Color And Song
April 29th, 2009
Mud Lake is overflowing with color and song. First-of-spring sightings:
-
Great Crested Flycatcher
-
Gray Catbird
-
Warbling Vireo
- More
Ruby-Crowned Kinglets
than you can shake a stick at.
Ruby-Crowned Kinglets are a tiny bit less hyperactive than Golden-Crowned
Kinglets. The male's ruby crown is usually hidden. But when he gets excited
(due to a territorial dispute with another kinglet, for instance), his crown
feathers ruffle and the red appears, usually in a "blink and you miss it"
moment. When I get a focus on one of them, I rapid-fire and hope I manage to
capture that moment.
A Brown Thrasher in the early morning light. Along with mockingbirds and
catbirds, thrashers are
mimids. Their songs are
intricate and variable, and they are capable of imitating other birds. Thrashers
tend to be elusive when they're not singing.
Like other flycatchers, the Great Crested Flycatcher will perch in the open,
sally up to snatch the occasional flying insect, then drop back down. This
bird is known for the odd habit of including a shed snakeskin in its nest
lining. Naturalists theorize that it's a ruse for warding off predators.
An ungodly racket of angry crows announced this final bird, a juvenile
(first-year) female Cooper's Hawk. They chased her out of the woods and she
ended up perching practically right above me, looking nervously back at the
mob.
According to another birder who got there before me, she's mated to a mature
male and they're likely planning to nest at Mud Lake. He also claimed that,
when it all started, she was attempting to
hunt one of the crows! I
hadn't heard of a Cooper's Hawk (or indeed any hawk) being quite that
ambitious before. Presumably she's learned her lesson.
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River Angel
April 28th, 2009
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Ring-Billed Gull on the Rideau rapids near Carleton.
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A Flash Of Gold
April 27th, 2009
Our recent summery weather has opened the floodgates on songbird migration.
Yellow Warblers are
back. This beautiful bird is Ottawa's most common breeding warbler.
...and, I should add, I'm not the only one who is pleased with the influx of
songbirds:
That would be a Cooper's Hawk, a rapacious bird-eating raptor. (I photographed
her two close relatives, the smaller
Sharp-Shinned Hawk and the
king-size
Northern
Goshawk, earlier this year.) She was perched low at Hog's Back Park
scanning for prey, and didn't seem to mind or even deign to notice when I got
within ten feet of her.
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Redwing Nesting Grounds
April 24th, 2009
Found this lady in a reed bed by the Deschenes Rapids, inspecting potential
nesting grounds.
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I have a big soft spot for female Redwings. There are three reasons for this.
One if that I find them quite handsome, and I like the gentle expression of
their faces.
Two is that they, like their mates, are gutsy when it comes to protecting
their young. If you wander into Redwing nesting territory when there are eggs
about, beware. Those birds fluttering in your face are not attempting to give
you a friendly greeting.
And three is that when I first saw one of these, a couple years ago, I thought
it was something much rarer than it was. It's not commonly known that female
Red-Winged Blackbirds are neither black nor red-winged.
In the migration news,
Pine Warblers have
arrived and colonized the tall pines at Mud Lake, as they do each spring. This
is the first warbler species of the year, at least for me--several dozen more
yet to come! I also saw my first
Brown Thrasher today. I
have high hopes of showing off a good thrasher pic someday, Pine Warblers not
so much. They spend nearly all their time in the canopy.
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American Robin Portrait
April 21st, 2009
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A nice portrait shot, I thought, even if our still-mostly-bare trees didn't
make for much of a bokeh.
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Marsh Redwing
April 20th, 2009
I was surprised how painting-like this came out. It is, in fact, a nearly
unaltered photograph of a Red-Winged Blackbird, taken at the Dow's Lake marsh
last Wednesday.
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Iridescence
April 18th, 2009
Breeding starlings are so beautiful.
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A scoundrel of a bird
April 16th, 2009
I found another singing Brown-Headed Cowbird at Fletcher Wildlife Garden, this
time in their backyard garden and with camera in hand (me, not the bird.)
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"By human standards, the female cowbird is not only a born sneak but a
shiftless parasite as well. She builds no nest of her own but goes snooping
about the shrubbery until she locates one of another bird smaller and weaker
than herself; she lays her egg in it and goes merrily on her way, never
bothering to call around to see how her offspring is faring under the care of
its foster parents. And how does it get along? It gets along far too well, for
being larger than its fellow nestlings it gluttonously grabs most of the food
brought by the victimized parents. Because of its unfair advantage, the baby
cowbird is sometimes the only nestling to survive, the weaker ones being
suffocated or pushed out of the nest as the little monster gradually takes
over the entire space."
- http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnh/nature/nsbirds/bns0396.htm
There is also such a thing as a cowbird mafia.
Naturalists
have observed cases where a female will return to where she laid her egg.
If the egg is still there, all is well. If it isn't, she trashes the nest.
Dastardly birds, really. But pretty.
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Love And War
April 14th, 2009
'Tis the season to see interesting water birds at Dow's Lake.
Common
Mergansers all over the place, a few
Hooded
Mergansers, and a lone
Double-Crested
Cormorant sunning on a rock. Over at Fletcher Wildlife Garden, a male
Brown-Headed
Cowbird was singing at the edge of a field.
Some trivia:
- Mergansers: fish-eating diving ducks. ("Diving ducks" are ducks who
submerge all the way underwater when feeding.) All female mergansers have
shaggy orangeish-brown crests.
- Cormorants: Odd, rather prehistoric-looking black water birds, related to
pelicans. Unlike most water birds, their wings aren't waterproof, so they have
to stand in the sun and dry them off periodically.
- Brown-Headed Cowbird: A small blackbird that lays its eggs in other birds'
nests. The hosts then raise the young, sometimes at the expense of their own
chicks, unless they're smart enough to evict the foreign eggs on sight.
Historically Cowbirds followed the movements of bison, which is why they
didn't have time to nest on their own.
The marsh beside Dow's Lake is a favorite breeding ground for Red-Winged
Blackbirds. This evening I arrived there to find a flock of males making a
huge ruckus, flying around and
chacking. Periodically they would all
perch in one place,
chack like crazy, then take off again. I wondered
if they were harassing a raptor, and was particularly bewildered when the
scolding seemed to be directed at a spot in the reed bed, somewhere a hawk
wouldn't generally go.
Finally I found the culprit: a lone female Red-Winged Blackbird. She flew off,
pursued by nearly every male in sight, and took shelter in some underbrush at
the marsh edge, flicking her tail and looking only mildly perturbed.
Coming soon: baby Red-Winged Blackbirds!
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Bookends
April 12th, 2009
There was something magical about the light on Friday afternoon. Everything
seemed luminous. I found myself trying for shots that I wouldn't normally do:
leaves, moss, bare branches on blue sky. Even an old stump caught my
attention.
These two came out especially well, and they bookend nicely: last year's
leaves, and this year's spring shoots. The second picture was taken right next
to the Britannia Yacht Club, thus the old twine on the log.
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