Jim Washbrook and other residents of a Northeast Calgary neighbourhood were treated to a rare sight in late March when a Boreal Owl spent a few hours posing for photographs during daylight hours. These rarely seen little owls are nocturnal and live in the Boreal forest. Many birders have never seen or even heard one.
Boreal Owl, Calgary, March 28, 2018. Photo by Jim Washbrook.
Boreal Owl, Calgary, March 28, 2018. Photo by Jim Washbrook.
Boreal Owl, Calgary, March 28, 2018. Photo by Jim Washbrook.
Sarah Bradley also took some photos of the owl sitting in the vines. Photos below by Sarah Bradley, Calgary, March 28, 2018.
The owl apparently moved on and was not seen again after that afternoon. Nice to have one of these come to you instead of having to go look for it!
Tomorrow is the fourth annual Global Big Day organized by the Cornell lab of Ornithology. Birders all over the world are encouraged to go birding and report their sightings on eBird. The goal is to see how many of the world’s 10,000+ species can be found, and to get reports from as many places and as many people as possible.
Global Big Day 2018. Image from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
The first such Big Day in 2015 had 6,085 species reported, which almost doubled the previous best day on eBird. Last year, on May 13, almost 20,000 people from 150 countries contributed more than 50,000 checklists containing 6,564 species. This is truly an important record of the state of the birds in the world.
To take part, just go birding anywhere you want to, and report your sightings on eBird. There is no need to spend the whole day – just spend some time counting birds in your local park, your yard, or anywhere you like.
If you have not used eBird before, it is very easy to get started. All the information you need is on their site. Start here to learn how it works, and then sign in and get started.
Note: If you want to contribute on Saturday but have not yet started using eBird, please just record the information about your outing (the location, the time spent birding, the species you see, and their approximate numbers), and you can enter the data into eBird later. Your sightings will be added to the Big Day. If you have trouble getting started with eBird, email me at birdscalgary[at]gmail.com and I’ll try to help. But read the information on the eBird site first.
Birds & Beers this month will feature a talk and photo presentation by Calgary birder Diane Stinson, about a recent trip that she and her husband Rob took to Antarctica.
Diane says, “Rob and I went on a trip in January to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. As there are not enough superlatives to describe what we experienced, I hope that this photographic presentation will provide a journey in spirit. While the focus will be birds (including 7 species of penguins and the South Georgia Pipit – the southern-most song bird in the world), there will also be images of whales, seals, icebergs and even some flowers. One of the highlights of the trip was standing on the edge of a colony of an estimated 500,000 King Penguins in St. Andrew’s Bay, South Georgia.”
Everyone is welcome at Birds & Beers, including children if accompanied by an adult. It is an informal social get-together, with food and drinks available. For the first hour or so you can visit with your fellow birders, and the presentation will start after 7 pm. If you can’t be there at 6 come any time until 7.
Upcoming Birds & Beers dates, all at the same time and place: Thursday May 24, Thursday June 21.
Tony LePrieur saw a flock of ten Migrating Mountain Bluebirds in the Weaselhead Nature Area in SW Calgary on April 1, 2018. All photos by Tony LePrieur.
Male Mountain Bluebird.
Six males together.
A female. Most of the earliest-arriving birds are males, eager to get on territory.
Mountain Bluebirds arrive back in the Calgary area every spring just about right on the equinox. The extended snowy and cold weather we are having this spring will make it tough on them. They eat mostly insects during the breeding season, but will also eat berries to survive the cold weather.
Mountain Bluebirds are a cavity-nesting species, and they are now often out-competed for nesting sites by non-native House Sparrows and European Starlings. In an effort to increase the nesting opportunities for Bluebirds, volunteers have erected hundreds of nest boxes in rural Alberta.
Common Goldeneye (male, mating display). Weaselhead, April 9, 2017. Photo by Tony LePrieur.
No speaker is scheduled for this month but come out and have a chat about (hopefully!) spring birding. Everyone is welcome. Food and drinks are available.
Upcoming Birds & Beers dates, all at the same time and place: Thursday April 26, Thursday May 24, Thursday June 21.
White-throated Sparrows are a common summer bird of the boreal forest, and in Calgary you can see them and hear their beautiful song in places like the Weaselhead and the west end of Fish Creek Park, where they breed. Their wintering grounds are in the eastern and southern United States and on the west coast from Washington to California, a long way from Calgary. Nevertheless, it isn’t unusual for a few to overwinter here, and if you feed birds in your yard they will come looking for seeds. I have had one coming to my yard all winter. Gus Yaki has also had one in his yard all winter, and a couple of others have been reported around the city.
White-throated Sparrow (left) and a Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco (right), Calgary, January 2018.
I first saw this bird in November 2017, feeding with a small flock of Dark-eyed Juncos. I have seen it periodically up to as recently as March 2018. It is always with Dark-eyed Juncos, another native sparrow species (the two sometimes interbreed and produce infertile offspring). These native sparrows prefer to feed on a flat surface like a tray, or on the ground.
White-throated Sparrow (left) and Dark-eyed Junco (right).
The distinguishing features of the White-throated Sparrow include the white throat which has a sharply defined lower border, the yellow lores (the spot in front of the eye), and the alternating dark and light head stripes. In this individual, an adult, the stripes are black and white. First-year birds have tan and brown head stripes, and there is also another adult colour morph which has tan and brown head stripes. The two adult colour morphs occur in roughly equal numbers. Interestingly, each adult almost always mates with the opposite colour morph, so both traits persist.
White-throated Sparrow (left) and Dark-eyed Junco (right).
White-throated Sparrow (right). The other bird is a male House Sparrow.
In the above photo you can see the rufous colour in the wing of the White-throated Sparrow and the blurry streaks on the sides of the breast.
Sometimes a White-throated Sparrow will be feeding on the ground with a flock of House Sparrows. Even without binoculars you can usually pick them out by their feeding behavior. Like other native sparrows (the Dark-eyed Juncos and Lincoln’s Sparrows, for example) they tend to scratch for seeds with both feet simultaneously, jumping quickly ahead and back. House Sparrows (which are not native sparrows but an introduced European species) never do this. The White-throated Sparrow also has a longer tail than the House Sparrow.
White-throated Sparrow foraging for seeds in the snow.
