Saturday 29 November 2014

Eurasian Tree Sparrow and King Eider, also Photo Quiz Results

This morning I decided to get up good and early in Fergus and jet down to Niagara-on-the-Lake to see if I could spot the rare bird that has been making an appearance at someones front yard feeder.  So what is this rare bird you ask?  A Eurasian Tree Sparrow!  This species is not native to North America, and was introduced into the St. Louis area in 1870.  Unlike the pesky and invasive sister species, the House Sparrow, the Eurasian Tree Sparrow never really took off, and today it has populations mostly in Illinois.  From what I understand from talking to other birders, there are 8 records in Ontario, 4 of them from this year alone.  I arrived a little before 8am and got a prime watching spot in front of the house where the bird was seen.  Long story short, the bird appeared in the top of a nearby tree away from the feeders and I got a good look at it for 5-10 seconds before it vanished.  I was able to see clearly the black spots on the whitish cheeks which separate this species from House Sparrows.  Most other people seemed to have missed it and/or were too busy chatting! Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of it.  So overall a success, but I would have liked to see the bird for more than a few seconds after waiting for 2.5hrs!

The scene along Niagara Pkwy as birders wait to see the Eurasian Tree Sparrow
On the way home I checked Queen's Royal Park and also Port Weller marina where a King Eider had been spotted yesterday.  I found it as soon as I walked down to the shore and was thrilled to get great views of the bird as it swam towards me with a group of Common Mergansers.  I have seen females and young males before but never an adult male, so it was a real treat to see one so close!

One of the most beautiful ducks around, Adult Male King Eider!





Here are the bird photo quiz results from last week:
Bird #1: Wilson's Phalarope- Amherst Island
Bird #2- Golden Eagle- near Arthur
Bird#3- Bohemian Waxwing- Guelph Arboretum
Bird#4- Solitary Sandpiper- Strathroy sewage lagoons
Bird#5-Bald Eagle- Harrow
Bird#6- Canada Warbler- Waterloo

Congratulations to Benjamin Oldfield for getting 5(and a half) out of 6!

Thanks for playing and please play again!

Monday 24 November 2014

Random Stuff and Bird Photo Quiz

Well I have been very busy moving into the new condo this past week, so needless to say my posts have been few and far between (non-existent).  I am going through birding withdrawal.  On the way home from work today I spotted a Snow Goose out in a field with some Canada Geese.  It stuck out like a sore thumb and I pulled over to get some crappy record shots in the fading light.

I know what you're thinking, how was I able to capture an even worse shot of a snow goose?...pure skill

Just for fun I thought I would do a bird quiz with some of my less than optimal shots.  Feel free to guess in private or in the comments if you are brave enough.  Good luck!

Bird #1

Bird #2

Bird #3

Bird #4

Bird #5
Bird #6

Results will be revealed next posting.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Niagara River

I was down in the Niagara area this weekend but only had a couple of hours to bird the river.  This morning I started in Fort Erie and worked my way towards the falls, stopping occasionally to see what was on the water.



I didn't see anything unusual unfortunately but did get to see this distant pair of adult Peregrine Falcons perched on the rail bridge.

The far bird was eating some unfortunate bird, but I couldn't tell what.
A saw a few other raptors as well including an over eager Cooper's Hawk that repeatedly flew out over the river to try to catch the Bonaparte's Gulls flitting above the water.  Needless to say, the hawk was unsuccessful since it had neither the element of surprise or the speed to catch these nimble gulls!

Further along the river I spotted the same domestic goose as I saw back in December, I think he's going to make a go of it on the river for the winter!

Remember this face?  If anyone is missing a white farm goose near Fort Erie, it may be on the river!
Towards the falls I had a juvenile Bald Eagle floating lazily over the river, heading north, but no gulls of interest.  Gull numbers along the river still haven't built up yet, although there was a fair bit near the falls.  Next time I will have more time and I'm sure I will turn up something good!



Saturday 8 November 2014

Hamilton Saturday Birding

In light of the rare birds which have popped up in Hamilton the past week, I decided to drive down this morning to see what I could find!  In particular, I was after an Eared Grebe and a Red Knot, both seen within a few kilometres of one another near the Burlington Skyway Bridge.  I tried first for the Eared Grebe by the Canada Centre for Inland Waters and despite a half hour of searching and spotting numerous ducks and other waterfowl, I wasn't able to come up with it!  I am quite confident that it was not in the area when I searched, and it may have left for greener pastures.  I did however see many of the similar Horned Grebe.

Horned Grebe
After striking out with the Eared Grebe, I moved on to target number 2 for the day, the Red Knot. This species is an uncommon shorebird at any time of the spring or fall in Ontario, but it is almost unheard of this late into the fall.  I pulled into the very hard to find Redhill Valley Stormwater Pond, and after searching for a few minutes I eventually spotted it foraging in the company of a Killdeer! Very exciting, and bird species #246 for my Ontario year list, slowly creeping up to my target of 250! You can't see it from the photos, but this bird seems to have a tumour or some growth on it's rear end under the tail, which may explain why it is hanging around so late.  It should be well on it's way to a beautiful ocean coastline in the neotropics right about now!

Record shot of the Red Knot

 After this I quickly checked Van Wagner's Beach but was rewarded with only a few birds including Red-throated Loon, White-winged Scotors and a few other ducks.  As I was leaving, the forecasted rain began to fall, making it easier to peel myself away from the birds.


