A Christmas Bird Count day, Rondeau style

The 2014 Blenheim/Rondeau Christmas Bird Count is now history, including the three days before and after the actual count day which makes up the count week. You may have read Blake's post of Sunday evening, highlighting some of the things he found or which were tabulated by others. Certainly considering how open the area was, with no snow and very little ice, the birds that lingered after the snowy cold spell a few weeks back were scattered widely, making detection of them somewhat difficult. The total number of birds was down from average, as was the total of 105 species, slightly below the 107 species average of the last decade. But I will take the relatively easy going over some of the tougher conditions we've had to deal with such as last year!

My day normally goes something like this: I start at the north end of Rondeau Road calling for owls well before daylight, making several stops along this road with the intention of reaching the very south end by about day break. The wind was light, the temperature was mild and sound carried, so it should have been good for Eastern Screech Owls to respond to my whistled calls. But something must not have been quite right for these little denizens of the forest. In spite of the ~10 stops, I only totalled 5 Eastern Screech Owls this day. Of course the fact that there were at least three Great Horned Owls hooting up a steady storm not that far away towards the edge of the forest might have caused some of them to resist the temptation to respond to me.....after all, Great Horned Owls eat many things, including smaller owls.

Just before 8 a.m., I reached the south end of Rondeau Road and began my day-time route, which means venturing out along the south beach and, if all is well, walking out the almost 4 kilometres to Erieau. And back. On sand. In rubber boots. All bundled up in heavy winter clothing designed to withstand whatever I might face along the way. Sometimes it is bitter cold with very strong head winds, which one time almost blew over my scope & tripod. My optical equipment weighs about 13-14 lbs. Or it might rain or snow. Fortunately this day was quite mild, and the wind was not strong, so it made it more comfortable. But there are a lot of trees and shrubs on the shoreline, due to the significant erosion of these last few weeks and months, so just walking along the shoreline is not an option.

This next image shows where the trail ends with about a 4 foot drop. There used to be a road here....I remember driving on it in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This bench finally succumbed to the erosion in the last week or so.

Instead for the first half kilometre or more, I made my way through mucky sloughs, shrub thickets and the edge of the cattail marsh to get beyond the last ridge of trees so as to see the marsh and more open section of the south beach. But it was worth it. In the process I came across a new nest of a Bald Eagle on about the last ridge of trees, and about 300 metres from the shoreline. The Burks had been out this way the week before and told me about it. It may be a new nesting pair. Park staff were not aware of this nest until I told them, but when the leaves are on the trees, it would be difficult to see from the south beach.

As recently as the first half of the last century there were two pairs of eagles nesting at Rondeau, but the population was hit hard by pesticides and production fell drastically throughout their range. Only one pair has actively nested at Rondeau since the 1960s. As the population continues to rebound, maybe once again two pairs will be here if they are not here already.

Parts of the south beach are quite open, with grassy dunes in abundance.

Looking towards Erieau

This grassy dune system on a barrier beach is quite a rarity in Ontario, with some of the best examples at places like Rondeau and Long Point. There were quite a few ducks, geese and swans as well as gulls on the Rondeau Bay and marsh side....thousands of them in fact. Ring-billed, Herring, Bonaparte's and Great Black-backed Gulls were all noted, but nothing any rarer. About ten species of waterfowl were recorded, but nothing unexpected. However the only 4 Gadwall on the count were ones I saw here. And two of the several Bald Eagles I saw this day were perched on the ice, feeding on the carcass of something. An adult Red-shouldered Hawk hung around, giving me views on three different occasions. The lake side was less populated with these water birds, but several flocks of mergansers and scaup passed by as did an intermittent stream of gulls.

