My Bird of the Day

March 27. 2025. Hendrie Valley. Royal Botanical Gardens, Burlington, ON. Canada. Another chance golden day, too good to waste on the trappings of urban living. Far better spent looking for birds; and where better than my favourite valley.

I was hardly out of my car and could hear American Robin song and Blue Jay screeching. Black–capped Chickadees were pleased to see me thinking I’d come with peanut handouts but were wrong. The tally for the day built quickly with Dark–eyed Junco, White–breasted Nuthatch and Northern Cardinal, all regulars and to be expected. And, then a surprise.

As I stood listening and watching, absorbing this bit of early spring, an unfamiliar scratchy bark made me pay attention. Looking up I saw a crow-sized bird moving through the open treetops and almost immediately knew it was either a Cooper’s or Sharp-shinned Hawk, they’re closely related and look-alikes except for size differences . Well, it was a Cooper’s Hawk, and I watched it make its way to the top of a White Pine where it had a nest – or at least the start of one, an untidy platform of twigs.  The thing about Coooper’s Hawks, like many predators, is that they have an aura of noble bearing about them, at least in our minds. Coooper’s dominate as predators of smaller birds and rodents which they often capture by ambush or high-speed chase, nobility being irrelevant. Over the past few decades, Cooper’s Hawks along with the Merlins have become increasingly common nesters in our suburban and urban landscapes. It was almost bound to be My Bird of the Day, not much else comes close as an attention-getter at this time of year.

As winter’s ice has faded, Red–winged Blackbirds, Canada Geese, Mallards, Trumpeter Swans, Belted Kingfishers and Wood Ducks have started staking out their little piece of the valley and I was pleased, though not surprised, to see an Eastern Screech–Owl sunning itself at its arboreal doorway.  I first saw a Screech Owl at that roosting/nesting spot in April 2018, and it or its roommates have been there since, and who knows for how long before.

To those already noted above I added Song, White–throated, and American Tree Sparrows. Two woodpecker species, Downy and Red–bellied Woodpeckers, a low drifting Turkey Vulture, a Red–tailed Hawk circling way up and I spotted another Cooper’s Hawk hunting treetops.

My two-hour hike ended up with twenty-eight species, good enough for March and certainly good for the inner man.

March 19 2025. Cayuga, Ontario, Canada. There’s always a day or two in the transition months of March to April, when spring gets a look-in while winter’s back is turned.   That sort of golden day has a feel to it, made of more than just warmth or sunshine; there’s shrinking snow, warm airs and maybe damp earth vapors mixed in.

My companion and I knew this day was coming and took advantage of it to head towards the shoreline of Lake Erie, about two hours away, but it took longer with many diversions and digressions along the way.

We explored a small conservation area overlooking a wide spring-flooded valley. The lake was busy with Ring-necked Ducks, more than I’ve ever seen together, we counted fifty.  Ring-necks are probably our earliest spring migrant duck, often present in patches of open water on otherwise ice-bound lakes.

Tree Swallows winter not far south of us so, an early spring arrival shouldn’t be a surprise; but somehow it always is, they are there when you least expect it.  I had spotted one zipping overhead as we drove, but we really craved a more positive sighting and as we scanned the Ring-necked Ducks and a few mixed in Hooded Mergansers and Black Ducks, a group of perhaps six or seven Tree Swallows settled in an old skeletal willow nearby.

That golden day held more excitement . A flooded field held a few Northern Pintails, Green-winged Teal, many Mallards and a single Redhead. Lake Erie, our goal, was not very productive, it was still largely iced over although ducks probably Long–tailed Ducks or Buffleheads filled the many open water cracks and a distant, sitting Bald Eagle was conspicuous.

Bird of the Day though were the Tree Swallows, just welcome back.

February/March. 2025 Kenya. In a land synonymous with ever-present clawed and sharp-toothed danger, it comes as something of a surprise to see flocks of looks-like-a-chicken category birds wandering around quite openly, I’m thinking of Vulturine Guineafowl and Helmeted Guineafowl.  You don’t see them in ones and twos, instead they’re always in large, tightly gathered family groups, on a search for seeds, leaves, bulbs, and insects at ground level.  They obviously know what they’re doing having been around since time began, Helmeted Guineafowl in much of sub-Saharan  Africa and Vulturine Guineafowl mostly in east Africa including arid parts of north and east Kenya.  And that’s where I enjoyed them both.

