Plants, Snakes, Butterflies, Bugs, and ... Birds

Invasive patch of Phramites in the dense Cattail Marsh of Point Pelee

It funny how cyclical birding can be. Year after year, give or take a few days or weather patterns, you have this cyclical repetition in nature...So predictable, you can literally ask ... "Whats in season this week?" Its amazing though. Last year on the last weekend of September, I had an amazing day on the marsh boardwalk, and this past week...So quiet (1 GBH and 2 Wood ducks)!

I left the marsh boardwalk noticing (maybe for the first time) a large patch of invasive Phragmites in the marsh. I always seem to smile if I drive by a ditch or highway edge and see native cat-tails and conversely, I get bothered to see phragmites knowing how invasive it is. I was alarmed to see this patch of phragmites in the middle of the marsh. It would be cool if Point Pelee could burn off this small patch before it gets larger... I'm not a botanist/ecologist so maybe I need not worry about it.

The last two weeks have yielded few noteworthy birds. I have been bringing my son with me out birding though, so maybe I'm a little more distracted or unable to really cover all the ground I'd like. I think this photo above is of a Philadelphia Vireo.

Another highlight from Pelee was this Peregrine Falcon perched on some driftwood along East Tip beach near sparrow field. Raptors were everywhere overhead. My time at pelee this weekend was very short, and sadly, I didn't connect with too many of the rarities that had been seen.

Baby Fox Snake

At Holiday Beach this past Friday, I almost stepped on this small earthworm-sized Fox Snake. I had thought momentarily that I might have photographed a Massassauga Rattlesnake, but that would be impossible. They are extirpated from Southwestern Ontario with the exception of a few that are very localized at Ojibway Park. Cool to still see this fox snake. I felt bad though, shortly after seeing this one, I found another one down the road that had been run over by a car. A road-killed garter snake was also seen along with a dead Monarch caterpillar. [***Bonus: Guide for the confusingly similar Fox, Massassauga and Water Snakes of Ontario] Butterflies have been depressingly absent this year as usual, but a dimorphic pair of Eastern Commas were very cooperative along with a Tailed Blue and Bronze Copper.

 Closer to home, I was looking at Checkered Skippers again near my work and amazingly a Cicada landed on me! Don't get me wrong, I'm not one to pick up bugs but I must say I was amused and took this self-portrait with this bug on my pants.
 

Cicada

 A Greater Angle-Wing Katydid was crossing the sidewalk this evening while my son drove his jeep to the park. Amazingly, my son's Power-Wheels Jeep ran direcly over this bug leaving it to see another day. This Katydid is responsible for the Click-Click-Click sound one hears emanating from trees during late summer nights in Southwestern Ontario [range map]. This brilliant leaf-mimick is almost impossible to find unless it perches on a house, door, car or sidewalk in this case.

Greater Angle-Wing Katydid

Good birding!
Dwaynejava
Bonus Footage (baby fox snake on youtube--- This is not me :-)  ):

Late May Birding - Whimbrel at Hillman Marsh

 

The last week or two have been busy with work and life, so its been a while since my last posting. I've enjoyed watching a Robin's Nest outside my front window, and watching humingbirds visit my hummingbird feeder in my back yard. Occasionally while I'm outside, (perhaps BBQ'ing) I am sometimes blasted by the song of a chipping sparrow on my neighbor's roof!

Three new Peregrine Falcons at the bridge...

I've also looked for some local breeders at Ojibway Park but things seem to be a little late this year. I only saw (and heard) my first Indigo Bunting on Wednesday this week. The falcons at the bridge have nested again and have three fledglings. Always neat to stop by and see them. 

I was informed that there was a Black-headed Gull at Wheatley this week, so I tried on Thursday to go find it. I figured if I missed the target bird, I should find something interesting at the Hillman Shorebird Cell.

While driving into Wheatly from the 401, I drove past Two Creeks Conservation Area and noticed a Bluebird Perched on a wire. I'm still amazed by bluebirds. They are rare to me... I might only see them a few times in a year. (Note: I just noticed on the link to Two Creeks Conservation Area... they used one of my warbler photos without asking me! I recognize that Bay-Breasted Warbler!)

At Wheatley Marina, I arrived to find hundreds of gulls and shorebirds on the beach, and just as I was walking around a sand dune to get better looks, a woman with a dog flushed every single gull... I saw many black headed gulls, but did not convincingly see a Black-headed Gull.  I found myself confused looking at the various gulls. I was assuming the Black-headed Gull would be a breeding-plumaged male, with a dark-red bill and a crescent-shaped white eye-ring. No such luck, but I did get breathtaking looks at Ruddy Turnstones and breeding plumaged Semipalmated Sandpipers.
  

