The artistic prize may have been yesterday's subject, but here's the birder's
prize:
This redpoll's (mostly) unstreaked white rump, minimal flank streaking, tiny
bill and overall "frosty" appearance all mark her as a rare Hoary
Redpoll. While Common Redpolls are birds of the boreal forest and tundra
scrub, Hoary Redpolls breed in the treeless high arctic. Even in a "redpoll
winter", like this one, only a few of them ever make it as far south as
Ottawa. This was my second-ever sighting of the species.
Redpolls in Ottawa have burgeoned again. I was amazed and delighted by the
sheer numbers of them at Shirley's Bay this afternoon, teeming around the
three nyjer feeders. And so tame. They do startle easily--but return to
feeding within seconds of the startle. I got hundreds of photos as the sun
peeked in and out of the clouds. I'll share the best of them over the next few
days.
The prizes, at least artistically, are the ones with significant amounts of
red on their breasts. Right now they're a small minority. (There will be more
of them as spring approaches.) So I was thrilled when I managed to get a
quality portrait of this guy:
I saw this fellow romping with his owner in the newly-fallen snow at the
arboretum, and couldn't resist taking a few pictures. He looked like he was
having the time of his life.
These "video portraits" by Music of Nature are simply breathtaking. I could
take stills from any one of them and call them excellent photographs--the
video quality is that good. Add to that the beautifully captured birdsong and
it's a feast for the senses.
I also can't imagine how they captured some of this, with the more
bashful and secretive species. I mean really: Henslow's Sparrow? What's next,
footage of a unicorn?
Here are my favorites (besides the Winter Wren embedded above):
Time for the last few stragglers, and the final triplist.
The Carolina Wren is
a common year-round wren in Virginia. It's a bolder species than the bashful
Winter Wren, and often found close to human habitation. This one was in a
neighbor's front yard.
Hermit Thrush in my
parents' back yard. Each year (if I visit) I find a few of these guys
wintering in the brushy woods behind the house. This visit, though, was the
first time I'd ever heard a Hermit Thrush sing in winter! It was more
disjointed than their summer song, and very soft, as if coming from
afar--though the singer was actually about ten feet away from me.
The Red-Shouldered
Hawk is a buteo: a
short-tailed hawk. The most well-known North American bird in that category is
the Red-Tailed Hawk. It favors open land whereas the Red-Shouldered Hawk
favors forests. In Ottawa, the Red-Shouldered Hawk is thought of as a rare and
reclusive bird, found only in true wilderness. (The endangered Leitrim
Wetlands, a remnant tract of mature forest in the south end, is one place
where they've been known to breed.) I've never seen one here.
Oddly enough, I had a grand total of six Red-Shouldered Hawk sightings on this
trip, and zero Red-Tailed Hawks! This species is clearly more common in
Richmond than I realized, and in winter it comes out of the forests (some of
them do, anyway) and readily dwells in developed areas. One individual seemed
to be spending the season in the vicinity of Deerfield Drive.
I was shooting into the sun here. But I think the silhouetted flight photo is
kind of compelling.
Tufted
Titmice are in the tit family along with chickadees, and they are indeed
very chickadee-like: hyperactive, acrobatic, intelligent, alert,
similar-sounding (chickadees go "chicka-dee-dee-dee", titmice go
"chicka-jay-jay-jay")...and last but not least, cute as anything.
When I was a kid, there was a tree in our front yard that our cat, Ebony,
liked to rest under. One summer it was also the tree in which a mockingbird
nested. She ran him ragged. It got to where Ebony would just come out on the
front porch and the mother would preemptively dive-bomb him. Mockingbirds are
not the timid sorts.
This is the single most common woodpecker in Virginia--at least judging by my
experience. And I see them as often in the suburbs as in deep woods. Their
call is a hoarse rattle that carries far and wide.
You can see a hint of this bird's eponymous feature in the first picture. I
think it would be better named "Neon Woodpecker" though--the color of its red
cap is of such a hue and brightness that it looks fluorescent to me.
The Red-Headed Woodpecker is less common and is considered threatened in some
areas. I rarely see them in the suburbs, but Pocahontas Park is a good place
to find them, especially in winter. They love the tall mature trees there.
Their habit of staying way up in said tall trees makes them tricky to
photograph.
Like the previous species, this one is quite rare in Ottawa (we're at the
northern tip of its range), but we do have one known breeding pair at
Constance Bay.
I've had several people tell me that they thought the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
was a "joke" bird--a funny name that someone made up. (Says one website, "it
sounds like an insult Yosemite Sam might sling at Bugs Bunny.") It's a real
bird, and it really has a yellow belly (yellow-ish anyway), and it really eats
sap. It's a type of woodpecker that uses its chisel bill to drill rows of
small holes in trees, then it licks up the sap that wells out. The pictured
bird is a female; males have a bright red chin in addition to the red crown.
Sapsuckers are skilled at getting sap to flow abundantly. (It's
not as easy as it may sound.) And their skills are important to other
birds too. Hummingbirds are attracted to sapsucker holes. They lick up the
sweet sap for food to tide them over until the flowers start blooming.
Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers are considered common breeders in our area, but I
usually only see them in migration--they don't breed in central,
easily-accessible places like Mud Lake. I expect the Gatineau is a good place
to find them in summer. In Virginia in winter, though, they are downright
suburbanites: I even saw one in the holly tree in my parents' front yard.