They belong in the Galliformes order of birds which puts them somewhere distantly related to quail and pheasants, and even chickens at a stretch. And size-wise they’re about the heft of a small turkey.  They’d probably make a decent meal, Elspeth Huxley in The Flame Trees of Thika, her autobiographical account of growing up in early-twentieth century Kenya, describes hunting them for the pot.

It is hard to resist being both charmed and amused by the sight of guineafowl. They show little or no fear of vehicles and seemed to only resignedly scatter on our approach.

The Helmeted Guineafowl, so called on account of its prehistoric, fleshy crest, is rather like a large black ball on legs. Its plumage is marked all over with ‘tear along the dotted line’ white spots and its face has a dinosaur-era look about it.

It was the Vulturine Guineafowl that made my days.  That crisp, smart, pin-stripe plumage contrasting with the vulturine bare-skin head makes a most unlikely combination. But maybe not so unlikely, because there’s probably a city banker or two somewhere who looks and dresses just like that, bare, jowly head and all. Even down to the remnant tuft behind the ears.

For all their apparent vulnerability they survive as a species. But I asked our guide who or what preys on guineafowl and he replied Bat-eared Foxes. Well of course.  We saw a few of them withdrawn into the shade by day but no doubt ready to stalk and take a bird or two from a flock. They are attractive little canids whose prime habitat is short grass plains, areas with bare ground and semi-arid scrubland – an exact match for guineafowl.

February/March. 2025 Kenya. I’m setting aside the “My Bird of the Day’ principle for a moment and stretching the timelines a bit to highlight a bird family that I can sometimes hardly believe, the Rollers. They are gaudy, tropical, blue birds with large heads, broad shoulders, and stout bills, and with a sit-and-wait-for-large-insects-to-show-up approach to feeding. We saw many on our recent trip to Kenya, they were widespread, though not everywhere and seemed to prefer open savanna habitats, with plenty of trees and shrubs and other convenient perches.  An odd name maybe but Rollers are named for their acrobatic and tumbling display flights, presumably when defining breeding territory or in courtship. I’ve always been mesmerized by their striking colours, usually an overall cerulean blue (subject to my artist friends’ agreement) with darker patches of intense pure blue and chestnut or rufous brown.

Worldwide there are thirteen Roller species, we saw three in Kenya: European Roller, Lilac-breasted Roller and Purple Roller.

The commonest was this above, the European Roller. It winters in sub-Saharan Africa but returns to Southern Europe and Central Eurasia to breed. My first encounter with it was while poring over bird books as a child, I was certain then that I’d never see one for real.  But when I finally did, in Kyrgyzstan in 2018, it made me tingle all over. What a bird.

The Lilac-breasted Roller (above) was plentiful but less common on our trip but that may just have been a matter of us not being in the right places. It is a purely African bird and somewhat migratory within the southern and eastern half of the continent.

This Rufous-crowned or Purple Roller was new to me and I would have missed it if our guide hadn’t assured us that it was a roller. It fits the general size and impression but missed out on the colour treatment. But it was still a roller and I was happy to make its acquaintance.

To round out any suggestion of a collection, I’ll add that I also saw and photographed these, a Broad-billed Roller, and an Indian Roller some years ago in Uganda and Oman respectively.

March 4 2025. Amboseli National Park, Kenya.  Amboseli National Park is a flat sometimes featureless plain, dry as dust in most directions (at this time of year) but becoming a soggy grassland and eventually a complex of shallow lakes as you travel west.  It is watched over by Mount Kilimanjaro and is very rich in wildlife, vertebrate and invertebrate.  We were there to sample it for barely 48 hours and were led around its most interesting corners by a well-qualified and skilled tour guide. When we left, our heads were full of memories: sightings of dryland and wetland birds and startling mammals in sometimes surprising numbers.

This is a birding site, and I’ll come to My Bird of the Day in a moment but I can’t leave the richness and abundance of what we experienced without sharing some of our encounters with mammals.

Mammals:  Masai giraffe, Grant’s Zebra, Wildebeest, Grant’s and Thomson’s Gazelles were all around but Elephants stole the day. For 50 years Amboseli Trust for Elephants (ATE) has conducted an extensive research program covering many areas of elephant biology including: social organization, behaviour, demography, ecological dynamics, communication, and human-elephant interactions. ATE’s presence has helped ensure the survival of them as well as the Amboseli ecosystem. And yes, we saw many, 250 elephants in one sweep of the binoculars for example.

A Hippopotamus draped with a mat of vegetation emerged from the waters behind a Tawny Eagle we had been watching.