The weather was the story during week 25. A heat dome covered most of Ontario bringing temperatures in the 30’s feeling like the 40’s. We had caregiving duties at the beginning of the week so no birding took place. I continued to work on planning the Canada Big Year when I had time and have made significant headway.

I also took a close look at the species left to see in Ontario and recorded numerous places to see them and when they start arriving. We attempted to bird a few mornings locally but by 10 the humidity, heat and lack of birds made it silly to continue. And so week 25 passed with another week of no new birds added.

I had hoped to have Killdeer baby pictures to show you but we missed the hatching! They must have hatched late evening on the 18th when I had not checked and then I heard the parents calling as we went to bed. I went outside fearful that a predator was around but I could not see or hear anything and in the morning there was just the empty nest there. Killdeer young are precocial meaning they are born able to run and feed themselves as soon as their fluff dries. The parents move them away from the nest site within a short period of time, usually hours and they also move every bit of shell from the nest site. They will stay with the young in long grass and shrubs until the young can fly at about 40 days. We found a cleaned out nest with no sign of predation and so we can only assume that they hatched that evening and the parents moved and cleaned that night. We hope that is what happened! Below is a picture Jerry took in 2018.

The heat wave broke at the end of the week and so we started Week 26 out birding. We had one County left in Ontario that we did not have a checklist for so we ventured up to Grey County and hiked at Bognar Marsh on Monday. It was a pretty trail, part marsh, mud and forest. Part of the trail loop is the Bruce Trail that runs along the top of the Niagara Escarpment. We managed to see and hear 44 species but alas, nothing new for our list.

There are 50 ebird Counties and Districts in Ontario and we have now birded, over the years, in each of them. I wondered how many we had birded in just this year and was surprised to find we have checklists in 38 of the 50 so only 12 that we have not been in this year. Do you sense another “goal” coming up? It turns out that at least 6-8 are on the agenda to visit this summer and fall so that only leaves another 4-6 to make an effort to visit. We will see how it goes…

Backyard nesting has been quite successful with many young showing up at our feeders. The young Grackles were the noisiest with their incessant squawking to be fed but it appears they are finally able to feed themselves and things are a bit quieter. We have a pair of Hummingbirds that are nesting and coming to our sugar water feeder. Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are also nesting close by as well as at least two Baltimore Oriole pairs. Robins have been successful nesters as have Song and Chipping Sparrows. Jerry thinks around 10 Eastern Bluebirds and 6 Tree Swallows have fledged from the nest boxes on our property. We had an Orchard Oriole visit as well.

Whenever we head to Hamilton for caregiving we try to bird for a few hours first and one of our favourite spots is the myriad of trails in the Dundas Valley Conservation Area. We have a new appreciation for the numerous trails that wind through that valley. The scenery is gorgeous and the habitat varied which means many species of birds reside there. On Wednesday we took a trail off Artaban Road hoping to get a picture of a Louisiana Waterthrush (not) and then we took a new trail, the Paddy Green Trail, hoping to see a Black-billed Cuckoo as we have only heard it this year (nope). It was no matter that we did not see what we wanted, there were many species to see and hear, the pedometer suggested we did 17 flights of stairs and the trails were beautiful.

We are enjoying slower birding where we have the time to stop and really listen to the songs so that we hopefully retain some of this new knowledge we have. We had a Chipping Sparrow and a Pine Warbler singing back to back at the Perched Fen in Brantford on Thursday and their songs are very similar but hearing them over and over, one after the other, gave us a chance to really hear the subtle differences. The young birds are starting to move out of nests so it is becoming easier to see birds in and around the trees. We managed to see most of the birds on our list. Jerry continues to get better pictures for our Gallery.

This week I started getting a few “needs alert” emails but they are birds being seen up at Polar Bear PP as part of the Bird Atlas Counts and it is a very long way up to Hudson’s Bay. Hopefully, we will see these birds when they start to migrate down in a month. At the end of the week a California Gull was seen at Point Pelee for a brief amount of time but flushed and was not seen again. Gulls are always tough to try and chase. The Lakes will be where we need to hang starting in a few weeks and a few early migrants are likely to start showing up. The downtime has been nice but we are anxious to get back to it and start adding some new birds.

We are officially at the half-way mark of the year! 6 months to go!

Week 26 309 species seen J&E