Northumberland Christmas Bird Counts, 2011

Nature Notes for December 23, 2011

Last Saturday morning at about 7:30 a.m., I was along the Lakeshore west of Port Hope trying, with my team-mate, to count the incoming flocks of Canada Geese as they flew from the north towards Lake Ontario. A short time later, we had walked to the lake and were trying to identify and count the ducks. We were participating in the annual Christmas Bird Count.

Birders look forward to the Christmas season because of Christmas Bird Counts. We are now in the middle of the 112^th annual Christmas Bird Count season. These counts can be held any time from December 14 to January 5.

The idea grew out of a Victorian tradition of a Christmas hunt, when hunters would try to shoot as many animals and birds as possible. In 1900, Frank Chapman, an ornithologist from New York, suggested that perhaps it would be better just to count the birds.

That idea has grown to become continent wide. Each year, thousands of volunteers take to the field to try to tally all the birds that they see and hear in a specific area. It is the longest running Citizen Science project anywhere in the world.

Last weekend, I took part in two counts, the Port Hope-Cobourg one on Saturday and the Presqu’ile-Brighton one on Sunday.

This year, the lack of snow made it possible to walk anywhere. Some years, blizzards, deep snow and/or icy conditions make walking difficult. The two days of these counts were the coldest we have had so far this winter, but most bodies of water were still ice free.

The open conditions made it hard work to find birds. They could find food anywhere, so were not concentrated at backyard feeders or in the small open leads in ice covered lakes.

Because my husband is the compiler for the Port-Hope Cobourg count, I have access to details of this day. Thirty-eight observers, most members of Willow Beach Field Naturalists, participated.

They tallied a total of 18,386 birds of 77 species on count day, with an additional 8 species seen during count week.

Highlights included Common Loon, 1; Double-crested Cormorant, 1 count week; Snow Goose, 1: Wood Duck, 1; Gadwall, 6; American Wigeon, 1; Northern Pintail, 1; Green-winged Teal, 1; Black Scoter, 1; Ruddy Duck, 1; Bald Eagle, 1; Northern Goshawk, 1; Peregrine Falcon, 1 count week; American Coot, 1; Purple Sandpiper, 1; Snowy Owl, 1; Carolina Wren, 1 count week; Hermit Thrush, 2; Northern Mockingbird, 1; Chipping Sparrow, 1; White-crowned Sparrow, 1.

Record high numbers were counted of American Crow, 2,077; European Starling, 2,945; American Goldfinch, 999; Northern Flicker, 9.

Species tallied in low numbers included House Sparrow, 193; House Finch, 48; Snow Bunting, 7; Horned Lark, 2; Pileated Woodpecker, 3; Northern Harrier, 1; Common Goldeneye, 157.

Despite the long often cold days, birders enjoy these annual events because there is always the possibility of the unexpected sighting.

There was one interesting non-bird sighting, a fisher in the rural area of Port Hope. This large weasel seems to be returning to this area. fishers have huge territories and and are mainly nocturnal, so they are not often seen.

As this is the last column of 2011, I want to take this opportunity to wish my readers all the best for the holiday season and good birding in 2012.

Snowy Owls arrive in Southern Ontario

Nature Notes for December 9, 2011

Just when local birders were despairing about the dearth of interesting or unusual birds in the area, some turned up. In the last week of November, at least five Snowy Owls were reported from Presqu’ile. These were quickly followed by reports from Port Hope harbour, Cobourg harbour and Wicklow beach.

The Ontario Field Ornithologists’ listserv is reporting Snowies from all over southern Ontario.

On December 6, there was a large, dark Snowy Owl on the end of the west jetty on the Port Hope lakefront. The previous Sunday, there was a different one - much smaller and whiter - on the roof of a building just east of the Port Hope water treatment plant.

As with most raptors, female Snowy Owls are larger than males. As well, females are streaked with many dark bars. Adult males are completely white, although young males may have some faint barring.

When there is snow on the ground, these birds can be very difficult to see. Sometimes they look like a large lump of dirty snow. It’s not until they turn their heads to show their yellow eyes that they are recognized as a bird.

The white coloration is very good camouflage for a bird that nests in the Arctic tundra.

