First sparrow back...

American Tree Sparrow Photo courtesy Wikipedia

I was delighted March 24 to look up from my lunchtime bowl of soup to see a bright rusty-headed sparrow in with the usual mob of House Sparrows under the feeders. My first thought was Chipping Sparrow at the sight of the red-brown cap (what the guide books call "rufous") but something wasn't quite right. No black line through the eye accented with a white eyebrow. Instead a gray face with a rufous line behind the eye. And then - aha - a black spot in the middle of the chest, the "stick pin" that screamed American Tree Sparrow.

It was so exciting to see our first migrant of the spring - they are the first of the sparrows to make the trek north. Well, what is supposed to be spring. It is still minus 20 when we got up this morning and if any snow has melted, it's not significant. But if the American Tree Sparrows are passing through on their way to their breeding grounds in the Arctic, then indeed there is hope others must be on their way as well and spring will come.

This is the first time we have noticed a tree sparrow at our feeders here in Naicam. I had not seen any since we left Delisle. I see from my"notebooks" that  it was April 2, 2004 that I saw my first American Tree Sparrows. A small flock of them were in and under the caragana windbreak at the north east corner of the field that became Delisle Golf Course. The snow was all gone that year and it was a lovely spring day when I was out walking Normie, our Schnauzer.

Jim Hay, in his article in Birds of the Saskatoon Area says that while "they show up in yards, they are more commonly found in trees along roadsides and in parks..." Their peak period of spring migration is from the last week in March to the end of April... the peak fall period is 25 September to 25 October.  "Like an enthusiastic party-goer, the Americn Tree Sparrow is the first to arrive and among the last to leave!" Hay writes.

So far only one tree sparrow has shown up in our yard - he was here again this morning. Maybe there is more of them over along the Rail Trail, keeping out of town? And the juncoes can't be far behind, can they?

Shorebird stubble bird

Long-billed Curlews. Courtesy Wikipedia

We were on one of our "Sunday drives" (April 26, 2000) when we came upon half a dozen most unusual birds to find strutting about in a stubble field dining on grasshoppers - Long-billed Curlews. It was the first time we had seen these duck-sized birds with spectacularly long, down curved bills. They are in fact the largest member of the Sandpiper family.

The female's bill is noticeably longer than the male's - up to eight inches - and with these chopsticks, they can pick up grasshoppers in the stubble or grass while still keeping an eye out for danger!  One of the nicknames given to them is "sickle bird," probably because they march along through the field or pasture, sweeping their bill side to side, like an old time farmer reaping  his crop.

We had a good look at them that day as they went about looking for breakfast. They are mottled brown and black on the back with buff underparts and a plain head. (The Whimbrel, which also has a long, down-curved bill has stripes on top of its head.) When something startled them they rose up shrieking "cur-lee, cur-lee," flashing cinnamon under their wings. When they settled back in the stubble, they just seemed to disappear, so good is their camouflage.

Like the Upland Sandpiper, they have suffered loss of habitat through agriculture. They nest on the ground and so their eggs at risk from badgers, weasels, magpies and crows and, if they think all's safe in a pasture, they are still in danger of being trod on by cattle. Their chicks take a long five weeks before they can fly so add hawks and heat to that list of dangers.

Incidentally, they have another nickname - the "candlestick bird" and not because they bear any resemblance to candlesticks. Years ago, during migration they congregated in large numbers at Candlestick Point in San Francisco. And yes, sports fans, that's where Candlestick Park Stadium inherited its name.

Sandpiper on a wire

Upland Sandpiper. Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Since moving back to Saskatchewan, John and I have twice been startled to find long-legged shore birds in the most unlikely places - balancing on a power line and dining in a stubble field! Both sightings occurred when we were out for a "Sunday drive."

On a warm sunny summer afternoon (Aug. 5/01) we set out to have a look at the Blackstrap recreation area south of Saskatoon. On a grid road near Dundurn, we were amazed to see what looked like a dove on stilts - perched on the power line. John had to back up so we could get a better look. What would a long-legged shore bird be doing there?

Upraised wings - Upland Sandpiper. Wikipedia photo

I had to get out of the truck for  better look with the binoculars - it was on John's "side." As soon as I stepped out of the truck, the bird lifted its wings directly over its back, balanced there, poised for flight. I stood perfectly still and it slowly lowered its wings. I recognized the upraised wing pose from books and knew I was seeing an upland Sandpiper.

