Of floods and falcons and other spring adventures
May 3rd, 2017

It's been a weird, wet, interesting spring.

In early April I made the traditional Ottawa birder's trek out to Cobb's Creek floodplain, near Bourget. Each spring Cobb's Creek floods and turns the surrounding fields into a shallow lake, attracting migrant waterfowl. I went twice, first solo and a few days later with Mike. On my solo trip I found the water mostly iced over, although that didn't dissuade the tens of thousands of Snow Geese! Few ducks to be seen, though.

I decided to go hiking down the old railbed trail. Not far down I found a long-tailed, light gray bird, singing away. Its song was a rather random-sounding series of phrases, some repeated. Well, I figured I knew what that had to be: my first Ontario mockingbird! I see mockingbirds galore whenever I visit my parents in the southern states, but it was still exciting to see one close to home, where they are quite rare.

But then I twigged to something...what was with that dark streak through the eye? Mockingbird doesn't have that. Then the "mockingbird" flew and alit on another tree in much better lighting, flicking its tail, and my mistake became clear. Black mask, hooked bill, faintly barred breast: not a mockingbird but a Northern Shrike. Though this was not an Ontario first, it was just as exciting, simply because I'd never found a shrike singing before. Shrikes are oddities of evolution, carnivorous songbirds that actually catch and eat other birds (and rodents.) Lacking sharp talons to hold onto their prey, they have developed the grisly habit of impaling it on barbed wire or a thorny branch. Chickadees dread them. It seemed so surreal for this fierce raptor (well, pseudo-raptor) to be singing cheerily!

A few days later I went back with Mike, and all was changed. The ice was off the water, and the water had swelled to become the most impressive flood I'd ever seen. It actually had waves. It had positively overshot the water level preferred by dabbling ducks, so again, there were few to be seen. Instead of duck-watching we ended up muskrat-watching! Hard to believe how many of them were paddling around in there.

In mid-April, around the time when Michael and I were contending with our flooding basement window well, I went hiking at Shirley's Bay and came to a spot where the river had simply swallowed the trail whole. Rubber boots would not have sufficed, hip-waders may have sufficed, but frankly, I'd put my money on a canoe. So I turned back, but not before having seen a wealth of migrant birds, including the largest group of Rusty Blackbirds that I'd ever found in spring. Rusties are grackle-like blackbirds (but smaller and shorter-tailed) who forage for food on swampy, flooded ground. Is it a coincidence that this is the spring when I see my biggest spring group of Rusties ever? I doubt it.

At the end of April, we hiked the Rideau from Billings Bridge to Hog's Back Falls and back. Highlights included a male Red-Breasted Merganser acting surprisingly pair-bonded with a female Common Merganser, and a Double-Crested Cormorant in resplendent breeding plumage, with an all-over indigo sheen and a gular pouch so strikingly yellow it looked painted. (Cormorants only look like that for a short time each year. In fact, seeing this bird made me realize that much of what I admired about the Great Cormorants in Cape Breton was due to finding them at peak season, and not due to their particular species.)

But the big highlight came near Billings Bridge, as we were walking back through the park lawn and a long-tailed light gray bird flew into a bush, flashing white wing patches. "I'm pretty sure that was a mockingbird," I told Mike.

"You're kidding," he said.

Since I had recent experience of mistaking a shrike for a mockingbird, I didn't want to be cavalier. So we waited patiently until the bird finally flew out, perched in a tree, and gave us a good look. There was then no question. Ontario-first Northern Mockingbird, for real this time! I reported it on Ontbirds, and about an hour later, it had been re-found by Paul Mirsky. Two others reported it early the next morning. This was exciting for me, as I don't often get to be a first finder of rarities, and the last time I was (the European Goldfinch at my feeder in 2015), the bird split before anyone other than me and my husband got a chance to enjoy it.

That brings me to this morning at Mud Lake, where I found the trail flooded in places it has never flooded before. (This is going to end eventually, right? We're not going to need an ark?) It was a cold morning with very few spring migrants to be seen, but one sighting from Cassels Road made my day by itself. All the Red-Winged Blackbirds in the vicinity began making alarm calls, and then a large raptor swooped in and started circling. When you see a raptor flying over Mud Lake you expect a Cooper's Hawk or an Osprey, maybe a Merlin (a small falcon) if you're lucky. This bird was definitely a falcon by shape, but it outsized any Merlin and had the thick black sideburns of the Merlin's more famous relative, Peregrine Falcon! And now that it was overhead the blackbirds were making sounds like I had never heard them make. (If you are familiar with the redwing's usual piercing alarm call, imagine that, but furtive and muted instead of piercing, with a certain "oh shit" quality about it.)

Then it actually went into a stoop: it dove down at the water, veering up at the last minute. But I couldn't see anything there that it would have been stooping at. Maybe a young falcon practicing its moves?

Coming soon, rain with more rain and a side of rain. And coming hopefully after all that is over with, my big four-day trip to Point Pelee with Jon Ruddy.

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