This area does not get visited by birders often at this time of year, or any time of year for that matter. So one is always on the lookout for uncommon species. Over the years on this section of my CBC route, I've had such things as Harlequin Duck, King Eider, Purple Sandpiper and Red Phalarope as some of the more unusual species. This year I didn't find anything that notable, but I did come across Snowy Owls.....two of them were perched on some of the driftwood scattered on the more open beach dunes. I managed to get them both in one of the photos. The second photo below shows the bird with much more barring, indicating it is likely an adult female or a first year male. The closer, whiter bird is an adult male. They aren't the best shots, as I only had a point & shoot camera with me. With all the other stuff I was carrying, I wasn't going to carry my big lens too!

 I didn't get right to Erieau like I sometimes do. The sand was not frozen, making it more difficult to walk on, and there was another major blow down blocking the shoreline, and it didn't look too promising on the bay side to get around either. I scanned the water near Erieau as best I could and added the things I saw to my checklist. Then I headed back to the car to spend more time on the next part of my territory. It was kind of disappointing, since the wooded area at the far western tip always has the potential to find something good.

Upon returning to the car, I headed up to the north end of the park to access the marsh road. This next part of my territory requires me to drive half way out the Marsh Road to the large parking lot. From there I walk. And walk. And walk some more. The south beach in the first part of the day only involves about 7 kilometres of walking carrying my gear. The Marsh Road section to the south end as well as the side shoot over to Long Pond and area involves about 9 kilometres of hiking, but at least it wasn't on sand.

Rondeau Marsh

I saw various raptors, including Northern Harrier, Rough-legged Hawk and more Bald Eagles. I saw at least 6 Great Blue Herons to add to the two I saw along the south beach earlier. And a few ducks. And another Snowy Owl. The shrubby thickets along the trail harboured a few sparrows, including American Tree, Song and White-throated. There were lots of mudflat edges, and I was hoping for a shorebird or two. Over the years I've had as many as 10 species of shorebird on my route, including such things as American Avocet, Western Sandpiper and Black-bellied Plover in addition to the ones mentioned from along the south beach earlier. But alas, there was so much shorebird habitat and so few shorebirds (most left at the previous cold, snowy spell), I didn't find any this day. I'm sure they were out there, but just not where I could see them. Fortunately Blake had a couple in his territory along the southeast beach: Purple Sandpiper and Dunlin, so at least there were some for the overall count.

I ended up with 40 species for the day. Not as good as I had hoped, and I'm sure I missed some that were there. Surely if I had someone with me to help watch in 360 degrees, especially someone with better ears and eyes than my aging ones, the total for this part of the overall count circle would have been higher. But all in all, it was a worthwhile venture. I've been doing this Rondeau count for about 45 years now, and I've had the south beach and south end of the marsh road territory for about thirty of those years. The weather has varied considerably, of course....on a couple of occasions in the early 1980s, I even managed to get out in a canoe to explore areas otherwise inaccessible!

I went back out to Rondeau today with the hope that one or more of the shorebirds that Blake saw was still around. The brisk wind was out of the west, providing a calmer shoreline along the east beach, adding to my hopes. I went via Erieau just to see what was there, and 5 Snowy Owls were still visible along Lagoon Road. But my goal was to walk a stretch of the southeast beach. There were a few Common Mergansers and scaup along with Bonaparte's and Ring-billed Gulls appearing to be following a school of minnows. And there was a single shorebird, a Dunlin, looking rather forlorn at the edge of a pond just in from the shore. Perhaps it is the same one that Blake had. I wonder how it will fare when the below freezing temperatures return in these next few days. I hope it has the energy to travel to a better place!

The Christmas Bird Count season is upon us!

Well at least the count period is. Technically the first official day of the Christmas Bird Count season is Dec 14. However since the count period for each count is three days before and three days after the count day, since the Blenheim/Rondeau count day is December 14, that means we can start keeping track of birds in the count circle beginning on December 11.

Christmas Bird Counts began, in a very few places, back in 1900. Prior to that, there had been a tradition to see how many birds and species one could shoot in one day. But some forward thinking people thought it was a waste to kill all these birds....why not just identify and count them instead? And so the CBC phenomenon began.

Each CBC is made up of a circle 24 km in diameter, and as many birders as possible spend the day combing as many habitats as possible looking for birds.While there are lots of good areas within this count circle the largest and main natural system is the greater Rondeau Bay and Rondeau Provincial Park complex and adjacent area. Although the name of this count is officially the Blenheim CBC, without the Rondeau Bay/Park and adjacent areas it would have less spectacular results.

The Rondeau/Blenheim CBC began in 1939, making it one of the longest running counts in Ontario. Some in Ontario began much earlier, however, including the Toronto one which began in either that first year of 1900 or very shortly afterwards.

Since 1939, the Rondeau/Blenheim count has totalled approximately 186 species, including three which have only been seen during the count period but not on the count day. This total includes 34 species of waterfowl, 14 species of shorebirds, 11 species of gulls, and 5 species of warblers, among others.

In the last decade and a half, we have averaged well over 100 species recorded on the day of the count, with a high of 115 achieved three times, This count is regularly in the top three counts in Ontario and except for some counts along the lower BC coast, often ranks in the top 5-6 in all of Canada.

There have been some rarities over that period, not surprisingly. Some of the most unusual species include: Pomarine Jaeger, American Avocet, Western Sandpiper, Purple Sandpiper, Red Phalarope, Barn Owl, Black-backed Woodpecker, Three-toed Woodpecker, Boreal Chickadee, Varied Thrush, Sage Thrasher, Spotted Towhee and Harris's Sparrow.

With that as a setting for the upcoming Blenheim/Rondeau CBC, and with the count period  now here, I spent part of today roaming around parts of the count circle to see what I could see and document, just in case some of those species go missing on the day of the count.

I checked out Erieau. With very little ice and milder temperatures once again, birds are spread out. There are a lot of ducks on the bay. Not a lot out on the lake. The Erieau harbour area had a few, including both scaup, Bufflehead, Redhead, Canvasback, Red-breasted Merganser, Common Merganser, Mallard, Black, Common Goldeneye and Ruddy Duck. I also noted a Horned Grebe, down from the several dozen that have been there in the last few weeks, and a single Double-crested Cormorant.

Greater Scaup

Greater (l) and Lesser (r) Scaup

 The head of the Greater Scaup is lower and more rounded than that of the Lesser Scaup, which also shows a bit more of slight peak on the top of its head.

Horned Grebe

Redhead

If you look closely at this Redhead you may notice the filament line wrapped around the base of its bill and hanging out the side of its bill. I'm not sure if there is anything in the duck's mouth, but it looks slightly askew, so it may have attempted to swallow something. It appeared active and healthy, but undoubtedly this bird will have challenges feeding, so is likely doomed.

While I was looking across the main slip from the edge, I saw a Snowy Owl on the rocks surrounding the area where the fish tugs moor. I was just getting ready to get a photo when a fish tug came in and the owl moved off. Fortunately it didn't go too far, although it wasn't as obvious a location in which to photograph it. Can you see it in this next photo?

If you look carefully, it is in the centre and partly obscured by a leafless shrub. Fortunately I was able to drive around to where the fish tugs tie up, and was able to get a clear, albeit distant, shot of it perched on the rocks.

There were a few other people that came by while I was watching.

I didn't go into Rondeau. It is the last day of the deer herd reduction, a management process that is necessary to keep the deer population down to the level where it doesn't damage the forest. A few years ago the winter population was about 600 animals, and they were starving. Some just sat down and died in the coldest weather. Since there are no natural predators (historically there would have been black bears, wolves and possibly cougars), unless some kind of control is carried out, the deer population will grow to the point where they will eat themselves out of house and home! Not to mention the damage that is done to the forest. But beginning tomorrow (Saturday, Dec 13), the park will be open again....just in time for the CBC!

