Porcupines on the Ground

Two weekends ago I spent my Saturday morning at the Old Quarry Trail. A part of the Stony Swamp Conservation Area, it is similar to Jack Pine Trail in habitat and species. I found 11 bird species in my 2 hours there, more species than I have seen in any of my recent walks at Jack Pine Trail. At the “Deer John” feeder area I found a single Mourning Dove, a singing American Robin, a White-breasted Nuthatch and numerous chickadees. Deeper in the woods I saw a Brown Creeper, a Pileated Woodpecker, another singing American Robin, a couple of cardinals, and several Red-breasted Nuthatches. A single American Goldfinch and several crows flew over, while back near the parking lot I heard a single Blue Jay.

Winter Wildlife at Jack Pine Trail

Black-backed Woodpecker

Jack Pine Trail in Stony Swamp is one of my favourite trails. I got a lifer there the first time I ever visited the trail back in June 2006 – a Virginia Rail – and many more since. Because of its mix of habitats, it is a good spot to view wildlife all year round; the trails cross several marshes, coniferous and deciduous forest, and even an open alvar-like area that hosts Field Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows in the summer. In the winter, the OFNC maintains a large bird feeder along the northern part of the trail, though this doesn’t prevent chickadees from approaching people for handouts. This is one of the best places in Ottawa to feed chickadees and nuthatches right from your hand.

Mid-Winter Birding

American Robin

Groundhog Day has come and gone, and we are still more than a month away from the spring equinox. This is the time of year when birding reaches its lowest ebb; the birds aren’t moving around very much, and migration is still weeks away. In Ottawa, February is the quietest month for birding, but there have been enough interesting reports to send me out each weekend looking for new year birds. I have added only five new birds to my year list so far this month, including a Common Merganser in the channel behind the Ridge at Mud Lake, and the over-wintering Hermit Thrush behind the Parliament buildings. After realizing just how short a walk Parliament Hill is from the building where I work, and how much potential there is for finding migrants there in season, I’ve made it a goal to spend more lunch hours there this spring.

Birds of Prey

It’s been a tough winter. Fortunately a mid-January thaw (referred to as “wintermission” by The Weather Network and virtually no one else) brought about a temporary rise in temperatures and spirits two weeks ago. I managed to remove the sheet of ice that covered my driveway as a result of the freezing rain we received earlier in the month, and have been able to walk on the sidewalks without fearing I might fall and injure my bones, joints or back. Unfortunately the thaw ended about a week ago, temperatures dropped, and winter returned. We got more snow last weekend, and this week the deep freeze returned.

Because the weekends have been either brutally cold or snowy and messy I have not been able to add many birds to my year list. It took me 15 days into the new year to add American Goldfinch to my list, when I found a group of four of them sitting in the tree next to the bus stop. That brought my year list up to 33, and I didn’t add another bird to it until the following Saturday when I found some Golden-crowned Kinglets at Sarsaparilla Trail.

Invasion of the Snowy Owls

Snowy Owl

It’s been said that this winter’s invasion of Snowy Owls is the greatest in 40 years. Large numbers have left the Arctic in search of a safe place to spend the winter; they have been found all across northeastern North America, from Newfoundland to the mid-western US states and even as far south as Florida. Bruce DiLabio, writer of the weekly bird column in the Ottawa Citizen, estimates there are at least 150 Snowy Owls in eastern Ontario alone.

There are two possible reasons for the extremely large movement of Snowy Owls this winter. The first is a scarcity of Arctic lemmings — one of their primary food sources – on their northern breeding grounds. The second is a population boom that has increased the number of birds competing in the same territories for the same food. I suspect it is the latter or a combination of both, for if there was a severe population collapse of lemmings we would probably see large numbers of other birds of prey heading south as well.

