Wild About the City » Exploring nature in the urban environment

What a wonderful walk today in the bright early afternoon sunshine. A walker’s delight, really. The bushes and trees — even the air itself — seemed to be alive with the delightful chittering chatter of very busy goldfinches. The guidebooks all describe the goldfinch chatter as sounding like variations on “per-chik’-or-ee.” And I guess that’s one way to hear it. I just love the buzzy busy sound they make when they call to each other to say hello, and talk about a particularly delightful thistle head they’ve found.

While the light was bright and virtually right over head as I perambulated along my usual path at Ashbridge’s, I decided to try and make a picture of the goldfinches eating anyway. Shooting in the bright mid-day light is severely frowned upon by photo experts. Every book, magazine and newspaper article I have ever read about photography basically says that the hours from 10 .m. to 4 p.m. are a non-go timezone for shooters. In fact, I’ve even read that you can tell the difference immediately between an amateur shooter and a pro. The amateur will be outdoors with a camera around his neck at lunch time, when the pros are either working in their digital darkrooms or catching 40 winks because they were up at 4:30 a.m. to beat the dawn.

Well, all that do-this and don’t-do-that advice  is for folks who have a choice. Those of us with other commitments have to ply our avocation just when we can.

The pros have it right, of course. For a photo to be truly memorable, it has to have that certain something extra — something that might be defined as moodiness. Guaranteed, that special magical quality that evokes emotion is almost impossible to get in the mid-day hours when the sun is directly overhead. No — for that extra magic, the low, slanting rays of the sun at dawn and dusk are needed.  Mist, fog, clouds all play their role, too, in getting that special shot.

Well, I tell myself, I gotta make do. Afternoons are mostly when I have the opportunity to get out for my walks. So white, bright overhead light is it.

That brings me to the picture above — a shot of an American goldfinch (Carduelis tristis) looking for lunch amidst a stand of dried vegetation. A thistle, perhaps?

Goldfinches are extremely interesting songbirds from a biological point of view, as the male moults all its feathers twice a year, ending up with strikingly different summer and winter plumage. The summer male, of course, is brilliantly lemon coloured, except for his black cap and white-barred black flight feathers.

The bright yellow colour comes from carotenoid pigments in the bird’s diet — or so I read. But I have a few unanswered questions. If the male and female eat more or less the same diet, why does the male acquire the colour, and not the female? Various sources say the brilliant colour of the male is required for him to attract a mate in the summer breeding season, but the biology of  the colour acquisition still eludes me.

My hunch about the little goldfinch in the picture above is that it is a male in the process of acquiring its bright yellow summer plumage. (I think only males have the orange-coloured beak.) But if there are any experts out there who can enlighten me, I’d sure love to know.

I’d also love to know any lore about this bird’s name. The first part is easy…Carduelis comes from the Latin for thistle. And tristis means sorrowful in the language of the Pope. Anybody know why Linnaeus felt this species deserved to be called sorrowful?

As an aside, I’m including a photo of a male brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater) that had absolutely no fear of being photographed up close. In fact, this bird was so nonchalant that he kept running so close to me that he was too near for my camera to focus on. I kept having to move back to get even most of him in my viewfinder.

I’m including his photo anyway, because of a posting a few days ago when I asked for help identifying an LBB I saw perched on a branch. I didn’t recognize the specimen mostly, I think, because I’ve never see cowbirds perching before. I’ve always seen them foraging on the ground with their stout bills searching for insects, caterpillars, spiders, seeds, grains, fruits and other cowbird delicacies. Out of her usual context, I didn’t recognize the pale brown bird.

I guess it’s like when you go to the theatre and see someone you associate with work, or school — and you subsequently have trouble placing him.

At any rate, here’s what my LBB’s spouse looks like. Handsome, eh?

© BCP 2010

Okay, relax everybody…It’s true I’m a novice birdwatcher, but even I know that the picture right above these words isn’t of an unknown LBB — it’s a streaked robin, a species infrequently seen in these parts and known to scientists as Turdus speculatus. No, I’m just being silly for no other reason than it’s raining out. The bird above is a beautiful brown thrasher, Toxostoma rufum.

I’ve only seen specimens of these gorgeous big birds a few times at Ashbridge’s Bay (more often in cottage country), but it’s always exciting when it happens.

Like so many times when out in the field, it was the song and call of this thrasher that got my attention before I ever saw him. I had never heard the song before, and went looking to see where this curious burbling series of notes was coming from. It wasn’t hard to find this bird — he was perched high up in an as-yet bare tree at the tip of the peninsula, singing his heart out.

Brown thrashers are in the Mimidae family, a group that includes catbirds and mockingbirds. They have huge song lists, and are able to mimic hosts of other songs. In fact, my Smithsonian Handbook of Birds of North America (Eastern Edition) states that brown thrashers are reported to have the largest song repertoire of any bird in North America, with more than 1,100 song types recorded. You can hear a minute-long sample recording here.