I decided to check out Clear Creek Forest, since I hadn't been there for several weeks. There are some big trees there, some of which are leaning, and I was hoping they didn't go down in the wind storm of a few weeks ago.

Fortunately all seemed well. There was the occasional dead ash tree that splintered and broke off, but most of the forest looked good. The winds weren't likely as strong there as they were closer to Chatham where there is no forest cover to break the force of the wind.

 This monster American Beech, in spite of its lean, looked as solid as ever, as did the other trees large and small.

The floodplain and along Clear Creek. The water was running, but most of the creek had a thin layer of ice.

I checked the Ridgetown Sewage Lagoon on the return. It was getting even duller out. The ponds on the south side of the road were frozen and not a bird was seen in them. A flock of about 200 Canada Geese were feeding in the cornfield south of that. The ponds on the north side were partially open, and there were several hundred ducks, mostly Mallard and Black. But no geese of any kind were visible. Hopefully the Snows and Greater White-fronts aren't too far away. The next photo shows three white phase Lesser Snow Geese on the berm of the lagoons, taken a few days ago, while Tundra Swans and Canada Geese are in the water or on the berm.

A bird that we would like to get on this CBC is one that I photographed on the C-K side of the Thames River near Lighthouse Cove a few days ago. Aaron Charbonneau had seen it on Dec 8. I got back from my meeting at Wallaceburg in time to scoot out and photograph it at the end of the next day. It is only the second time I have seen a Great Egret in December.....the first time was a couple of decades ago in my territory near Wheatley for the Pt. Pelee CBC.

This egret is sitting within the count circle for the St. Clair NWA CBC, which I compile, and is scheduled for Jan 1. Maybe if the present weather pattern holds until then, we will record it for that count. Time will tell....

Rondeau Rambles, Shoreline Shambles

Late fall is a great time to roam around a forest. It is easily one of my favourite times to visit Rondeau, as there is hardly another soul around at all, so it feels like I have the entire place to myself.  The various walking trails and closed off roads give many options to explore. I have been there several times in the last couple of weeks.

Harrison Trail

One can really see much farther into the forest, with the leaves that used to 'clutter' the view now all piled on the forest floor, continuing the decomposition process to provide nutrients which next year's growth will benefit from. The accumulated leaf litter also provides some insulation benefits to the various organisms, large and small, which spend the winter at or under the ground level.

These open conditions also give one the ability to see the diversity of tree sizes. There are some quite large trees scattered throughout the park......not as big as they would have been at the time of settlement, but quite big by today's standards. Some of these are decent examples of Old Growth Forest, a highly endangered type of forest. Old Growth characteristics include big trees, but that is just one of many characteristics. I plan to do a special blog or two in the future on Old Growth Forest.

This first image shows a Sugar Maple that measures approximately 107 cm in diameter.

This next image shows a large Red Oak, measuring ~102 cm diameter. It is literally right on the trail, with the edge of the South Point Trail showing at the lower right hand corner of the photo. This tree is well beyond the normal range of Red Oak at Rondeau, where it is generally more common towards the east side of the park than this far into the forest. It has been damaged by the wind.....you can see a large branch that blew off in the last few months.

This next image is of one of the largest Tulip Trees in the park. It measures 125 cm diameter. It is along the closed off (to vehicles) section of Rondeau Road, north of Gardiner Ave. The dark vertical line indicates that it was damaged, likely by lightning, at some point, but other than that, it seemed to be fairly healthy.

This next image shows what is left of one of the trees that used to be well known as one of the largest trees in Rondeau. It is a Sycamore, and was affectionately known as Big Syc to those of us working at Rondeau in the 1970s. It measured a whopping 167 cm diameter. It died in about 1969, and fell over in 1972. Nonetheless, even in its gradually decomposing state more than 40 years later, it is an impressive size. It is located approximately 400 metres south of Bennett Ave and less than 100 metres west of the closed section of Rondeau Road.

The hiking trails are also worth visiting at this time of year. I wanted to check Tulip Tree Trail for several reasons, but before I did, I always stop to see what is hanging around the feeders at the Visitor Centre. It varies from one visit to another. Pine Siskins are relatively abundant this year. They travel in small flocks, and sometimes you don't see any and other times more than 50 can be in the feeder area.

Pine Siskin

 American Tree Sparrows are typically seen throughout.

Am Tree Sparrow

 Chickadees are always a crowd pleaser. This year, however, they seem to be less common than some years.

Black-capped Chickadee

 Blue Jays are often around.

 House Finches used to be more plentiful than what they seem to be these days. They are not native to eastern North America, but were accidentally released several decades ago from a captive population along the east coast, and have gradually been working their way back west from whence they came. I believe it was about 1978 when they first started showing up in the Niagara area.

House Finch (male)

 Red-bellied Woodpecker numbers have fluctuated over the decades. They were quite uncommon as recently as the mid 1970s, but have become well established as permanent residents across southern Ontario since then.

Red-bellied Woodpecker (female)

 A migratory species present here mainly in spring and fall is the White-crowned Sparrow. They are much less common in winter, and non-existent in southern Ontario in the summer.

White-crowned Sparrow (immature)

 White-throated Sparrows are aptly named!

Birds aren't the only ones to visit feeders.

I eventually got onto the Tulip Tree Trail. One of my favourite spots is along the big section of boardwalk at the west side of the trail. I've always enjoyed this upturned mossy tree root.

In the wake of some of the most severe wind we've experienced for quite awhile, there has been some storm damage not surprisingly. The ash trees that were killed by the Emerald Ash Borer are quite brittle, and snap easily. It begs the question: if one of these trees fell in the forest, would it have made a sound? I think the answer is probably no, in this case, as the howl of the 100 km/hr wind through the trees likely was much greater than any sound of a falling tree trunk :-).

Fortunately most of the ones that snapped off and blew over were relatively small diameter ones, and although they created a tangle of broken branches at ground level, didn't damage the boardwalks nearly as much as they might have if they had been large trees. Nonetheless, getting across some of the boardwalks on the trails involved a little creative hiking.

The evidence of the major storm was in existence along the northeast side of Rondeau Bay. There had been a fair bit of aquatic vegetation growth in the bay this past year. Typically the vegetation starts to break up during the fall, so with the wind and wave action these last few weeks, much of it piled up along the northeast side of the bay. Hundreds of ducks, geese and gulls have sometimes been seen resting and feeding on this island of vegetation. This image was taken from the bay side boat launch.

Storm damage was quite severe along the exposed shoreline at the south end of Rondeau. There is no ice along the shoreline, so the waves that during the peak of the windy conditions measure 2 metres high or more, did considerable damage in spots.

I enjoy getting out to roam along the shoreline during the worst of conditions, if I can do it safely. I like to bundle up and feel the power of the wind, and watch the power of the waves as they crash ashore. These are the conditions that result in the most dramatic changes to the immediate landscape, and ultimately shape the park's physical base. The shoreline is altered, trees come down and are sometimes moved considerable distances from where they used to stand. Beech trees become beached trees. The shapes and shadows of yesterday's forest denizens are forever altered on these dynamic landscapes. November and March are typically the two windiest months of the year, and that was certainly the case during part of this past November. This first image isn't of a beech tree, but a Silver Maple. When it first started to grow, it was well back from the shoreline in a slough. It likes to have its 'feet' wet. But over the years, the shoreline gradually moved north, throwing sand farther and farther into the forest and slough formation, until it seemed to be growing out of the sandy beach. And then this November, the relentless wave action caused it to tumble down, and now it has more than its feet wet. For a short while, this fallen tree will provide some protection to the sandy beach as the waves crash against the solid trunk rather than the much more mobile grains of sand. But eventually the waves will win out, and the tree trunk will be moved elsewhere or decompose where it currently rests.