Unexpected Year Birds

American Robin

Sometimes the best outings occur when you go looking for one particular species but find something entirely different instead. With many of my coworkers still on holidays, things were quiet enough at work that I had enough time to go to Hurdman on my lunch break on Thursday and Billings Bridge on on Friday. With a year list of only 17 species after the first day, I was still missing several ducks, finches, and other common birds. I hoped to rectify this by spending some time along the Rideau River, even though it was still bitterly cold…Ottawa was stuck in a deep freeze that lasted three days, with the daytime temperatures reaching no higher than -23°C. Fortunately there was very little wind, which made the cold tolerable so long as I bundled up in numerous layers before heading out.

Ringing in the New Year

The first day of 2014 dawned bright and sunny, with a faint pink and peach hue to the pale blue morning sky. It was cold, too – bitterly cold. I left the house at 8:00 am with the temperature fluctuating between -24°C and -21°C, and although I was out until close to noon, it never really got any warmer.

New Year’s Sunrise

In the Depths of Winter

Brown Creeper

It has not been a great winter for birding so far. Although the Harlequin Ducks are still hanging out at Deschenes Rapids and a Varied Thrush has been reported somewhere near Pakenham / Arnprior, there have been no rarities in our area. Redpolls, crossbills and even Bohemian Waxwings are completely absent, and with the freeze-up of our local ponds and rivers (except for the rapids along the Ottawa and Rideau Rivers), most of the gulls and water birds have left. All that remains are our hardy year-round residents and the usual winter residents: American Tree Sparrows, Snow Buntings, Snowy Owls, Northern Shrike and the like.

The Golden-faced Charmer

Eastern Gray Squirrel

On the first Friday of December Anouk and I made plans to drive down to Kingston together to see a regionally rare Thick-billed Murre. Those plans fell through as an early morning report indicated that the bird was not present in the same spot it had been seen the previous two days; indeed, to my knowledge it was never seen subsequently again. We decided to remain in Ottawa instead, and had a pleasant day birding the city’s west end.

We started at Britannia Point to check the rapids for two male Harlequin Ducks. We found them fairly quickly, along with several Common Goldeneyes, some mallards, a Red-breasted Merganser, and some distant Common Mergansers hugging the Quebec shore.

A Nocturnal Visitor

On Thursday night, just as we were finishing dinner, I noticed my cat Phaedra staring out the patio door, all hunched up with her ears flattened as if she were about to pounce. She typically adopts this posture when watching the squirrels or chipmunks that come up onto our back deck looking for peanuts, but as it was fully dark out I realized that something else must have caught her attention. We have had raccoons come up to our back door at night before (once), but I didn’t think she would see a raccoon as potential prey. When I went over to look, I found this guy instead:

White-footed/Deer Mouse

It is either a White-footed Mouse or a Deer Mouse, both members of genus Peromyscus. These two species are almost impossible to tell apart unless you have one in your hand. Both are brown above and white below, a colour pattern that extends to the tail. Both have large ears which have little fur covering them and big, protruding eyes.

In Deer Mice, the two colours of the tail are sharply defined, while in White-footed Mice the line between the two is less distinct. Another characteristic which differentiates these two species is the length of the hind feet: Deer Mice generally have hind feet that are 22 mm or less, while White-footed Mice usually have hind feet 22 mm or more. The colour of the fur can also help distinguish these two species, however it is not a reliable trait as these two species have different geographic variations. In general the Deer Mouse has a richer, brownish or tawny pelage, whereas the White-footed Mouse tends to have a pelage that is more pinkish-buff or grayish, with scattered dark hairs.

Both of these mice are excellent climbers, and the White-footed Mouse is known to be a strong swimmer. Both species are commonly found occupying man-made structures such as barns, garages, storage sheds, and even houses. During the winter, the Deer Mouse often travels above-ground, which makes it vulnerable to nocturnal predators; their tiny skulls are one of the most common items found in regurgitated owl pellets.

The mouse appeared to be eating the red peanut skins that the squirrels had left behind earlier that day. I cracked open the door and took the below photo:

White-footed/Deer Mouse

It got spooked after that, then fled into the night. This was only the second time I’ve seen a mouse feeding in my yard; though Phaedra has been checking the back deck every night since, we haven’t seen it again. Hopefully it survived the cold weather and the snowstorm we had this weekend!