and cloudy skies, there weren't any thermals of rising air to float upwards and along on. So today their wings and tail weren't showing the typical look.

Broad-winged Hawk

Bald Eagle juvenile

Bald Eagle adult

It is possible that one of the sub-adult eagles I saw was double counted, so I may have only seen 6, not 7. At one point I did have three eagles in view simultaneously. Photos of these birds were a challenge. Even though the camera set-up I was using was the equivalent of a 12X binocular, with the birds being mostly a kilometre or more away, I had to do some heavy cropping to even get these!

Alas, I didn't see a Swainson's Hawk. But I did see this.

Gashawk (not a raptor :-)

The Broad-winged Hawks should be moving in large numbers in the next week or so. Mostly sunny skies with light NW winds are ideal for them to move in substantial numbers. Usually upwards of 100,000 of them are recorded from one or more of the hawk watch sites over the course of the season. On one occasion several years ago, the Holiday Beach site recorded about 80,000 in one day! Kettles of them can be seen almost anywhere slightly inland from the Lake Erie shoreline. I am looking forward to getting out again soon!

Black Changing To White

Okay don't panic....I'm not suggesting that we are getting more of the white stuff, although with the way things are going this year, who knows. Everyone I've heard from recently is tired of the way winter is dragging on.

No, the 'black' I am referring to is the presence of American Crows......I'll get to the 'white' shortly.

Chatham-Kent, and specifically the city of Chatham, happens to have the notoriety of supporting the largest winter crow roost in Canada in most years. It wasn't too many years ago that the town of Essex was competing for, and sometimes winning, those accolades. I know that many other cities in southern Ontario have seen an increase in wintering crows, even cities as far east as Ottawa. But it seems that over the last decade or so, Chatham-Kent has usually been the 'winner', much to the chagrin of many locals.

Crows undertake a major migration in the mid to late autumn, just like many hawks do. Even though estimates of crows in the Chatham-Kent area on a single day in late November have often been well over 250,000 birds,  the hawk migration watches at Holiday Beach Conservation Area and at Lake Erie Metropark just across the Detroit River counted almost 550,000 crows passing their observation towers during the autumn. And there were some days when they were too busy counting hawks that they just stated "crows moving all day, no numbers taken." So even though well over half a million crows left southwestern Ontario, typically well over 100,000 birds remain in the Chatham area for the winter. For example the St. Clair NWA Christmas Bird Count, for which the count area includes the western part of the city of Chatham, almost always tallies over 100,000 birds within the count circle, and our all time official number for the count is 159,860 birds! The number of crows in Chatham-Kent has rivalled even the largest winter crow roosts in the U.S.A., according to the results of the Christmas Bird Counts held there.

Crows in Chatham-Kent in December

Crows roosting in the neigbourhoods along the Thames River in January

I know it isn't fun to have so much bird poop landing on ones car, sidewalk, steps, roof, person, etc. But from a bird perspective it truly is a fascinating phenomenon. This roost has been here to some degree for as long as even the oldest human residents can remember. I won't get into the reasons in this post as to why the crows have chosen Chatham-Kent as their principal wintering spot.....I'll save that for a post this autumn, so stay tuned.

Here is a video clip of a small section of the roost along the river.

The crows build up their numbers steadily, beginning in early to mid-October, and essentially remain in the C-K area until early to mid-March. As the days get a bit longer allowing them to travel a little farther during their daily excursions to forage, in combination with some milder weather, the crows tend not to return to their roost. That is happening right now, and although there are still some crows around, they would more likely number in the several hundreds rather than the tens of thousands.

And now on to the 'white stuff'.....instead of surrounding fields being blackened by crows, they are being whitened by the arrival of those magnificent Tundra Swans, which to many people, herald the arrival of spring! While in some milder winters a few dozen or more swans may overwinter in places like Rondeau Bay, this year there was a total absence of them......they must have realized that they would have much better wintering conditions in their traditional area of Chesapeake Bay along the east coast surrounded by Virginia and Maryland.