This bench used to be a nice safe distance from the shoreline. In fact there was a road bed between it and the shoreline, remnants of a paved access for vehicles as recently as the 1970s. The high water of that era caused the road system to fail, and so it was closed to vehicles, but still available to hikers and cyclists. It is only a matter of time until this bench tumbles into the water, as another bench did on the east side of the park in November of 2013. One can sit on this bench now and dangle one's feet into the waves (I did, just after taking this photos) as they continue their erosive action.

Unless there is enough ice along the beach, sand movement takes place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is always perceived as a 'problem' to those who like to live along these dynamic shorelines. As a result, historically, structures were placed perpendicular to the shoreline to trap sand as it moved along the shoreline, to provide some level of protection to the immediate area. The bigger problem is that when you take sand out of the shoreline movement system and cause it to stabilize one area, the energy of the waves will take even more sand from areas that are unprotected, causing greater damage to landowners in that proximity.

On a much greater scale, some of the erosion problems that Rondeau has experienced over the last century or more is a direct result of the existence of the Erieau pier. At one time, it was thought that Rondeau Bay would be a great natural harbour for shipping. But the entrance to the harbour kept filling in. So the Erieau Pier was constructed in the 1800s.

Before that time, the lake side of the Erieau peninsula was more or less in line with the south beach of Rondeau, separated from time to time by the harbour entrance which was kept open by the natural flushing action of water exiting Rondeau Bay.

The following image is one I took in April, 1989.

It is quite obvious that the two sides do not line up any more...the area on the west (left) side of the pier has trapped a significant amount of sand (which is largely the basis for Laverne Kelly Memorial Park). As the water slows down to get around the extended pier, it drops its sand load. After it gets around and resumes its velocity, it picks up sand and either carries it farther along the shoreline or, if the wave action is such, it will crash on shore and wash the sand over the beach and into the bay or marsh on the other side. A coastal engineer in the 1970s determined that from approximately the mid 1930s to the mid 1970s, the south beach of Rondeau had 'migrated' northward into the bay a total of 550 feet as a result of this!

The area east of the channel and pier is not even remotely lined up with the Laverne Kelly Park beach. And since the time this photo was taken, there has been more sand deposited at LKMP and the space between the rocky breakwall and the south beach of Rondeau has increased.....just ask any boater who has been around for that long.

What kind of bird is this.....are you sure?

I've been a little behind in posting this. It all started about a week ago, when I posted some shots of swans and geese taken in the fields of the former Dover Township, between Chatham and Lake St. Clair. A couple of shots showed what I determined to be a juvenile Ross's Goose. The photos weren't definitive, but in combination with what I saw in addition to the photos, I was convinced (and still am) that it was a Ross's Goose.

A former MNR colleague who specializes in, amongst other things, northern geese and swans, sent me a message making some comments on it. I wanted to get some additional photos to be more definitive, and indicated that I would be going out again to see what I could find.

This past Wednesday, December 3, I returned to the scene. However things had changed in the several days between visits. Once the corn fields were harvested, farmers set about to plow or disc them. So instead of the 15 or so fields I had seen on Nov 28 with swans and sometimes other assorted waterfowl. the choices were limited. I only saw 3 fields with swans, although one was in fine condition and had upwards of 1000 birds. This was right along Belle Rose Line, a bit east of St. Clair NWA.

I looked and looked over the swans, but did not see any small white goose.

It was quite windy, and small flocks of swans were arriving steadily while I watched.

But after awhile, I decided to see if there were other fields harbouring my target small white goose. So I moved on.

As mentioned, there were only a couple of other fields with swans, and even then only a few, so I didn't have any greater success at those fields.

But I did notice other white birds.....Snowy Owls.

