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May has ended and despite the month’s mainly deplorMable weather -or perhaps because of it -this year’s migration has been most exciting. With so many birders out in the field, observing, recording and photographing, it seems very little has been missed.
Let’s start with reports from May 27. That’s the day Merrill Smith and members of the Ottawa Duck Club were checking the wood duck boxes at the sanctuary at Shirley’s Bay.
They inadvertently flushed three American bitterns, one from a nest that contained a brown egg. Several of the eggs in the duck boxes had holes in them showing that baby ducklings were hatching. The group was fortunate to hear a mother wood duck calling her brood and saw the ducklings jump out of the box and join her in the pond below.
On that same day, James McDonald in Orléans watched a northern harrier stalking 15 black-bellied plovers and heard a lone, lovelorn bittern calling his booming mating sound for a week along the Ottawa River. He also spotted an eastern kingbird.
Another bittern story arrived from Patricia Juffel, in Merrickville near the Nicholson Lock. She had seen one catching frogs three times in a nearby pond.
And Ted Hefferman saw a single sandhill crane in a field near Waba between Pakenham and White Lake. Rosemary Kralik saw a pair in another field of hay near some wetlands in the Lanark Highlands. A very pale male with a browner female, both with the distinctive bare red patch on the head.
On May 26, Bruce Di Labio observed a major collection of water birds. He estimates there were about 11,000 Brant geese between the Deschênes Rapids and Britannia Bay on the Ottawa River, with smaller flocks of white-winged scoters, (about 280), surf scoters (14), red-breasted mergansers (74) and long-tailed ducks (28). He also came across a purple sandpiper in breeding plumage on the Britannia pier.
The next day, Di Labio checked the Alfred sewage lagoon where he found more than 500 shorebirds, most of them dunlins and semipalmated sandpipers. Among the highlights were 11 red-necked phalaropes and more than 70 ruddy ducks. A single whimbrel was found at the Embrun lagoon before a peregrine falcon flushed and scattered the shorebirds.
Di Labio also visited Lake Doré near Eganville, where he found two Arctic terns along with more than 80 common terns, a black tern and three Bonaparte gulls.
Tom Devesceri was also at the Alfred lagoon, where he managed to get a picture of a red-necked phalarope.
On May 28, two good reports arrived. One came from Giovanni Pari, who found a Eurasian widgeon on the Russell lagoon with an American widgeon, long-tailed ducks, northern shovellers, blue and green-winged teal, four rednecked phalaropes and some Brant geese.
The day’s second report came from Brian Graham, who saw three great egrets n the Sawmill Creek wetlands.
A number of patient photographers have managed to get good pictures of the tiny ruby-throated hummingbirds that never seem to keep still. Nick Haramis caught one sitting in a crab apple tree with white flowers and another of a robin in an apple tree with red flowers. Jean Hicks took photos of male and female hummingbirds at her feeder in Orléans.
Tom Roos reports having an amazing number of hummingbirds buzzing around his home at Blanche Lake. He has a picture of at least six of them on the feeder at the same time that he said were only half the total number in the area. It is definitely a good hummingbird season.
On June 1, Pat Summers brought the hummingbird that spent the winter being looked after at the Wild Bird Care Centre out here to Orchard View in Greely for release into the wide world.
She carried his large cage over to my garden where the feeder is and set it down for him to have a look around. Then the top of the cage was opened and out he flew -not into the tree with the feeder, but up to the top of the small sunburst locust tree where he sat and surveyed the situation.
Next he flew across to one of the crab apple trees along the road at the back behind the residents’ gardens and from there he disappeared, possibly into the bush. Hopefully, he will come back to my feeder where he will be easily recognized with his very white breast and the beginnings of the red patch on his throat.
Congratulations to all the dedicated people who work at the centre caring for injured and orphan birds with so much success.
Send birding reports and specify location to 613-821-9880 or e-mail elegeyt@rogers.com.
The Wild Bird Care Centre for orphaned and injured birds is at 613-828-2849.
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