The autumn spectacle
November 13th, 2009
Male (right) and female Green-Winged Teal, wallpaper available
Andrew Haydon is birder mecca these days. 'Tis the season and the place for migrant waterfowl. One of the manmade ponds has attracted several dozen Scaup and a handful of Green-Winged Teal, and they, in turn, attract the folks with the multi-thousand-dollar lenses. Go down there on any good sunny morning, and you can see them lined up on the shore with their tripods and their insanely well-endowed cameras. And you might just see me and my humble Nikon D40 + 70-300mm lined up with them. These ducks are normally quite wild species, whom you wouldn't expect to mill peaceably around on a little pond in a recreational park. But there they are. So we don't waste the opportunity!
Scaup males are late going into eclipse and late coming out of it. They're handsome ducks in breeding plumage, but right now they look more or less like scaup females: which is to say, like balls of mud. Some of them have begun their molt out of eclipse, which means smudgy, unkempt balls of mud. Nevertheless, Every Bird Deserves Its Day. So I took pictures. And darned if they didn't manage to look handsome in spite of themselves.
More compelling for me were the teal. Teal are small dabbling ducks with striking, often beautiful plumage. Two species occur in our area, Blue-Winged and Green-Winged. Green-Winged is the prettier of the two!
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It was hard to fully appreciate them while I was focused on taking pictures, so I came back the next day with binoculars. They were still there, and I got my fill, watching them dabble in the mud from ten feet away. After awhile a photographer in full camouflage (overkill in this case) with what looked like a 400mm joined me. "I'm not used to this," he said. "Wildlife not being...well, wild."
He glanced over at the multi-thousand-dollar-lens people. "Suddenly I feel inadequate."
"I know the feeling," I replied. "My friends joke that I have a lens as long as their arm. No. That's as long as your arm."
Back on the Rideau, my winter friends, the Common Goldeneyes, have arrived in force! There were literally hundreds of them Wednesday morning, gathered in rafts all along the river from Hurdman to Cummings Bridge. Here's a small group of males at sunrise.
Brightening The Landscape
November 11th, 2009
Songbird migration is winding to a close. The focus now is on the wintering species--the year-round birds, plus the far-north "winter finches" who may wander into our area in search of food. A few minutes walk from Hurdman bus station, there's a set of feeders that gets put up every winter. It's one of the best, if not the best, bus-reachable winter birding hotspots in the city. Along with the ever-present goldfinches and chickadees, there are redpolls and siskins if they're in town, in 2007/08 the suet feeder sustained an overwintering Hermit Thrush (who, it was theorized, was unable to make his migration to the southern states due to injury), and in winter 2008/09, as you may remember if you've been following along here, the seed feeders drew in three Wild Turkeys!
The feeders aren't up yet. But I took some sunflower seeds there yesterday, sprinkled them on a log, and enjoyed the show. Chickadees (who began escorting me down the path as soon as I took the baggie out) were almost instantly whizzing back and forth, then came the delicate tapping sounds from all around as they perched in trees pecking the shells open. The cardinals (a mated pair) were much more cautious, slowly, quietly making their way over, hopping from perch to perch in the underbrush.
It's a harsh landscape out there right now, bare-branched and frost-scorched. It's nice to have cardinals around to brighten it up.
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Some goosy wallpapers
October 27th, 2009
Two shots of the Brant at Andrew Haydon Park, and one of a more familiar Canada Goose.
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Young Redwing
October 25th, 2009
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I photographed this juvenile male Red-Winged Blackbird back in late August. The rather cavernous feel of the backdrop is a fortunate optical illusion. In fact, the bird was maybe a foot above ground, and the surface behind him was a fallen tree.
I Spot My Prey
October 21st, 2009
There's a black and white cat I've been seeing at Mud Lake for years. Its behavior is entirely feral, yet somehow it survives the winters.
Although my forebrain realizes the cat is probably just afraid of me, there's always something a little unsettling about the intense looks I get when we cross paths...
A chickadee, and a wigeon in strange company
October 20th, 2009
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Another chickadee posing for the camera. I have to bring some sunflower seed next time I go to Mud Lake--they're starting to get cranky with me for not having any!
A female American Wigeon with a taste for exotic men :-) (Those are male Mallards flanking her).
Common birds get their day
October 19th, 2009
The lighting was unusual on this one...it came out looking as if I'd taken the chickadee indoors for a portrait.
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There were about five hundred robins today and one Hermit Thrush. I eventually gave up on the Hermit Thrush (he's called "hermit" for a reason) and focused my camera on one of the robins. I liked the way the fall leaves called out his brick-red breast, and vice versa.
This was taken in the maple swamp area of Mud Lake. I photographed a robin in the same place back in April. It's a favorite spot for them.
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A Song Sparrow at Dick Bell Park.
Memories Of Summer
October 15th, 2009
I love autumn. I've loved it since I was a kid. The crisp air, the changing trees, gold and scarlet maple leaves piling up on forest paths. Still, I felt nostalgic looking through these photos I took in early August. Nowadays even the asters are going to seed, and alas, there is no such thing as a winter-blooming wildflower.
Black-Eyed Susan
Common Milkweed
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I call it "cormorant on jade." No digital editing, other than a slight contrast enhancement, nor is the location anything exotic. The Rideau River was just a neat color that day.
Sparrows are always tough to identify, and doubly tough in late summer when the fledglings come out. My best guess on this one is a young Chipping Sparrow.
St. John's Wort (center) and Viper's Bugloss (upper left.)
Fresh autumn Wood Ducks
October 12th, 2009
The pair of Wood Ducks stood out like delicate Fabergé eggs amidst the large, aggressive mallards.
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(Male near center, female on the far left.)
That one was taken just after a large pile of birdseed hit the ground--thus the rather purposeful look of the approaching mallards.
There is in all the world no work of art like nature's work of art: a male Wood Duck in his fresh, newly-grown autumn plumage.
Fall Migration, mid-October 2009
October 11th, 2009
Warbler migration has finally wound down. There will be a trickle for awhile yet, especially of the abundant Yellow-Rumped Warblers, but I didn't spot a single one today. Taking their places are increasingly large flocks of kinglets, juncos, and White-Throated Sparrows.
This brings me full circle. It was kinglet season last fall when I first bought my zoom lens and started photographing birds.
Thanks to the cold weather today, the tiny, hyperactive Golden-Crowned Kinglets were only moving at light speed as opposed to, say, ludicrous speed. This contributed to my obtaining my first decent, in-focus photograph of the species!
A male Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. That red bit is not a trick of the light--it is, in fact, a wee glimpse of the bird's usually-concealed red crown patch.
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