Birding in the Canadian Prairies - A New Experience

Nature Notes for August 26, 2016

In early July, I had the good fortune to be able to explore a birding area that I had never visited. For ten days, my husband and I birded in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, chasing down bird species of the dry mixed grass prairie. The range of some of our target species just barely extends into southeastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan.

While Ontario was having the worst drought in years, southern Saskatchewan was having the wettest year in 20 years. Areas that are usually semi-desert were still green instead of the more usual dry brown. This may have helped the birds, as insect food might be more abundant than in a dry year.

Since I had not birded in prairie habitats prior to this trip, many of the species were new to me. For example, Western Meadowlark is a common bird in the grasslands. It looks almost identical to Eastern Meadowlark, but its song is very different.

Clay-coloredSparrows were probably the most common sparrow we found, as common as Song Sparrowsare here. Clay-coloreds prefer open habitats with small bushes. It seemed that the bush only needed to be a one-foot high sagebrush to be attractive to the sparrows.

I didn’t realize before this trip just how important the prairie sloughs are to breeding waterfowl. Sloughs (pronounced “sloo”) are shallow marshes in the prairies which often dry up during the summer. Some had cattail edge and small shrubs surrounding the open water. This is the breeding area for many of the duck species that are seen in southern Ontario only in migration. On our ten-day visit, we found 15 species of ducks in these wetlands.

American Avocet

photo © Rob Lonsberry Photography

As well as ducks, several shorebird species use these sloughs. American Avocets, a handsome, long-legged wader, were present in many ponds. More recently, they have been joined by Black-necked Stilts, another long-legged wader. Only in the past 20 years have the stilts become regular breeders. Willets are another shorebird that breeds in the prairie sloughs.

Yellow-headed Blackbirds are sometimes more common than Red-winged Blackbirds in the cattail edges of these wet spots. Adult males are spectacular, with a completely bright yellow head and black body.

We visited Old Man on His Back Prairie and Conservation Area, a reserve southwest of Eastend, Sask., which for 20 years has been owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada. In 2003, NCC introduced a herd of genetically-pure plains bison to OMB. NCC manages the property as a working ranch and showcases the positive relationship between agricultural land use and land conservation. We did see the bison, briefly and from a distance. Much to my surprise, Common Nighthawks were roosting on the rail fence surrounding the Visitors Centre. We could have spent much more time than we did here.

We explored secondary roads south of the Cypress Hills to the U.S. Border in both Saskatchewan and Alberta. Here, we found many Lark Buntings, McCown’s Longspurs and Chestnut-collared Longspurs, McCown’s Longspurs are listed at “uncommon and local” in our most modern field guide, but we were fortunate enough to find 30 or 40 in a large flock. These were along a road that was posted as passable only in a four-wheel-drive vehicle if there was rain.

The reason for the timing of this trip was the annual conference of the North American Bluebird Society which was held at the Ellis Bird Farm near Lacombe, Alberta. The common bluebird here is Mountain Bluebird. We saw more Mountain Bluebirds along roadsides in southern Saskatchewan than we did at the conference.

Ellis Bird Farm is home to a large Purple Martin colony, an increasingly rare bird in Ontario. Researchers, who were studying these birds, gave presentations about their work. Some of the birds have been tagged with geolocaters which can record what routes they take to their wintering grounds in the Amazon basin and back to Alberta.

I’ve only touched on a few highlights of our trip. If you meet me in the street, be prepared to spend a little time if you ask me about it. My exuberance might result in information overload.