The small head in proportion to the body is what gave us the impression of a dove and its round, dark eyes seemed enormous. The Peterson guide book aptly described them as "shoe button eyes." It had a thin neck, short bill, and was light underneath with a mottled brown tweed back and longish barred tail and yellow legs.

Upland Sandpipers were once one of the commonest birds on the prairie, according to Stuart Houston in Birds of the Saskatoon Area, but were hunted excessively late in the 19th Century and then when European settlers arrived, their nesting habitat was destroyed with the introduction of grain farming. They face many natural hazards, including a difficult migration of 8,000 miles to South America where they are still hunted and served as a restaurant delicacy.

Next time I'll tell you about the shorebirds we saw wading in the stubble.

From Coast to Coast...

We saw a Black Oystercatcher on the West Coast.... Photo courtesy Wikipedia

What - will this winter never end? While waiting for spring and birds to return to the Prairies, I've been transcribing my notebooks to my computer and when this gets too tedious, I graze randomly through bird books or birding sites on the internet.

When I came upon this picture of the American Black Oystercatcher, I was instantly transported to the West Coast. A few years ago, while visiting our friends Kel and Norma at Gibson's on the Sunshine Coast, we went for a drive to Sechelt and on the way, stopped at a number of birding sites. On the rocks at the water's edge, we saw this all-dark largish wading bird with a fantastic orange-red, heavy, slightly flattened bill, and its peculiar yellow eye ringed with red. I recognized it instantly as an Oystercatcher because in all my bird guide books it appears on the same page as my favorite wading bird, the elegant American Avocet.

Atlantic Puffin  on the East Coast...
Photo courtesy Wikipedia

It has to have a thick tough bill because it uses it to pry open mollusk shells and to probe in the sand for crabs and worms. Since the entire world population of Black Oystercatchers is estimated at less than 10,000, I was delighted to see it.

And speaking of unusual bills, take a look at the Atlantic Puffin. When John started planning a Maritime vacation to connect with his relatives and friends and retrace his family roots, I begged for a chance to track down an Atlantic Puffin. Now why would a prairie born and bred gal be interested in a puffin? The cover of Peterson Field Guides' Western Birds edition has a Tufted Puffin on the cover and these cartoon-like birds have always fascinated me.

We visited his relatives first and I polled all of them about puffins. Not one had ever seen a puffin. My darling husband, however, did find a way for me to see puffins. We drove to the Eastern side of Cape Breton and and took a boat tour to what was called the Bird Islands out in the Atlantic. There, near the tops of rocky cliffs, we came upon a colony of Atlantic Puffins nesting with Razorbills, Black Guillemots, Kittiwakes and other gulls.

I had expected Puffins to be big birds. In photos, they look like they must be the size of Penguins. Nope. They are about the size of a robin but fatter - 10-11 inches long. They look like mini-torpedoes when they are flying. Their orange bills and orange legs are conspicuous. The black eye-liner markings around their eyes gives them a comic cartoon appearance.

They nest in burrows on the rocky cliffs. The only time they are on land is during nesting season. The rest of the time they are way out in the ocean - their powerful wings are adapted for swimming and they use their feet for rudders. They even mate at sea.

When they come ashore to nest, the male digs out the burrow or cleans out an existing one. The female lays only one egg and both parents take turns incubating it. When the egg hatches in 40 or so days, they share the feeding responsibilities. Adaptations of their big beaks help them carry up to a dozen little fish at a time. Their tongue holds the fish against the spines in their palate.

Pair of Atlantic Puffins. Photo from Wikipedia

When we were there, we were told that the parents force feed the youngster at the end of the nesting tunnel, making the baby grow fatter and fatter until he is too fat to get out through the tunnel. The parents then abandon him/her and fly back out to sea. By the time the baby has lost enough weight to fit through the tunnel, he is old enough and strong enough to fledge on his own, and takes his solitary flight to freedom.

Wikipedia says that contrary to popular belief, the chick is not abandoned by its parents. So who do you believe? I found the abandoned baby story somehow very touching and the most extreme case of tough love!

And a bit more trivia for you. The Puffin is a member of the Auk family. And did you know it is the provincial bird of Newfoundland and Labrador?

Evolution of a birdwatcher

My darling John was not always the happy birdwatcher he is today. In fact, not long ago he was definitely the Reluctant Birdwatcher. I was in the habit, as we drove along the highway, of muttering the names of ducks we saw in the slough or hawks on power poles or birds flitting by. He retaliated by muttering the brand names of tractors or combines in the fields or even of cars we met.

