Don't go chasing Whip-poor-wills

Mosquito-tormented Chemin Demers

Still too bright for Eastern Whip-poor-wills...

  Just kidding, do it. After a dreamless post-Vermillion afternoon death-slumber, I met up again with George et al at 6:30 (p.m. this time for a change) for an evening expedition down towards the American border. We were looking for, or rather listening for, Eastern Whip-poor-wills at dusk on Chemin Demers. We found them! At least eight were heard "Whip-poor-willing" as the last dregs of peachy dusk bled out below the horizon of farm fields.

  One sounded like it was singing from under the corrugated overhang of a barn, judging from its metallic echo. It then flew across the road right in front of us at waist level, affording brief looks at a stubby, fast-flapping, bat-like bird. It sang for several minutes from a tree ten feet away, frustratingly unseen in the bucolic gloom (My recording of Eastern Whip-poor-will singing: https://soundcloud.com/mat-poll/whip). The mosquitoes were out in full force down there too...I was thankful for the head netting I picked up at a Korean market many moons ago.

V-fly

Vermillion Flycatcher Pyrocephalus obscurus

Little Wood-Satyr Megisto cymela

(From Sibley)

  Tagged along with G ‘n R on a last-minute first-morning twitch of an errant and spectacular visitor from Mexico/South Texas. Vermillion Flycatcher! Helluva bird, talk about full-on colour saturation. I'm told it's only the second record for Québec. It was singing and flycatching in the main swamp at Boisé Ste-Dorothée. Of course, an impressive bird like that drew an impressive crowd. The moquitoes were out. Also, new butterfly! I’m tired.

Last Push for the D’ville Hundo

Yellow-rumped Warbler Setophaga coronata
(with apparent Xanthochromism)

Yellow-rumped Warbler Setophaga coronata
(with apparent Xanthochromism)

The bird doesn't raise eyebrows when
 the yellow is removed from the equation...

American Redstart Setophaga ruticilla

Chestnut-sided Warbler Setophaga pensylvanica

Yellow Warbler Setophaga petechia

Wilson’s Warbler Cardellina pusilla

Common Yellowthroat Geothlypis trichas

Warbling Vireo Vireo gilvus

Scarlet Tanager Piranga olivacea

Great Crested Flycatcher Myiarchus crinitus

Eastern Kingbird Tyrannus tyrannus

Baltimore Oriole Icterus galbula

Bobolink Dolichonyx oryzivorous

Brown-headed Cowbird Molothrus ater

Osprey Pandion haliaetus
(with full crop)

Black-crowned Night Heron Nycticorax nycticorax

Common Tern Sterna hirundo

Blue-winged Teal Anas discors

Northern Green Frog Rama clamitans

Muskrat Ondatra zibethicus

Reserve Faunique Marguerite-D’Youville, Île Sainte-Bernard, Châteauguay, May 18, 2021

  Another fun stab at a hundred species for D’ville, with 83 species encountered in 11 hours of birding. We logged ten warbler species on the day, but it didn’t feel like it. Numbers were thin, and there were no noticeable warbler waves. It felt odd, given the time of year, that we didn’t run into any Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, or Magnolia Warblers, among others. Besides warblers, the day’s list was also light on deep water ducks, raptors, and sparrows, which didn’t do us any favours.

  We probably won’t try for 100 there again this spring, but it is a number that is definitely in sight. It could be done if we showed up before dawn and had a bit more luck with timing…but right now, it seems like the Venn diagram circles of arriving/departing/breeding birds are already pulling apart. It was entertaining to try for it.

  The day was hot, with barely a puff of wind all day — a massive contrast to the wintry weather of just a week earlier. Stay hydrated!

  One of the last birds of the day was an odd bird indeed. A warbler was spotted in a small tree on the southern tip of the island, at about 7:30pm. It initially had me super confused. I briefly thought it was something nutty like a Townsend’s Warbler. Nah. Then I got better looks at the yellow throat and overall Yellow-rumped Warbler vibe, and ambitiously pegged it for an Audubon’s Warbler, the western counterpart to our white-throated Myrtle Warbler, the eastern subspecies of Yellow-rumped Warbler. When I got home and was able to review some more images in field guides and online, the long Myrtle-like supercilium and yellow speckling on the chest had me thinking it was a Myrtle x Audubon’s hybrid, with maybe even some Magnolia Warbler influence, if such a thing is possible. After kicking the images around on bird ID groups, a new possibility emerged — a straight-up Myrtle Warbler, but with Xanthochromism, an unusual excess of yellow pigmentation. This seems to match up best with the overall markings of this bird, which are pretty standard for Myrtle Warbler, yellow notwithstanding.

  All in all, it was a fun bird to puzzle over in the field. I was all sore and cranky by that point in the day (hour #10 of birding), but after seeing it, all of that went away. My knees were new again. I was uber amped. Gotta love birding.

  Oh yeah, right at the end, an insect flew into my open gob and got stuck, wriggling, in my throat. It was hilarious.

Cem Dregs and Fool’s Warblers

Brown Creeper Certhia americana
(March 21)

Northern Parula Setophaga americana
(May 9)

Mallard Anas platyrhynchos
(March 21)

Northern Raccoon Procyon lotor
(March 21)

Woodchuck/Groundhog/Marmotte/Siffleur Marmota monax
(Matrch 21)

Eastern Chipmunk Tamias striatus
(March 21)

Harry doing what Harrys do

March 17

Dan getting dissolved
(March 28)

April 5

A skirmish line of twitchers dipping on a Louisiana Waterthrush
(April 5)

Little Lord Horror’boi

A house, 100% haunted

Coffee stashed in the camera bag, the only way to go

  Not every one of my bird trips ends up being blogged. Sometimes I get backlogged (backblogged?), sometimes I forget, and sometimes I just can’t be arsed spending the time to blog, especially when the birding was slow. Here’s a quick compilation of a few such trips to the cems over the past few months.

-March 17: 10 degrees and sunny in the snow, 16 species.

-March 21: 10 degrees and rainy…20 species…many mammals. Lovely Brown Creepers at close range.

-March 28: 4 degrees, rainy as feck, 9 species…”How rainy can it get?” I laughed. We dissolved.

-April 5: 5 degrees and mixed weather…23 species…dipped on a one-day-wonder Louisiana Waterthrush at 7:45am after an all-nighter…if you’re not tryin’ you’re dyin’.

-May 9: Painfully quiet for the time of year…27 species but it felt like less than that. On the warbler front, we ended up with only one each of Black-and-white Warbler and (a last minute) Northern Parula, and we had to dig hard to find those. Plenty of ‘fool’s warblers’ (kinglets) around though. I guess it was one of those “The wind taketh away” kinda days. What else…Saw an Osprey...and a singing female Purple Finch that initially had us conundrummed.

Underbirdy

Pine Warbler Setophaga pinus

Pine Warbler Setophaga pinus

Eastern Chipmunk Tamias striatus

Mont-Saint-Bruno, May 12, 2021

  Had a quick muck around Mont-Saint-Bruno yesterday with the Scottsman. While the flying bebites and the leaves were in near summer form, it was still relatively underbirdy, with five species of warbler noted among 31 total bird species.

  Continuing with the trend of a screwy late spring, when we visited the same spot almost exactly three years ago, there were 12 species of warbler (and 44 species overall).

  A breeding-plumaged male Pine Warbler showed well. It was a stunner, especially when compared with the 1st year female from the previous post. I can see how, given quick looks, it can be a confusion species with Yellow-throated Vireo.