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| Raven wing prints. |
I believe I always will love birds.
"On every vernal morning a wave of robin-song rises on the Atlantic Coast to hail the coming day, and so , preceding the rising sun, rolls across the land until at last it breaks upon the distant shores of the Pacific Ocean." Forbush quote.
Bird songs are one way of identifying birds. Two little flycatchers look almost exactly alike, but the Alder says 'witch brew' and the Least says 'che BEC'.
Colour or shade is another way. An unknown poet described the Blackburnian Warbler as it sat high atop a tree: " All the fire of all the sunsets Blazing, flashing in thy flaming breast.
Watching birds can be enjoyed singularly, in pairs or in a small group; from your home or office window, your vehicle or on foot; locally or in the wilderness; on land or on water.
Most books show the usual look of a bird. However, birds molt and morph, eclipse and have phases, are immature and juvenile, and have first year and mating plumage. And if that's not frustrating enough, extreme weather and courting rituals can dramatically change their profile.
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| Peregrine Falcon box for recovery of species in Northern Ontario. |
The birds in books, over the decades, look the same whether standing, perching, flying or in silhouette. Their name have altered, such as , Sparrow Hawk to Kestrel; Pigeon Hawk to Merlin; Duck Hawk to Peregrine; and Marsh Hawk to Harrier. Ranges have gone from geographic terms to maps with migration progression, such as where they are found on April 1st, May 1st, and June 1st. You can use range maps to see if a species is supposed to be in your area.
Birds are also described as abundant, common, uncommon and rare. They also add casual, accidental, extirpated and extinct.
Cincinnati Zoo, 2 P.M., EST, September 1, 1914, a bird died.
The last Passenger Pigeon, out of an estimated population of 1,115,136,000 was gone, but not forgotten... it is listed in the 1991 Thunder Bay Field Naturalists' Checklist of Birds for the Thunder Bay District.
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| The Eagles on the Lagoon ice. |
The hiking trail to Sawmill Point is a Bird watcher's bonanza during the spring and fall migrations. My neighbour has counted nearly 200 species just from daily walks. When the Nipigon River is low the sandbars entice shorebirds to rest on the flights north and south. If the river is high a trip to Hurkett Cove Conservation area and a brief slosh along the shore could reward you with a vision of Tundra Swans and Sandhill Cranes, many plovers and sandpipers as well as ducks unlimited. The Nipigon Marina has a gaggle of geese. Each Spring, while the ice melts, the Lagoon holds a convocation of Eagles. The Red Rock Marina hosts an exaltation of horned larks just before the snow flies; you could see a paddling of ducks on your way to Five Mile Park on Lake Helen to view a gulp of Cormorants. The Cameron Falls Road could have a descent of woodpeckers; up the Tower Road one might find a sedge of Bitterns; during your Blueberry Blast berry picking you may see a boil of Hawks.
I like collective nouns and have made a couple of my own: a scatter of Redpolls and, a creep of Juncos.
A birdwatcher never seems to run out of things to do. As a citizen scientist you can undertake to research and record your observations of bird habits, numbers and migrations. Or, you can just watch birds for your own amusement and exercise.
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| Downy woodpecker and chick. |
In 1900 ornithologist Frank Chapman asked birders across North America to go out on Christmas Day and count the birds in their home towns and submit the results as the first "Christmas Bird Census". Now 50,000 birders do it each year.
In 1994, 22 people counted birds in the first Christmas Census in Nipigon and Red Rock. We counted 3,786 birds with a total of 39 species. 1,182 Red Polls and 961 Evening Grosbeaks (that's the yellow ones), padded that count. The next year we found 4 Red Polls and 22 Evening Grosbeaks. Taking part in this annual event can be as easy as counting birds out your home window or car, to as tough as snowshoeing, hiking, skiing or snowmobiling into the wilderness of our 24 km. diameter count circle. After sundown we gather for a pot luck supper and report our sightings and adventures. Results are published annually by the National Audubon Society.
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| Red-breasted Nuthatch. Very stiff-legged and aggressive when it takes seed. |
The goals of this project are to track changes in the distribution and abundance of feeder birds; to identify habitat features, types of feeders, and types of food that influence how often birds use feeders. Another goal is to track range expansion and introduced species.
It assists in monitoring diseases that affect bird, such as the flap of West Nile Virus in the Jay and Crow families. In the West they are tracking House Finch Disease, a mycoplasmal conjuntivitis, in the U.S. and Canada. Aviann Pox is another disease that affects House Finches. Bald birds are usually not diseased, they are just molting and for some unknown reason drop all their head feathers at once. For the last two years, 2010 and 2011, I have had a Blue Jay in this condition. at first it will only show up real early or real late, then after a few days it is right there with the rest of the family as its feathers grow in.
For the Feeder Watch project you feed and monitor the birds at the same site all season.
The Great Backyard Bird Count asks you to count the birds on one or all of four days in February, and then enter your tally on line.
As an individual you can keep a life List, a Year List, a Trip List or a Property List.
As a group, you can have a Big Day. That's when you see how many birds you can find in 24 hours, usually at the height of migration, with any number of participants, with no limit on the area, by any means of transportation and timed from midnight to midnight. Dead birds don't count. if you haven't the strength for the Big Day you can have a Big Morning and stop at noon.
