Shorebirding at Presqu’ile Provincial Park

Baird’s Sandpiper

On August 26th I joined Eastern Ontario Birding’s trip to Presqu’ile Provincial Park. The owner of EOB, Jon, is a friend of mine and got more than he bargained for when he agreed to pick me up at 5:30 am – as soon as he pulled up in front of my house a police car pulled up beside him to ask if he knew anything about a complaint that had been called in. Jon told the officer he was there to pick up a friend to go birding, and the police officer told him that he believed him (the eBird sticker on his car probably hadn’t gone unnoticed, and lent credibility to his statement). The police car drove off just as I was heading out the door, but we saw it stop with two other cruisers on Grassy Plains. Emerald Meadows is a quiet neighbourhood, and I certainly didn’t hear anything at 4:30 in the morning, but it made for a strange start to the day.

Sweltering August Heat

Blue Dasher

The August long weekend is here, and it’s been brutally hot and humid. Temperatures have reached as high as 32°C with a humidex of 41. It didn’t feel quite so hot yesterday, but today was awful. The sun was relentless, and there was no cooling breeze to provide relief. Being in the shade helped, but even so, I didn’t feel like staying out for very long.

We haven’t had much rain in the last month, so the water levels of the Ottawa River have dropped and mudflats are developing in Shirley’s Bay and Ottawa Beach. I wanted to look for shorebirds, but Shirley’s Bay didn’t sound too appealing – a long mosquito-infested walk through the woods to get to the dyke, which is almost completely open to the baking sun – all the while carrying a scope that sometimes feels like it weighs as much as I do. So yesterday I drove over to Andrew Haydon Park instead.

Hiatus

It’s been a long time.

I didn’t mean to take a break from blogging, let alone such a long one, but I realized that except for my post about owl baiting, I haven’t posted anything in almost a year.

A YEAR.

I guess it started when I fell behind after our trip to Costa Rica. I’d also been sleeping badly, waking up ridiculously early no matter what time I went to bed. This past winter, I was waking up around 4:00 and feeling tired all day. I couldn’t concentrate, and kept forgetting things. I was starting to make mistakes at work. My mental state was permanently foggy – it was like when you get out of bed with only half an eye open and when you get in the shower you can’t remember if you just shampooed your hair or conditioned it so you start over. Worse, I can’t have caffeine, so chugging coffee or energy drinks was out. Eight o’clock or ten o’clock, it made no difference what time I went to sleep – I was awake again by 4:00 or 4:30. I work full time, and blogging was the last thing on my mind even though I kept going out on weekends and taking photos. I have to confess, some days I didn’t even much feel like going birding.

At some point I realized I wasn’t just tired, I was exhausted. When I went to my doctor to get an allergy shot one day in June, I left my jacket there and had to go get it at lunch time. Only then did I tell my doctor how I’ve been feeling. She immediately changed my sleeping pill prescription, and after a few months, I’m feeling like myself again.

My desire to blog hasn’t really come back, so I’m going to start with the present and work backward and see how far I get. I’ve got some lovely photos from Drumheller (Alberta), Las Vegas, Nova Scotia, and southern Ontario I want to share. I may not quite remember all the stories that go with them, so my posts might be shorter than usual, but hopefully I will be able to get on track – and stay on track.

Herons etc.

Black-crowned Night Heron (sub-adult)

During the August long weekend I visited the Eagleson storm water ponds a couple of times to check out the shorebird habitat – the southern pond is starting to dry up, leaving a huge swath of the smelly, muddy pond bottom exposed. The usual Spotted Sandpipers and Killdeer were present, but at least four Lesser Yellowlegs, one Greater Yellowlegs, and five Least Sandpipers had joined them. It’s still early in shorebird migration, so I expect the diversity will increase as the season progresses.

The number of herons hunting at the ponds has also increased lately, which is typical this time of year as the birds disperse from their breeding grounds to look for good feeding areas. At least two Great Blue Herons, two Great Egrets, and three Black-crowned Night Herons are around; I haven’t seen any Green Herons yet so far, but expect they will show up shortly. Because there are so many herons here, and because they perch and feed out in the open, they make excellent targets of study; I shouldn’t be surprised that they are starting to draw the attention of local photographers. I ran into one this weekend specifically to photograph the egrets and herons; doubtless there are others.

Post Breeding Dispersal

Eastern Kingbird

On the first day of the long weekend I decided to look for odonates at Mud Lake. Specifically, I wanted to find some spreadwings, Fragile Forktails, darners, big river clubtails, or Swift River Cruisers, as I hadn’t seen any of these yet this season. I ended up seeing a couple of Slender Spreadwings, a few skimmer species, one big river clubtail perching on a rock in the river (likely a Black-shouldered Spinyleg), and little else in the way of odes. Unfortunately my best dragonfly of the day turned out to the first one of the day, a skimmer that flew in from the lake, landed, and hung from a leaf about two feet above my head. I could only see the underside and I registered only two things: that it had large coloured patches on the hindwings, and that it appeared red. My first thought was that it was a Calico Pennant, but the spots didn’t look quite right, and the dragonfly seemed larger than a Calico Pennant. I moved around the shrub to get a view of it from the top, but the dragonfly flew off before I could get a photo or even a better look. Only later did I wonder if it was a saddlebags of some sort, or perhaps even a Widow Skimmer whose colours I’d misjudged. I’m not sure what it was, but I really regretted not getting a photo or better look.

Chipper says Hello!

I have four chipmunks now visiting my yard looking for food dropped from the bird feeder. At first I was only aware of three, one of which has a shorter tail than the others, and only two of which will run up to the back door when I open it and call them over (they know I keep the good stuff inside). Then a few weeks ago I noticed three chipmunks with long tails, although they don’t all come at the same time.

One day I noticed this chipmunk in my back garden, standing on its hind legs while munching on my pansy flowers. The pansies are situated just in front of the bird bath and do much better out back than they do in my front garden – they have been blooming profusely since May. (The ones in my front garden died only a few weeks after planting – remind me to never plant them out front again.) I tried to take some photos of the chipmunk standing up and eating the flowers, but they didn’t turn out so well.

However, I did manage to snap the shutter in time to get this photo:

Eastern Chipmunk

I went out and put some pile of bird seed on the small retaining wall, and the chipmunk disappeared until I was gone. Then it came back out to feed.

Eastern Chipmunk

It has a much shorter tail than my short-tailed Chippy, and it looks much more ragged – as though it was freshly broken off, and none too cleanly. I am not sure whether my short-tailed chipmunk had its tail further shortened, or whether this is one of my regular long-tailed ones. I’ll have to keep an eye out on the weekends and see.