One field alone had three Snowies, with yet a fourth only a few hundred metres away across the small creek. Yet another field well away from this concentration had another individual. All were sitting tight close to the ground. Perhaps the very windy conditions caused them to sit low and tight, and I likely missed others.

None of them were as close as I wanted them to be....they never are! While I was watching one individual, it got up and flew a short distance farther into the corn stubble, heading into the sun. I got a record shot, but the light was poor as was the angle of shooting from the car.

Eventually, I decided to meander on back to the main field of swans. The days are just too short! And there were even more birds arriving. Usually at the end of the day, swans that have been feeding in the fields return to the lake to spend the night. But presumably the 40-60 km/hour winds were keeping the lake surface a bit riled up, and so the swans were heading inland for the night.

I watched and watched, and was about to pack up and head for home. The sun had already set, as one can see from the slightly rosy hue on the swans in the previous photo.

And then a small group of swans arrived, with a small white goose with black wing tips out in front!

This is a fairly heavily cropped photo, and again, one can see the pink in the sky indicating the lateness of the afternoon. The fading light made it more challenging to get the photo I was hoping for. To keep the shutter speed to an acceptable level of 1/640 sec, I had to shoot wide open at about f/4 and with an ISO of either 800 or 1600, certainly higher than I normally like on this particular camera body (7D). But at least they landed more or less in front of me, so I got some more distant shots which I could, and did, crop.

Clearly this was a different bird than the juvenile bird I had seen the previous week. This clean white bird is obviously an adult. It is small enough for a Ross's Goose. There is no 'grinning' patch on the bill, although it may not be really obvious from these two photos. The bluish base of the bill also fits Ross's Goose. The only thing that doesn't fit well for Ross's is the longer beak and more sloped forehead than one would expect. It isn't always easy to get all the salient features well represented in a photo. Ideally one needs to study the bird from different angles, especially when the characteristics don't fit nicely.

I sent three of the photos to a former MNR colleague, who has a Ph. D involving waterfowl, especially geese, of the far north. He in turn sent it to another former MNR colleague, who is an excellent field biologist and birder. He also sent it to another Ph. D. researcher with the American Museum of Natural History, who specializes in Snow Geese of the northern latitudes. I also sent it to another former MNR colleague who did his Ph. D. in researching geese both in the northern latitudes and also on their wintering ground. Two of the aforementioned individuals spent many years as the waterfowl biologist with Moosonee District. So clearly all of these gentlemen had a lot of first hand experience with this species and any other goose species of the northern latitudes.

It took a couple of days to get the responses, hence this post is a little later arriving on my blog than I would normally plan.

Their responses were interesting. They ranged from:
-clearly a hybrid between Ross's Goose and Lesser Snow Goose
-definitely a Ross's Goose
-strongly would consider it being a Lesser Snow Goose

In the face of the varied opinions of these experts, and they are very much experts, it pointed out something that I've known for quite some time: viewing one or two photos, if they don't illustrate all the important and therefore clinching features, makes it difficult to be 100% certain of a bird's identity. One needs to study a bird first hand to really get a true feeling of how a bird behaves and how it looks from various angles.

So what do I conclude?

Being the only person to have seen this bird in real life and under better conditions that the two photos show, I do feel that it shows a lot of Ross's Goose characteristics: the very small size (less than half the size of a swan), the lack of a grinning patch and the bluish base to the bill all nicely fit Ross's Goose (I saw several white Snow Geese just yesterday at Ridgetown Sewage Lagoon, and they were definitely larger and the grinning patch was evident even from a distance). However, and herein lies the difficulty in declaring it a pure Ross's Goose, this bird also shows some characteristics that don't fit, primarily the longer bill and more sloped forehead. A 'good' Ross's Goose has a stubbier bill, and a more abrupt forehead, not a sloping one.

Therefore, this bird is almost guaranteed to have some Snow Goose genes in its heritage, but there is no way of telling how many generations one has to go back to determine when that happened. And it is possible that those genes came into the mix on more than one occasion. Snow Geese and Ross's Geese are known to hybridize, so overall it isn't surprising that this bird shows some traits of both.