Their primary prey in the Arctic is lemmings. When the lemming population plummets, which it does on about a 4 year cycle, the owls are forced to leave the north in search of food. That’s when they turn up in our area.

In southern Ontario, there are no lemmings, so the owls switch to other food: mice, voles, rats, rabbits, smaller birds – essentially anything they can catch.

The breeding grounds are far enough north that, in summer, there is almost 24 hours of daylight. Therefore, it is not unusual to see these owls active during the day. If they winter in the Arctic, they also spend part of the year when they have to be active in darkness.

This species is one of many Arctic nesting birds that have a circumpolar range. That is, they occur in the north of Europe and Asia as well as North America.

Locally, they are often found along the waterfront. Perhaps those open, windy sites look to the birds like the tundra. They can be found in any open site and are often found in agricultural fields. They have also been found perched on utility poles, fence posts, barns and silos. In town, I’ve seen them perched on top of buildings. Several years ago, on the last irruption of Snowy Owls, I found one sheltering alongside the air conditioning unit atop the condos at Cobourg harbour. A number of years ago, I awoke to one perched on the chimney of the house of my back fence neighbour.

To date, this seems to be a good year for Snowy Owls in the south. It’s worth really looking at that lump of snow. It might turn out to be one of the visiting owls.

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The annual Christmas Bird Counts will be held before the next column appears. Port Hope-Cobourg’s count is on Saturday, December 17 and Presqu’ile-Brighton’s on Sunday, December 18.

Pomarine Jaeger in Cobourg Harbour

Nature Notes for November 25, 2011

                            Pomarine Jaeger, Cobourg Harbour. Photo© Bruce Parker.

There were two phone messages waiting for us when we arrived home for lunch. Both were about a Pomarine Jaeger which had been spotted in Cobourg Harbour in mid-morning. One message also said that the bird looked like “it was on its last legs”.

This was not an encouraging message.

The Ontario Field Ornithologists were having an outing that morning (November 13) which had included Cobourg Harbour. Ian Shanahan, the leader of the trip, had spotted this bird, a rare one for Ontario. Cell phones began to hum and soon the word was out into the birding community.

Pomarine Jaegers are marine birds which, at this date, should be out in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. They usually come to land only in the high Arctic in the breeding season.

In the fall, some jaegers migrate over land from Hudson’s Bay to the Atlantic. Some of these birds show up in the Great Lakes, usually as the result of inclement weather.

The Pomarine Jaeger is a bit smaller than a Herring Gull with quite a stocky build. The one in Cobourg was a dark young-of-the-year, mostly dark chocolate brown with some pale barring on the undertail coverts. The bill had a gray base with a dark tip.

Pomarine Jaegers come in two colour morphs – light and dark. The dark form adult is all chocolate brown. The light form adult is light underneath and light on the back of the head and neck. Both forms have light colour at the base of the primaries, but this is only visible in flight. The central two feathers in the tail are considerably longer than the rest of the tail and twisted.

Unlike many marine birds, they nest singly, not in colonies likes gulls and terns. They would be unwelcome in colonies of other species, since they would eat the eggs and young and try to rob food which the parent birds were bringing back to the nest.

Pomarine Jaegers are quite eclectic in their food choices. On the breeding grounds, they feed mainly on lemmings. Their population fluctuates with the lemming population. In years of low lemming populations, they may not breed at all.

Most of the year they spend on the open ocean. They often harass other seabirds to try to rob them of their prey. If they can catch them, they will also eat adult birds. In addition, they feed on carrion and the offal discarded from fishing trawlers.

Jaeger is the German word for hunter. The British name for this species is Pomarine Skua.

We went to Cobourg as quickly as possible after we received the message. There were no other birders in the parking lot. (Birders can be easily identified by their binoculars and spotting scopes). This didn’t look good.

On scanning the beach on the west side of the harbour, we sighted a large brown lump. Unfortunately, the bird had died. It probably succumbed to Type E botulism, a bacterial disease which is present in the Great Lakes ecosystem. Large die-offs of other water birds have been reported recently from the Durham waterfront.

Since this is such an unusual visitor for this area, we collected the body. When prepared as a study skin, it will make its way into the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

I hope that my next encounter with a Pomarine Jaeger is with a live one.