I figured I would try the Hillman Marsh Shorebird Cell to see if anything good was around, and to my amazement, there were 23 Whimbrel! I had just done a very brief count and quickly ontbirded my finding with a conservative count of 15 birds. Jeremy Bensette and Rick had just arrived as I was leaving, and they did a better study than I did. (I only had 20 minutes there). Another cool bird seen was a treetop flycatcher, probably a Willow or Alder Flycatcher. I found myself on that path to the shorebird viewing platform, hearing a raspy flycatcher call, but being unable to find the tree it was perched on. I must have spent a minute trying to find the bird, and just when I found it, I bolted! Alder Flycatcher would still be a lifer for me.

I just can't seem to get a good photo of Whimbrel!

DESIRED OFO & SUMMER TRIPS

I wanted to go to the Carden Alvar Trip this year, but I screwed up the dates!?!?! Reading the trip report by Jean Iron was painful, as they had three potential lifers (Golden-winged Warbler, Vesper and Grasshopper Sparrows)... but I guess I will try again for next year.  Even Ivana (my wife) felt bad ... She has encouraged me to go to Skunk's Misery OFO Trip this weekend. Perhaps seeing an Acadian Flycatcher will be a consolation. I also wanted to go to the Napanee Trip, but getting there is almost logistically impossible from Windsor if one is unable to take time off work.

Two other trips that I'm thinking about are a Sisters Oregon Woodpecker festival in mid June. This weekend features almost every Western Woodpecker (11 species), including Williamson's Sapsucker and Lewis's and White-headed Woodpeckers. One blogger had 70 species on a scouting tour of the area, 20 of which would be lifers.  ... I think I would die of happiness attending this festival. Another dream trip would be the Gulf-Coast States... Where Scissor-tailed Flycatchers are common summer breeders.

Good birding!
Dwayne

A local radio-tower field often has Bobolinks, Meadowlarks and Savannah Sparrows

Windsor's Peregrine Falcon Fledglings & Venus Eclipse

Fredie & Voltaire

Not much happening bird-wise this week. I've had a few brief walks at Ojibway, but the 6 Peregrine Falcons at the bridge are the big story. According to Patrick from the Canadian Peregrine Foundation, here are some names/stats for the four new Peregrine Fledglings (summer 2012):

Name	Colour Band	Band ID
Viper (female)	Blue Band	23/W
Twitter (female)	Yellow Band	S/23
General Brock (male)	Red Band	22/V
Eddy (?)	Green Band	S/24

 

What a difference a day makes

This next four or so photos are taken over the span of a week (May 28 to June 6th). Soon they will be learning how to fly, hunt and perform aerial displays at the foot of the ambassador bridge. Six Falcons? Very Cool!

May 28th

May 31st

June 5th  - Twitter (yellow) & General Brock (red)

June 7th - Viper (blue)

It was pretty cool to see 6 Peregrine Falcons today while standing next to the bridge in Windsor. Twitter & General Brock have started flying and are perched about while their parents try to feed all four fledglings.

Twitter dropped part of a dead bird, so parent has to go pick it up.

I feel strange calling one of the meanest, fastest most fearsome birds on earth "twitter". LOL. I read somewhere recently that Falcons are closer (genetically) to Parrots than to Hawks.  Strange no?


A quick walk at the Ojbiway Prairie had nice looks at Baltimore Checkerspots & Orchard Orioles among others. The Baltimore Checkerspot was in the exact same spot I saw it last year! Other birds seen at Ojibway this week are Eastern Towhee, Northern Flicker, Field Sparrows, Indigo Buntings, plus you most common and basic birds. I'm saddened not to see any Eastern Bluebirds. Usually I hear and see them easily at this time of year.

This summer, I will try to pay more attention to Skippers and Hairstreaks. I have a butterfly guide now!

The tiny Least Skipper. Least only in name.

Here is a cool video about Peregrine Falcons and how they kill their prey:




I'd love to go out to Hamilton to see the breeding Prairie Warblers, but I just do not have the time.  I might save seeing a Prairie Warbler for retirement...

Good birding!
Dwayne

Raymond Barlow shot this incredible photo of a Peregrine Falcon. You owe it to yourself to check it out:

http://www.pbase.com/raymondjbarlow/image/142337407

 Or Jerry Peltier's once in a lifetime photo of a Peregrine Falcon destroying a blue-jay in mid air.http://www.mybirdingplace.com/details.php?pic_id=3338



Bonus: Venus Eclipse!