In the last few days, Tundra Swans have been arriving in southwestern Ontario, from Long Point to Essex County, in large numbers. As many as 7500 birds were estimated to be in the Rondeau Bay area last weekend, and the numbers continue to grow. As they spread out to surrounding fields of corn stubble from Lake Erie to Lake St. Clair, it is difficult to get an accurate count.

Hundreds of swans may be feeding in old corn stubble fields, often with Canada Geese.

Canada Geese arriving at a field

They will sometimes use the same fields for several days in succession, but with lots of these types of fields to choose from in C-K, are apt to move around. It is best to watch for birds leaving their resting area near Rondeau Bay or another large body of water and follow them to their feeding area. Most likely when one flock goes, others will follow.The fields of the former Dover Township, especially between Pain Court and St. Clair NWA and north to Mitchell's Bay is another favourite area for thousands of these birds to feed. In short order, they will continue to northern Lambton County just south of Grand Bend using the former Lake Smith, which is often flooded in spring, as a resting and feeding area before continuing their journey north.

They won't be in southern Ontario for a long time. In most years they arrived before now, so will soon be on their way to feeding areas much farther north, before they take the final leg of their migration to their breeding ground in the Arctic and sub-Arctic watersheds.

And while they are here in Chatham-Kent, they have to contend with numerous wind towers. But it seems that the towers do not present a problem for them.

When one encounters a flock of swans feeding in a field, it is prudent to look for other, perhaps less obvious species. Can you see something other than Tundra Swans in this photo?

 

You might see Snow Geese, such as the five birds towards the front of this image. They are much smaller than the swans. Here, there are two pairs of white Snow Geese and one Blue phase Snow Goose. The Blue one is towards the left of the image, and can perhaps be seen better in the image below, taken today. The photo below also has some Canada Geese at the left, and some ducks in the back ground, including a male Wood Duck. These birds were a long way from the road, so were difficult to get good photos of even with an excellent camera and telephoto lens combination.

As the patches of water become more extensive close to shore, many other waterbirds can be observed. Places like the Erieau harbour are perfect right now, although as the ice recedes the waterbirds will spread out considerably. A few photos taken over the last couple of days in the Erieau area are posted below.

Bufflehead male

Common Merganser male

Common Merganser female

The female Common Merganser's crest doesn't always show up so distinctly. This was the result of a 'tail wind'.

Canvasback male

A large mixed flock of mostly Redheads and Greater Scaup

Some birds, such as this male Redhead, have not been able to survive this winter

Ring-necked Ducks, with Canvasback and a Greater Scaup

Pair of Mallards

Greater Scaup....note the length of the white in the wing which is longer than in Lesser Scaup

Wood Ducks in the foreground; male Northern Pintail in upper left; male American Wigeon in upper right

Besides waterfowl, there are other species that have recently appeared. I noted my first Killdeer today, although an occasional one had been reported a few days earlier. Around one of the small 'lakes' in a flooded field were at least 6 Killdeer.

Killdeer, newly arrived in the Erieau area

Red-winged Blackbirds have been slowly arriving over the last week or so. As the weather warms, the males are frequently heard giving their spring songs in preparation to attract a female when they arrive.

In the woodlands, new life is appearing as well. While I was at the Rondeau Visitor Centre yesterday I saw no less than 8 Eastern Chipmunks scampering around, chasing each other and feeding on the scraps below the bird feeders. They would normally appear once in awhile on a warm winter day, but during this winter, that just hasn't happened!

Near watercourses and wetlands, animals such as Muskrat and Mink will be roaming around. I photographed this Mink a few days ago as it was exploring along the edge of a deep channel in northern Chatham-Kent. They are normally shy creatures, but do have an inquisitive nature on occasion. This one was apparently unconcerned with my presence and I got numerous photos, using my vehicle as a blind.

 

Spring officially arrives tomorrow. Here's hoping it will be able to stay!