I don’t know whether thrashers stick around for the summer, as I’ve only ever seen them in the spring. My guess is that they stop in at our beach park for a few days to rest and feed before heading up north to cottage country. Perhaps someone with more knowledge than I can let me know.

Speaking of people with more knowledge, I’m hoping that someone can help me identify my real LBB, to the left. I searched through every page of the aforementioned Smithsonian handbook, and couldn’t come up with a satisfactory match to my photo.

The closest picture I could find was of a female indigo bunting. The shape and colour of my little brown bird’s bill looked similar to the bunting’s in my book.

Can anyone help with the identification?

Thanks in advance.

Update:

Several kind people have quickly let me know that my little feathered friend just above is a female brown-headed cowbird. As Homer would say: “Doh!”

Thanks to the folks who let me know. Next time, I’ll know. Ain’t learning grand?

© BCP 2010

The common grackle, Quiscalus quiscula, is one of the blackbirds most people love to hate. Ornithologists classify the grackle as a songbird, but lots of people would have a hard time with that description, as the bird’s voice tends to be more of a series of harsh croaks, that sound — at least to my ear — like variations of ”chit, chit, widget” than the pure joy say, to be heard in a goldfinch’s song.

(To hear a grackle, click here. The link will take you to a page about grackles on squidoo, a volunteer-written website that has thousands of pages, each one about some particular specialty interest.)

But I confess it wasn’t this grackle’s vocalizations that caught my attention, but his beautiful plumage. By no means could you call this fellow black. I would say he was sporting a range of colours usually seen at the jewellery store: A head made of saphire and tanzanite, a tourmaline eye, a metallic gold and bronze body, with flight feathers of amethyst and ametrine. (For more on gem colours, click here.) And all dusted with the magical quality known as iridescence, an optical phenomenon quite common throughout the natural world — in the wings and carapaces of some insects, the shells of some mollusks, the scales of some fish and many feathers — but rare elsewhere.

Trust Mother Nature to mark one of her most querulous beasts, Quiscalus quiscula, with such a magical appearance.

By the way, does anyone know anything about the banding of these birds? It looks like my Ashbridge’s specimen is wearing a tiny silver band around his right ankle — um, do birds even have ankles?

© BCP 2010

A wonderful day at the beach today. So many of our feathered friends have returned, it’s hard to catalogue them all. There are the returning migrants that will stay here for the summer and into the fall, and others, like the white-throated sparrow, that are only here for a few days — sadly — as they feed and rest before making their way to further points north.

And then there are the birds that stay here all winter, like Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal. We have a couple of pairs of cardinals that stay year round at Ashbridge’s Bay. No matter the season, they are very often heard belting out their songs — and often enough seen, as well. But the fact remains that  owing to their penchant for declaiming from the very tops of our tallest trees, they are darn hard to get a good photograph of.  It seems that almost every photograph of male or female cardinals in my collection is taken from WAY below. Not the view enthusiasts are generally looking for.

But perhaps because it is spring, and there is lots to eat now on the ground, the Mr. and Mrs. who live at the end of the Ashbridge’s peninsula are spending more time closer to the ground. Today I lurked about in a dense thicket behind some sea buckthorn and quietly waited for this pair to emerge from the thatch. After some time, my patience was rewarded with a nearly unobstructed view of the Mrs. going about her business — foraging. I know that the male of the northern cardinal species Cardinalis cardinalis is considered the more handsome one of the pair. But I think the female’s colouration is quite spectacular, though more subtle.

As I mentioned earlier, we are now getting the transient migrants passing through Ashbridge’s, like the white-throated sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis.While we only get to enjoy the presence of these beautiful sparrows for a few days each spring, people who are lucky enough to have cottages in Ontario’s near north have the pleasure of hearing the lovely song of the white-throats all summer.

White-throated sparrows are the indomitable little birds that sing two songs, depending if you are American or Canadian. Americans say these little songsters sing “Old-Sam-Peabody-Peabody.” And Canadians say they sing “Oh-sweet-Canada-Canada.” It’s the same song, of course, and it last about four seconds. It’s beautiful and haunting in the northern woods no matter what human words we try to put to it.

The funny thing is that normally people hear white-throats long before they hove into view, probably because their song is so darn distinctive. But today at the beach I didn’t hear a single white-throat song, and in fact had no idea that they had returned until I caught a glimpse of this little fellow hopping around foraging for food in the underbrush. I was actually staking out Mrs. C. (see above), keeping very still and trying to move extremely cautiously in attempt to get distracting twigs out of the picture I was trying to make of the cardinals. (Mr. C. was around, too, but wasn’t nearly as co-operative about having his picture taken.)

I’m glad I didn’t miss the white-throat today, though. They are surely a treat for winter-weary ears. For me, these beautifully adorned sparrows embody the north. A few Canada-Canadas and I am in a cedarstrip canoe, paddling past pine-clad shores. (And much, much y ounger!) Who can be sad when they hear that song penetrating through the thickest of thickets? To hear the song of a white-throat, click here. The link will take you to a page from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that features audio and video of the species Zonotrichia albicollis, as well as lots of other info.

© BCP 2010