So there you have it....I think one can safely say this bird is a hybrid.

'Snowy' White Friday

Not being a strong advocate of the commercial madness associated with Black Friday, I decided to roam around the back roads of the former Dover Township, in Chatham-Kent for a bit this afternoon to see what I could scare up. It turned out to be a Snowy White Friday instead, which was fine by me.

Although it is relatively early in the season, there has been another invasion of Snowy Owls in southwestern Ontario, and it may turn out better than even last year. In the winter of 2013-2014, there were huge numbers of Snowy Owls, but they were much more abundant in eastern Ontario and even as far east as Newfoundland. Apparently the productivity of Snowy Owls in northern Quebec was massive. Productivity is heavily dependent on the amount of food available, since some of the courtship behaviour to stimulate breeding is the number of young lemmings or voles that the male will bring to the female. I saw a photo of a nest from northern Quebec from the 2013 breeding season that had more than 70 lemmings lined up all around the nest! The abundance of food resulted in the superabundance of owls that fledged causing a major southern invasion that fall, since there was likely not enough food on the breeding ground to sustain the large population of owls all winter.

Apparently the Snowy Owls that arrive in extreme southwestern Ontario are not from northern Quebec, but from either north or west of Hudson Bay, so although we had a good number of birds, it paled in comparison to the numbers reported farther east.

Maybe this is the year for us in the southwest. There have been 2-3 in the Rondeau/Erieau area, there were 9 in the vicinity of the Sarnia airport as well as others west of Wallaceburg, all in the last few days. In my roaming around a small part of Dover today for a couple of hours, I came across 4, and there were likely more.

The first one was on a pole right along Bear Line, just north of Angler Line. These are easy to see, even against a grey cloudy sky.

Another was almost a kilometer back off the road, sitting on a pipe contraption. Even with a 700 mm lens, this photo had to be heavily cropped just to see the bird. It would be easy to miss, and I undoubtedly did miss others that were in a challenging location to see.

And there were lots of roads I didn't travel either. Also this time of year, they are occasionally seen perched on duck blinds or other suitable sites out along the edge of the lake. I saw one from Mitchell's Bay, perched on a small island closer to Walpole Island than the Ontario mainland. The fourth bird was sitting well out in a recently harvested corn field in the northeast corner of the intersection of the Jacob Sideroad and Maple Line, and only visible with binoculars.

There were lots of other white birds as well. Tundra Swans were scattered all over the place. I saw probably at least 15 different fields with these huge swans resting or feeding in. Some fields had only a few dozen birds, but a few had several hundred, along with Canada Geese. And there were always several flocks visible in the air.

While I was driving slowly by one field, a very small goose caught my eye as it emerged from behind a swan. I got a quick look through binoculars, and then grabbed the camera. This particular group of birds were much more skittish than any others I looked at, and the bird of greatest interest to me got caught up in the flight and so I managed only a couple of quick shots.

Ross's Goose and Tundra Swan

Ross's Goose, tail view

Unfortunately the photos themselves are not conclusive, but in combination with what I saw through the binoculars at first, I am quite sure this is a juvenile, white phase Ross's Goose, which is relatively rare. The bill was very small and stubby and didn't appear to have a 'grin' patch. Overall the bird was extremely tiny.....I almost didn't even see it. According to the Sibley Guide, a Tundra Swan is about 53" total length. A Snow Goose, which is very similar to a Ross's and more common, is at least 28" in total length, or more than half the length of a swan. By comparison, Ross's Goose is about 23" in total length, which is much less than half the length of a swan. In looking at the first image I have posted, comparing the goose to the swan, it is evident that the goose is quite small, and to my eye, much less than half the size of the swan right beside it.

All in all, it was a very fine snowy white Friday.