Then came the infamous black-and-white ditchbird incident. April 15, 2003 (according to my memo book glove compartment records) we were en route to visit Karl and Yvonne with our older grandchildren (Cameron, Megan and Ian) along. The kids were helping me watch for birds and were on the outlook for other wildlife. I recorded sighting a herd of Pronghorn antelope west of Tessier, SK, and then another between Oyen and Youngstown in eastern Alberta.

Somewhere on the road between those two antelope sightings, John mumbled, "Black and white ditchbird."

"What did you say?" I asked.

"Did you see that black and white ditchbird?"

"What do you mean - ditchbird? You mean a magpie? A magpie is black and white."

"No, no. It's taller than a magpie. Tall and skinny. It's a ditchbird. Just keep watching. There's quite a few along here."

By this time, the kids were intrigued and anxious to catch a glimpse of Grandpa's fabulous bird. As the miles zipped by, they kept up their watch and I flipped through the field guide. What tall black and white bird could be possibly be talking about?

"There's one just ahead," he called suddenly.

"Where?" we all cried.

"Grandpa, do you mean that black and white post in the ditch?" one of the kids asked.

"That's it," John said. "A black and white ditchbird."

The kids laughed and I whacked John with the bird book. Ditchbird, indeed.

And what's worse, I wrote it down in my memo book! And so in transcribing my records to the computer program Karen set up for me, I found there isn't  slot to enter "ditchbird."

This reminds me of an old woman we met in Wetaskawin years ago when Karl was a baby. When we were moving to the town between Edmonton and Red Deer, John's mom wrote from New Brunswick asking us to look up an old school friend of hers she hadn't seen for decades. At 80+, the old gal was still an avid hockey fan - this was the era before colored TV and when there were only eight teams in the NHL. She showed us the school scribbler in which she kept detailed records about every team and for every player there were columns headed G, A, P and F. That was Goals, Assists, Penalties and the last one, F? That was Fights.

She kept her records because it added another dimension of fun to her TV game watching and that's why I keep my bird records. It's just fun. Maybe I need an "F" column on my computer to transcribe the ditzy things like John's ditchbird and Fay's eagle.

Kill-dee, kill-dee, killdeer

Hey, the sun is a plus on this cold March day! Margaret Madsen photo

I ended my last blog mentioning Killdeers in March in the Okanagan. This was rather depressing since the mercury again dipped down to minus 30 overnight here in Naicam and the possibility of seeing Killdeer here anytime soon is very remote! So once again, this photo taken yesterday has nothing to do with what I plan to ramble on about today - i.e. Killdeer.

I love hearing chickadees calling their name, but believe me, I am ready to hear Killdeer doing the same. I'm sure it will come come as no surprise when I tell you that that the scientific name for Killdeer is  Charadrius vociferus. How appropriate because this very vocal bird calls constantly as it dips and swoops over the fields.

The Killdeer is probably the best known of all "broken wing" birds for feigning injury in order to draw predators away from its nest. The first time I saw a Killdeer pretending to be injured is now more than 60+ years ago when I was a young child, but it still is vivid in my mind. "Ooh, poor bird" was my reaction and I ran after it, trying to catch it. When it would pause, seemingly to rest from its struggle to escape me, I would pounce and it would leap out of the way and stagger on calling pathetically, dragging its wing, luring me further and further from its nest. When it suddenly leapt into the air wing, miraculously healed, I felt duped and vowed next time to look for the nest and not be fooled.

Actually, it was many, many years later that I did see a Killdeer's nest. Our daughter Karen was exercising her horse in the riding ring when, on making her first diagonal across the ring, she said that a Killdeer suddenly materialized from the sand and challenged her horse. The bird puffed itself up and ran at the horse with threatening determination. From her seat in the saddle, she spotted the nest and called to us to come see.

The nest was simply a small, shallow depression in the sand, neatly tiled with tiny pebbles. Four sand colored eggs mottled with brown rested on the pebbles. They were so well camouflaged that we could have walked by dozens of times without seeing the nest or its contents. Karl pounded in four wooden stakes to mark its location and warn riders and tractors dragging harrows to avoid the spot.

The bird books say incubation is 24 to 28 days and all the eggs hatch within hours of one another. Apparently the babies being peeping inside the shells several hours before they hatch and they listen to the sounds their parents make. Both mom and dad take turns sitting on the nest.