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hinode spacecraft captured this stunning view of the transit of Venus.

They Come in Threes

My last horrah of my Christmas vacation took place last Friday with a trip out to Point Pelee in search of White Winged Crossbills. Where are they??? :-)  I did see a three pack of Owls (Great Grey, Snowy and Screech) along with a three-pack of Falcons (Merlin, American Kestrel and the resident Bridge Peregrines) in my futile search for the Crossbills.

It was 50 degrees (F) out (Jan 6th) and sunny. Not much was seen at Point Pelee bird wise with the exception of some Red Breasted Mergansers at the tip. The tip of Point Pelee is really eroded!!! Its really up to the PPNP staff to figure this out, but I think foot-traffic along the 3'-4' erosion wall near the tip is a bad idea. As people approach this ledge, the wall seems to crumble due to the predominate sand content in the soil there.

I reluctantly stopped for 5 minutes at the GGOW site on the way to PPNP and got a chance to see Rick, my birding friend from Leamington. Check out this photo below of the GGOW. It crossed the road on McCain side road at one point, just 1'-2'  above the roadway. The GGOW has evolved its senses to hear lemmings under snow, but not to deal with a Chevy barreling down the road at 60km. Lets hope he makes it!

 

I met some birders today looking for Short-eared Owls out in the county. These guys from Virginia knew about birding hotspots in the county that took me almost three years to find out about. They told me that Northern Shrikes were seen yesterday in a location not far from the GGOW. My search for them today netted some Eastern Bluebirds and an obliging Merlin. American Kestrels were seen in a few places, but this one near the Onion Fields was not as shy as the others. The Snowy Owl above was also seen in the Onion Fields near Rd 19 and Rd D. Point Pelee was very quiet... a few Red Breasted Mergansers near the tip, a few Horned Larks in the onion fields but not much else was seen.

 

Merlin is really the star of this posting. I rarely see them. Kestrels are easy enough to find out in the county, although they can be very camera shy. I got home thinking it would be cool to see a Peregrine Falcon to make a "Falcon Hat-trick" (for the day) but I was thinking that the few people who read this blog would not really care if I did or not. Then it dawned on me that I needed to go to Canadian Tire (near the bridge) to pick something up anyway... So there you go... Falcon Three-Pack.

Good Birding,
Dwaynejava

Peregrine Progress v2

Not much new happening lately. I've visited the bridge area in west Windsor for the last few days and have had a chance to see the flightless, downy Peregrine chicks molt into large, beautifully feathered fledglings. The shots above are of "Lady Gaga" (aka X/64).  She was on a two-storey apartment building next to the bridge. I was only about 20m away on a porch next to the building she was perched on, and I was able to use a tree as a blind. This bird was trying to sleep, but kept getting harassed by an angry Robin! What a brave mommy Robin!

 This is Spitfire (R/11). He's not flying as well as Lady Gaga, so its easy to see him perched on a low ledge on the bridge. He's stretching, napping and eating food from his parents... working up the confidence to start flying.

How cool to be in a mid-city environment and see Peregrine Falcons flying overhead with food in their talons, perched on telephone wires, and being harassed in trees by Robins and Blue Jays (see photo below).

Some butterflies seen lately include Dreamy Duskywing, Southern Coudywing, Silver spotted Skipper, which I spotted while going on an Ojibway walk, looking for Northern Bobwhite which was reported earlier this week.

Good birding,
Dwaynejava

Dreamy Duskywing has metallic purple flecks in its forewing and has greatly extended mouthparts that are diagnostic.

Peregrine Falcons at the Bridge V2

 

 Today's paper had an article about two new baby falcons that have hatched at the bridge in Windsor (Lady Gaga and Spitfire). I couldn't help but stop by tonight while going for a riverside walk with the family.  I'm thinking CPF stands for Canadian Peregrine Foundation?

 Could the photo below be a Peregrine Falcon with a baby Owl? I wish the falcons would eat some of the abundant Starlings around... but who am I to tell these raptors what to eat? Any guesses on what he/she has?

Good birding!
Dwaynejava

 More photos from Wednesday...

 

 The sexual dimorphism of raptors usually has the female as the larger of the two. That hints that the one on the right side is the male. This is on the steeple of Assumption Church next to the bridge. The fledgling above is probably 'Lady Gaga' as the sibling seemed to be smaller and weaker in behind her.