Monitoring birds on the Bruce
Ringing a Blue Jay at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory
It is the 22nd September 2016. In the half-dark of our early morning start I am excited to pad the paths and follow the fantastic host and Head Ringer at the bird observatory, for it is time to open the nets for another day’s migration monitoring. With all the nets set we retire to the veranda to drink strong, black coffee and start our migration watch of the bay. We hear the harsh grating rattle of a belted kingfisher across the inlet and soon come the chuckling of many yellow-shafted flickers, with the occasional screeches as the flickers tell the passing merlin and sharp-shinned hawks in no uncertain terms to take flicker right off the dinner menu.
At our feet is a quiet gathering of sparrows; feeding on weed seeds, we scan the Eastern white Crowned. (nice Adults with crisp crowns, and two juvs.) and today there's a Lincoln Sparrow too. Each net round brings unexpected delights as you never know what there will be and highlights for me were the Whipoorwills we nearly caught (well, they sat on the net poles!), the many different woodpeckers, the gorgeous saw-whet owl, the Purple Finch that waited till my very last day to come down to ground level, and of course the many and beautiful thrushes, which were the real focus of my trip – I had dreamed of them…Wood Thrush, Hermit Thrush, Grey-Cheekd Thrush, Swainson’s Thrush, and the Veery. And I certainly couldn’t complain – we had Grey Cheeked and Swainson’s from day one!
Sunset over Wingfield Basin
Later. It is evening. We sit on the decking watching beaver swim branches of aspen and dogwood out to their lodge on the ruined ship. The scratchy gnawing seems so loud across the still water. I eat my dinner by moonlight, and in this heightened awareness I can feel the shape of each rice grain in my mouth. The darkness around me is made of crickets and frogs, the rattles of a kingfisher across the bay and the clattering splash of landing geese. Across the basin, from somewhere on the prickle-backed bluff, a distant nightbird is calling 'whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will…”. And above us, the tiny distant trajectory of the International Space Station, drifting past.
View of Wingfield Basin from the bluff
In the morning we climb the bluff and look down to our house on the edge of the basin, and the place is an amazing wilderness. As we turn to go, we spy some feathers on the cliff edge and take them back to the Bird Obs to ID them. And our suspicions were correct - sadly it seems that our night-time singer was dinner for something else. Later that evening, we listened half-heartedly, expecting silence, and so were amazed when not one but three birds were now calling across the night! Those four weeks at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory were among some of the best ever!!
The birds were incredible, the company was awesome, the Fall colours were something else. And with the odd rattlesnake thrown in, and some VERY fresh bear prints, my month there went all too fast. I still keep in contact and love reading their regular blogs about the banding seasons, well worth a read!
Jack Pine cone