When the young hatched in the riding ring, they were fuzzy ping pong balls of sand-colored fluff on toothpick legs. When they ran from spot to spot, they really looked like balls rolling. But the instant a parent gave the alarm cry, they would freeze and shut their bright dark eyes and magically, they would disappear. It was uncanny how well camouflaged they were.

Winter in March

Cold, wind, snow - in March - yuck! Margaret Madsen photo

There's something wrong with this picture. March is more wintery than January this year. I remember saying, in balmy January, "If this is winter, we can't complain." In the middle of this stormy day, even the skittery sparrows don't care if I am at the window with my camera. They are cold and hungry and just want to eat.

While John was out filling the feeders, the little Downy Woodpecker arrived for breakfast, landing as usual in the birch tree.  I was watching from the kitchen window,  dishtowel in hand instead of camera, as the woodpecker stretched and bobbed his head left and right, checking out the strange creature invading his usual feeding space. John is accustomed to having the chickadees chatter at him, urging him to hurry and get on with the job, but the woodpecker's whistling whinny was a new voice, giving him heck. The little bird dropped down branch by branch, keeping up his his scolding chatter. The red patch on the back of his head seemed to flare larger as he ordered John away from the feeder. The moment John rehung the feeder and turned away, the bossy little bird  bounced down and was clinging to the wire frame, hammering at the suet.

While it is too cold to actually go outside birding, I am amusing myself at the computer transcribing data from the little notebooks I keep in the car, in the kitchen and with my binoculars to record bird sightings. When I have all the information - species, date, location, habitat, number, comments, etc. - fed into my computer, I should be able to sort the lists several ways. If I want to know what birds I have seen in March in past years, for example, I will sort by that.

Unfortunately, I just picked up a notebook from 1998, the last spring we lived in the Okanagan, and on March 10, there was a pair of killdeer in our small north paddock. Oh dear. I wonder how long until I see the killdeer here at the edge of town?

Trayful of sparrows.  Margaret Madsen photo

Baby it's cold...

Sunrise over frozen slough east of Naicam. John Madsen photo

According to the TV weatherman, March 1 this year was the coldest beginning of the month since the record for cold was set in 1916! Hearing statistics like that certainly doesn't make me feel any warmer! The official first day of spring may be less than three weeks away, but the grim forecast says we will sit in this deep freeze at least until then! 

Looking out my kitchen window today, I see that Monday's blizzard and yesterday's wind have reshaped the landscape. John took this photo out the window this morning when the temperature was minus 34 and the windchill minus 42.

To console myself, I'm sharing another picture with you of the same wrought iron hook, here holding something much warmer - orange and black oriole sitting on an orange on a black hook.

Orioles love oranges! Margaret Madsen photo

Now isn't that better?

Why do you suppose orioles are attracted to the color orange? We have an oriole nectar feeder that is orange plastic and the very day we hung it on the front deck, an oriole visited.

Have you noticed that Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are attracted to the color red (matching their flashy bib)? And Hummingbird feeders have red, not orange, on them. Is this merely coincidence? The hummingbirds did drink from the oriole feeder and I've seen them grazing happily in my orange nasturtiums so who knows? I once read that insects, necessary for pollination, are attracted to the color yellow which might explain why so many flowers have yellow centres where the pollen and nectar are located.

The discussion of birds and color does open the question of a bird's vision. We all know that birds have much sharper vision than humans. I doubt that even the bionic man could see a mouse a mile away but raptors can. And did you know that mouse urine shows up in ultraviolet light and that certain raptors can see the ultraviolet dribble trails left by mice, and when they see a concentration of urine trails, they know where to watch for mouse activity.

Birds that are active during the day have two to five times as many color receptors (cones)  as humans. They also have oil droplets in their cones which apparently sharpens color reception and reduces glare. Nocturnal birds have more rods than cones for night vision. (Again my "trivia" comes from The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior put out by the National Audubon Society.)

I highly recommend The Sibley Guide for trivia lovers as well as bird enthusiasts. You can open any page and find fascinating trivia in the captions to Sibley's fantastic drawings. For example, page 323, illustration of mourning dove feeding young in nest. "For the first 10 days or so after columbid young hatch, the parents feed them 'crop milk,' a substance that is secreted by the wall of the crop."

Fascinating! When it's too cold to go out, there's nothing like a book for company and it looks like for the next few weeks, Sibley and I will be close friends!