Roundup is a combined list of all species recorded by independent groups within a given area in a single day, usually in April or May.
Waterfowl Census is on a given day in Mid-winter.
Hawk Watch is on a designated day in Fall.
Luna Count is done by moon watchers on the night of the full moon.
I have a list I call 'A Bird in the Hand". A list of species I have fed on or by hand.
- Pigeon
- Starling
Canada Jay on her nest. She could see from her nest when
we opened the door and threw out bread. - Canada Jay
- Chickadee
- Evening Grosbeak
- Pine Grosbeak
- Red Poll
- Pine Sisken
- Red-breasted Nuthatch
- Purple Finch
- Junco
- Downy Woodpecker
- Raven
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| Black -capped Chickadee, always in motion. |
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| Pine Grosbeaks . |
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| Raven on roof. |
In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring, " As the habit of killing grows - the resort to 'eradicating' any creature that may annoy or inconvenience us - birds are more and more finding themselves direct target of poisons rather than incidental ones"
Incidental -such as the valley in a far western state that spread poisoned grain out in the fields to kill mice and 3000 migrating geese dropped dead.
The hundreds of thousands of incidental kills have become millions of direct target killings.
Two point five million Blackbirds in Texas in one year. Five hundred thousand in one day in Texas, were killed with DRC-1339, a killing agent that also kills non-target seed eating species of birds. DRC-1339 was developed in the 1960's. It is a non-persistent organochlorine pesticide. It kills birds by shutting down their kidney and liver functions.
Between 1974 and 1992 perhaps hundreds of millions of Blackbirds died as a result of spraying industrial detergent, 'Tergitol", on the roosting flocks in the Eastern and South-Eastern U.S.. This makes the feathers 'un-waterproof' and the birds die of Hypothermia. These were mixed species of Blackbirds that were being so treated. In Kentucky and Tennessee, over an eight year period they killed 28 million birds.
In the spring of 1994, South Dakota used DRC-1339 to kill nearly a million Blackbirds. This proved ineffective, so, beginning in the spring of 2002, the USDA planned to poison up to 2 million Red-winged Blackbirds a year for three years. Seventy percent of the birds affected by this program would have been on their migration to Canada. the idea was to thin down the breeding stock. Fortunately this program was put on hold. They wanted to study on it .( a problem with body disposal). What was all this about? It was all about protecting South Dakota's sunflower crops that were being raised for birdseed.
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| The sunflower fields. |
Don't feel smug!
Pierre Mineau has fought for sixteen years to get an insecticide banned that has killed hundreds of thousands of birds across Canada. Carbofuran. It kills by destroying the victim's nervous system. a supervised corn-field study showed 45 species of birds were killed. Based on that data, Mineau estimated up to three hundred thousand adult birds were poisoned in Southern Ontario cornfields between 1980 and 1985.
In December 1998 the Federal Government of Canada deregistered the Granular form of Carbofuran. Liquid Carbofuran is still registered for use on potato, corn and sugar beet crops in Canada.
Where am I going?
In true Perry Mason style, I am getting to the fact that we live in the Boreal Forest, and it has just been discovered, after 10,000 years, that billions of songbirds breed here. Swimming and wading birds also rely on the bogs, fens and lakes of this region of Canada.
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| A ruffed grouse on nest. |
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| A nest in the Blueberry bushes. |
Data on Boreal birds are sketchy and rely mainly on southern fringe surveys. From this little bit of data they have come up with :
- 40 species are declining at an annual rate, the most striking being a 10.7 % drop of Rusty Blackbirds.
- 40 species are rising in population, but at a very low rate of 1% or 2%.
The Canadian Boreal Initiative was formed in 2003, a project of the American Pew Charitable trusts. Also the Boreal Songbird Initiative of Seattle in conjunction with C.B.I. funded the Boreal Rendezvous which resulted in the cover-story of Canadian Geographic, Jan/Feb 2004:" The Singing Forest, Why Billions of Birds Need Canada's Boreal Woods." This is a report of a six-and-one-half-day paddle on the Churchill River in Saskatchewan, by Candace Savage. In nine pages she names one bird she saw, and their guide mistook a raft of Grebes for Coots. There are nice photos of Boreal birds but it doesn't seem clear that that photographer was actually on the trip with her.
A side article by Jodi Di Menna describes a new plan launched in December 2003, to preserve Canada's Boreal Forest. The framework agreement was put together by a coalition of Industrial Interests, First Nations and Conservation Groups.
Be Prepared!
This coalition calls for 300 million hectares of our Boreal Forest to be placed off-limits to forestry, oil and gas industries. The remaining 300 million hectares are to be managed under stringent sustainable-development practices.
Will we still be allowed to live here, in the southern fringes of the Boreal Forest, with our life sustaining forestry, hydro dams and electric power lines, and gas pipelines and mines?
All I can say is:
If the birds are being killed before they even reach Canada's Boreal Region, why blame our forests for not hatching the eggs?
This was a lecture I gave in 2004 to Rotary Club of Nipigon.
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