Tuesday 4 November 2014

Blast From the Past: The Craziest Road Trip of All Time


This is a story that is long overdue for this blog.  It all begins back in 2009 when I begin my Master's research studying the Monarch butterfly spring migration in the Norris Lab at the University of Guelph.  There is a lot of back story that I could tell you about how Ryan Norris and I came up with the research ideas, but long story short, we wanted to see if the Monarchs returning to Ontario were coming directly from the Mexican overwintering sites or if they were the offspring of these individuals born on the Gulf Coast and further north.  To test these we planned on using a relatively new technique called stable isotope analysis which involves comparing various isotopes (chemicals) in the wing of the monarchs to that in rainwater and milkweed.  Because these elements vary predictably by latitude, we can get a rough idea of where individual monarchs are born.

I hired a good friend of mine, Mike Brunet, after doing interviews for the job and realizing that there was no way that I was going to be able to tolerate or doom some random person to spending 3 months with me in a tent travelling across what would end up being half of North America.

Mike and I left Guelph in early May of 2009 with the primary of objective of collecting (killing) as many monarchs as possible in the U.S and Ontario.  I know this may sound barbaric, but it was ironically really important information for conserving this species, and countless monarchs are killed each year by cars, pesticides each year, so a few hundred would be inconsequential...so get off my back.

Here is our general route that Mike and I traveled, still shocks me that we covered this kind of ground, I figured around 44,000km in total.  This blog gives the Cole's Notes version of what was a very long trip.

We checked a few spots in Ontario, but didn't find any Monarchs.  This wasn't surprising, given the fact that only very few arrive in Ontario in May.

Mike on the lookout at a beach near Windsor, ON
We quickly left Ontario and dipped into Michigan, down through Indiana and into Kentucky by the third day.  We collected a fair bit of milkweed which was just barely out of the ground in Indiana.  Spring was late this year, and also extremely wet.  From Kentucky we headed west all the way to Kansas.

Kansas skyline
From Kansas we headed directly south through Oklahoma, probably our least favourite state. Although I'm not sure exactly why, we did find one nice state park to camp in here and I remember seeing lots of Summer Tanagers and Common Nighthawks flying over in the evening!  Most of our days would follow the same routine on this leg of the journey: collect as much milkweed/monarchs as possible and then find a park to camp at for the night.

State Park in Oklahoma
Mike eating his daily ration of a PB and Jam sandwich
From Oklahoma we headed further into America's deep south, all the way to Corpus Christi Texas! We collected lots of milkweed and camped at Padre Island National Seashore, a wonderful place with abundant bird life and fantastic scenery.  Being a grad student had never been better!

Black Terns, Common Terns and Laughing Gulls fill the air at Padre Island
Black Skimmers float by
Black Skimmer, one of my favourite birds of the trip
Padre Island at sunset
I felt bad that they allowed people to drive and camp right on the beach with their cars, but I couldn't really say anything...because we were camping there too.



From Corpus Christi, we headed west in the arid cattle lands of south-central Texas.  We collected milkweed as far west as Lost Maples State Park, a beautiful natural area, where I was able to see one of the most sought after birds in Texas, a Golden-cheeked Warbler!  Texas surprised me, the diversity of habitats and stunning vistas made this my favourite state of the entire trip!

Lost Maples State Park
Soon after, we quickly left Texas and made tracks eastwards through the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Beautiful property of a generous lady who let us stay at her house in Mississippi for a night
Snapping Turtle in Florida
Blackwater River State Forest
Dinner while we were camping was typically Campbell's Soup heated in a wood fire.  I'm not sure if this is the fire, but Mike scorched himself pulling a can of soup out of the fire and was rewarded with what looked like 3rd degree burns on his leg...a bad night for team Monarch.
Dinner- soup heated over a fire
From Florida we wound our way up from Florida, through Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and then back to Guelph to offload our milkweed samples.  At this point, June was rolling around, and we started our second big leg of our journey, which was to focus on capturing Monarchs in the Great Lakes.  We started in Ontario and made our way through Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, all the way to the Dakotas.

Monarchs must have known what we were up to, because they were really hard to come by in early June.  We were so desperate, that we chased down even the trickiest of Monarchs.  This one went across and nasty drainage ditch, so I plowed through it and captured it on the other side.  I threw these pants out.

Not so fast!
We had better luck once we got well into Michigan, and we hit the mother load in Wisconsin!  The first good field we found I got mild heat stroke chasing butterflies around in a field.
Lake Michigan sand dunes
After spending June in the Great Lake states, Mike and I headed back to Guelph with lots of Monarchs to be analyzed in our lab.

Collected monarchs.  Invaluable data to preserve this magnificent species
In July, we quickly re-grouped for the final leg of research along the eastern seaboard of the United States.  The goal here, to solve the mystery of where Monarchs east of the Appalachian Mountains come from.  We started in South Carolina and worked out way north to Maine.  We encountered abundant Monarchs in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Welcome to Virginia
Cutler Coast, Maine
After getting nearly as far east as New Brunswick, we had collected all the data that we needed, and Mike and I headed for home.  Tired, but satisfied after a successful research trip.  

We also made sure that the data was put to good use, with the publication of several journal articles.  The results were fascinating and showed that although most Monarchs arriving in Ontario in May and June are the first spring generation born on the Gulf Coast, a few make the entire trip from the Great Lakes to Mexico and back to the Great Lakes! An incredible journey for such a small creature.  Equally as fascinating was the discovery that Monarchs that arrive on the east coast of the US in July are predominantly the offspring of the Gulf Coast generation which laid eggs as they moved north in the spring.  These individuals hatched in the central US and migrated east across the Appalachian Mountains to the east coast!

Here are the articles in case you want the detailed story: