Tag Archive | winter birds

The Elusive Brown Creeper

By Cathy Warwick

The last time I saw a Brown Creeper I was cross-country skiing at Confederation Park and had stopped at the top of a hill to catch my breath. I was near a stand of Spruce trees and noticed a piece of the bark was moving. Of course it wasn’t the bark – it was a tiny brown bird moving up the tree. The Brown Creeper is not a well-known bird largely because they lay low, extremely low. They are elusive and mysterious but when you see one its behaviour and look is unmistakable. If you decide to add it to your Life List and go out looking for one, good luck! You’re going to need it. Another strategy is to read this article to familiarize yourself with the Brown Creeper for the day you see one, then you can point to it and yell “a Brown Creeper!”

First of all they are tiny, their body is about the length of a thumb, add to that their long brown tail. Secondly they have amazing camouflage, they have brown feathers on the top of their body, perfectly suited to hide against a spruce tree. Their underside is a white colour, this countershading camouflages them when flying. Their stealth colouring is only undone by their song, a high pitched tssst sound. That’s where you come in with your phone at the ready, the Merlin Bird ID app open. It can identify a Brown Creeper and then you can look for it by its song.

If you get a good enough look you will see its curved bill, perfect for digging in the bark where other birds can’t get to. It eats the insects, their eggs and pupae, hidden in the bark. In photos you can see its relatively long feet, which help it hang on to the bark as it creeps upward in a spiral. Once they have checked out a tree they will fly to the base of the next and start up that one. I wonder if the nuthatch, going down and the creeper, going up, have ever bumped their little heads together. What an adorable mishap that would be.

The Brown Creeper needs live trees to forage on and dead and dying trees to nest in, they use the whole forest lifecycle (allaboutbirds.com). The English traditional park of rolling green lawns with large trees studding it is horrible for wildlife. In our city it’s nice we have some Creeper friendly ‘messy parks’ like Weaslehead and Fish Creek.

Hopefully five years from now when you actually see a Brown Creeper on a tree you can recall the name of it. Maybe the fact that it is ‘creeping’ up the tree will twig your memory and you can yell out its name. Your advanced birding badge will be on its way if you succeed.

More about the Brown Creeper on All About Birds.

Winter Birds Update, December 21

Dec23

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

In early December I posted about the start of Winter Birding season. As usual, we picked up almost all of the commonly-occcuring winter species pretty quickly for our list. Before last weekend’s Calgary Christmas Bird Count, we were at 87 species. But we added four new species on the Calgary Count on December 18 (Varied Thrush at Queen’s Park Cemetery, Northern Shoveler at Bonnybrook waste treatment plant on the Bow River, Gadwall at a couple of locations on the Bow, and a Common Grackle seen at a feeder in SE Calgary). So, as of December 20, we were at 91 species for the Calgary region.

Common Grackle, photographed in mid-December in SE Calgary by Jennifer Howson. (Yes, I have spoken to her about the bread!)

The extreme cold weather we have been having is keeping birders from going out, and the birds are often sheltering, so one might think we would have a low number of species this year. But it is in line with the past few years:

Year	Total on Dec. 20	Final Total
2019	89	109
2020	98	119
2021	92	118
2022	91	???

(Data courtesy of Caroline Lambert. Caroline has done most of the work on the Calgary list again this year, as well as maintaining the Bow Valley list.)

There are several other Christmas Bird Counts in the region in the next ten days, so we should get a few more species on those. (Nature Calgary’s site has some information on some of the other counts if you wish to take part. There are also some Long-term Foothills Counts that may need addditional participants.) And then there is the long stretch from the beginning of January to the end of February to find more species. So we might end up with a total of well over 100 species again.

Some of the species that haven’t been reported yet this year but that we are still likely to find include Wild Turkey, Northern Pygmy-Owl, and Short-eared Owl. Those have all been seen in the five previous winters. American Kestrel and Red-winged Blackbird have also been seen in each of the last five winters, but I wonder if it is now less likely at this point that they will turn up. We have a good chance to get Clark’s Nutcracker (seen in three of the past five years but known to winter in nearby areas) and Black-backed Woodpecker (seen in four of the past five). Hoary Redpolls have also been seen in four of five years, but the low numbers of Redpolls around this year will make it a real challenge.

If you see somethig that is not yet on the list, please report it on the Albertabird site.

Meanwhile, over in the Bow Valley near Canmore and Banff, they have 55 species so far. They may not get to the record of 74 for the season, but should have a respectable total in the 60’s. You can follow the Bow Valley Birding Group on Facebook here.

Check out the Alberta Winter Bird List site to see the lists for Calgary, the Bow Valley, Edmonton, and the overall Provincial list.

The Calgary Winter Birds List – One Week To Go

Feb19

Posted by Bob Lefebvre

For the past five years Caroline Lambert and I have been keeping track of all species reported in the Calgary region in the winter months (December 1 to February 28). This is something that Gerry Fox has done for the Edmonton birding community for many years. Caroline also keeps a list for the Bow Valley birding area in the Banff-Canmore area. There is also a long-standing list for the whole province that is maintained by Richard Klauke.

Northern Flicker puffed up at -30 Celcius. We may get a little more weather like that yet! Photographed in Calgary on January 2022 by Ray Turner.

It’s interesting to see how many species and how many rarities we can find in the winter, and many birders like to keep a personal winter list so that they have incentive to get out during these slow birding months.

The Calgary region is the 80-km diameter circle that is also used for the May Species Count:

Here are the numbers of species we have recorded:

In the first two years we only accepted sightings that were posted to Albertabird but since then we have included any confirmed sightings we can get. So, although it is a small sample size, 110 to 120 species seems to be what we get in the winter.

We are currently at 113 species. The most recent additions, since January 15, are Red Crossbill, Purple Finch, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and Clark’s Nutcracker.

As always seems to happen when you keep a list, we have had some great rarities this year, but we have also missed on some species we usually get. But there is still a little over a week to go, so maybe we can find two or three more.

The three species that have been reported in all four previous years but not this year are American Kestrel, Harris’s Sparrow, and American Goldfinch. It seems a long shot that these will be found at this point, but it’s surprising that none have been seen.

Spruce Grouse is definitely a species we should be able to find. It was reported in three out of the four previous winters. Although their range is restricted to the western edge of the circle, there should be some around.

The other possibilities are the three local “hard-to-find” owls, Barred, Long-eared, and Boreal. And sometimes we get California Gulls or even Ring-billed before the end of February.

My personal winter list is now up to 44 species, which is still very low. I have only six species that are only or primarily seen in winter, plus a lot of resident birds and seasonal rarities. So I have nine days to go find Snowy Owls, Snow Buntings, Pine Grosbeaks, Northern Shrikes, and many others!

My best “winter” bird this year, a seasonally rare Fox Sparrow. Photo by Bob Lefebvre

Here is a link to the page that Caroline maintains with all four winter lists. If you’ve seen any of the species that haven’t yet been reported this winter, let me know.

Previous posts on Albertabird about the 2021-2022 Calgary winter list:

December 2 – 41 species.

December 18 – 90 species.

January 15 – 109 species.

Merry Christmas From Birds Calgary!

Dec25

Snow Angels. Posted by Bob Lefebvre

Wing prints — Snow Angel, Inglewood Golf Course, December 14, 2019. Photo by Kathleen Johnson.

During the recent Calgary Christmas Bird Count, we saw an amazing number of animal tracks in the fresh snow on the Inglewood Golf Course. But the most extraordinary tracks were these wing impressions (sometimes called snow angels) left by some of the local Bald Eagles as they skimmed low over the snow.

In two places we saw a series of over twenty of these in a row, where an eagle had taken off from the ground or a low perch and flew across the open fairway, leaving an impression with every wingstroke, usually with impressions of the feet between the wing prints as well.

Short-eared Owls in Winter

Mar28

Short-eared Owls are scarce in the Calgary area in the winter, but sometimes a few can be found hunting meadow voles around fields that have not been cultivated for a few years. Ron Chiasson photographed these owls near Calgary this winter. Short-eared Owls are a sensitive species so we won’t give the location. They have declined in the Calgary area over the decades as native prairie has disappeared, but they have an almost worldwide distribution and their conservation status is “Least Concern.”

Short-eared Owl

You can see more of Ron’s photos at Ron Chiasson Photography.

Cold Weather Bird Photos

Mar4

Well, it’s turning into a very long, cold, and ridiculously snowy winter here in Calgary. I’m sure the poor road and pathway conditions are keeping many local birders at home more than usual, but if you do go out, you may be treated to some spectacular winter sights, as the following pictures show. All photos were taken by Ron Chiasson in Calgary this winter, with the exception of the American Dipper photo, which was taken in Kananaskis.

Canada Goose

Bald Eagle

Bald Eagles

Mallards

Gray Partridge

American Dipper

Downy Woodpecker

Common Goldeneye

Common Goldeneyes with Canada Geese

Common Goldeneye

Northern Goshawk

House Finch

Mule Deer

White-tailed Deer in chest-high snow.

Canada Goose

Trumpeter Swan

Trumpeter Swan with Canada Geese

Trumpeter Swan

sunbeams

To see more of Ron’s photos, go to his website here, or follow him on Instagram.

Ron Pittaway’s 2016-2017 Winter Finch Forecast

Oct4

Posted by Dan Arndt

With another summer season coming to an end, and many of our fall migrants beginning to trail off, thoughts turn to what the winter may bring to us in southern Alberta.

You can find the original article here: Ron Pittaway’s Winter Finch Forecast 2016-2017. If you’ve read it already, you might notice there’s a fairly strong emphasis on eastern Canada and the U.S., and some mentions of “Western Canada”. Without further ado, here’s a species by species breakdown of what I think we’re likely to expect here in the Calgary region.

Red Crossbills at a feeder in SE Calgary

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Ron’s “General Forecast” describes cone crops as: “good to bumper in Northern Ontario, Western Canada and Alaska”. Also, due to the drought conditions in much of the east this year, the cone crops in that region are poor, so the birds that would regularly winter there will be moving east, west, or south to find food.

Pine Grosbeak:

Mountain Ash berries are their preferred food, and as those crops are good throughout the boreal region, chances of seeing many of them this winter are low. They are often found at high elevation in the front ranges of the Rocky Mountains west of Calgary during the breeding season. Mountain Ash is a decorative tree throughout much of the Calgary area, which will likely draw some down from the mountains.

Pine Grosbeak

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Purple Finch:

As the cone crops are in good shape here this year we should expect to see Purple Finches rarely. They’re never really in the Calgary area in large numbers, but if you’re looking to attract them, black-oil sunflower is your best bet.

Purple Finch

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Red Crossbill:

While it’s unlikely for us to get a Red Crossbill irruption quite as good as what we had last year, it’ll still be a fairly good year for them throughout the pine and spruce in southern Alberta. The west end of Fish Creek Provincial Park is always a good place to find them, and Griffith Woods is another good spot.

Red Crossbill

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White-winged Crossbill:

As with the Red Crossbills, this species has moved west to the abundant cone crops out here, so we stand to have another good year of White-winged Crossbills throughout southern Alberta. They’re another common feeder bird, and as with most, they tend to prefer black-oil sunflower seeds.

White-winged Crossbill

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Common Redpoll:

As the general trend of crop failure continues in the east, these birds will be found on birch and willow in the west where the cone crops have been much more robust. Nyjer seed will be the feed of choice to attract these to your yard in the Calgary area.

Common Redpoll

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Hoary Redpoll:

Whenever you find a flock of Common Redpoll, there’s a chance that you might find the occasional Hoary Redpoll in the mix. They’re really not that easy to pick out, but if you spend the time looking over a flock you might just luck out and find one that looks just a little paler with a tiny little bill. When it comes right down to it, it’s a numbers game… at least until they lump them back in with Common Redpolls!

Hoary Redpoll

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Pine Siskin:

Pine Siskins have already been appearing in southern Alberta, and like the Pine Grosbeaks, they do breed in the area, so it will be interesting to see just how many of them show up this winter from elsewhere.

Pine Siskin

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Evening Grosbeak:

These beautiful finches are so incredibly striking, and they seem to be doing well all across Canada, with their numbers again on the rise. We’ve even been seeing them within the city limits of Calgary on the Friends of Fish Creek outings to Bebo Grove and Marshall Springs, which is a good sign for seeing them in bigger numbers as the colder weather sets in!

Evening Grosbeak

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Blue Jay:

While these guys aren’t finches, they can be irruptive as they also feed on the same seeds that winter finches utilize. Their numbers have also been on the rise in the Calgary area as well, so it’s almost a guarantee that we’ll be seeing these all throughout the area and even in some back yards this winter.

Blue Jay

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Red-breasted Nuthatch

Another species that we’ve been seeing in larger numbers already this fall, the Red-breasted Nuthatch is a charismatic little critter. More often than not you can find them foraging in spruce stands calling from the tops of trees and flitting about in mixed flocks with chickadees and kinglets.

Red-breasted Nuthatch

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Bohemian Waxwing:

Of all the species, these are the ones that seem to be around every winter in decent numbers. While we do have irruptive years where we have tens of thousands in the Calgary area alone, it’s not uncommon to see flocks of hundreds. They are most often found foraging on silverberry, mountain ash, or even spruce trees on whatever they can find in the boughs.

Bohemian Waxwing

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So, where can you go to see finches this winter? Within the city of Calgary, the Weaselhead Nature Area, Griffith Woods, and the west end of Fish Creek Provincial Park are great places to look. In the north, Queen’s Park Cemetery and Confederation Park can provide some good views of these birds as well. As well, the front ranges and foothills of the Rocky Mountains are productive because of the huge numbers of spruce lining the slopes. Don’t rule out some of the prairie wetlands either! Pine Siskins and both redpoll species will feed on cattails and spilled grain wherever they can be found!
Good luck out there, and let’s hope the cold weather holds off for just a little bit longer!

Back to Bebo for a Beautiful Bird

Mar2

Posted by Dan Arndt

Our second visit to Bebo Grove this winter was in search of a well-documented Varied Thrush that had been seen there for a few weeks, and thankfully it decided to stay in almost the exact same spot for our Sunday morning outing. We also got some of the regular boreal birds that we’ve come to expect at Bebo Grove, and while the morning was fairly quiet in terms of numbers of individual birds, we did have some nice close encounters that highlighted the morning overall.

Bebo Grove – February 21, 2016

While the highlight of the morning was the Varied Thrush, a bird we found early on and spent a good amount of time with, I’m going to save those images for the very end, since there are a few of them in different poses, and really it’s always good practice to save the best for last!

Our morning was, as I mentioned in the intro, quiet overall in terms of bird sightings, but there wasn’t a moment while travelling through the trees that we didn’t have at least forty or fifty Pine Siskins in the trees above us, trilling and chattering away. We even had a brief sighting of a Merlin, a Dark-eyed Junco, and a few other birds that I we haven’t seen as a group since the late fall.

Boreal Chickadee

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Boreal Chickadee

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It’s almost like clockwork the areas in Bebo Grove where we find mixed flocks of Boreal and Black-capped Chickadees, and where the bird activity picks up bit by bit to a startling cacophony of sound and being dive-bombed by chickadees, nuthatches, and the odd kinglet or creeper. There were a few more Boreal Chickadees here than the last time we visited this little grove, and they had a very well established pecking order, with one larger bird coming in first, then the next two coming in almost as soon as it had left.

Pine Siskin

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We even had a few close encounters with some Pine Siskins once again, coming down into the lower boughs of the spruce trees to feed on hatching insects as well as on the fallen cones.

Pine Grosbeak

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One of the bird species that seems to be diminishing in numbers in southern Alberta right now are the Pine Grosbeaks. While there are a few places to still reliably find them in the city limits, I suspect that they’re heading north and west as our early spring has really ramped up over the last few weeks. Similarly, both White-winged and Red Crossbills, as well as Bohemian Waxwings seem to have all but withdrawn from southern Alberta a few weeks earlier than they normally would, despite there still being an abundance of food for them.

Golden-crowned Kinglet

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Another species we found picking through the lower branches in search of freshly hatched insects (in February, at that! The wonders of these long-lasting el Nino chinooks!) were a few Golden-crowned Kinglets. These birds were unusually unaware of our presence once again, and so we had really good looks at them while they fluttered about almost like hummingbirds feeding from the tips of the branches and all the way along each small branch and twig.

Varied Thrush

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Of course the real highlight was this male Varied Thrush. I’ve been seeing quite a few of these birds in Revelstoke, British Columbia in my trips there all winter, but these are certainly a great bird to find in Alberta, especially one returning to the same area for such a long period of time in the winter!

Varied Thrush

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We even got to hear him singing away for a few minutes, while a second male a little further off in the distance sung counter to him. If you’ve never really heard these birds before, their song is a long, high pitched piercing note, much like the sound of the brakes of a train squealing to a stop.

Varied Thrush

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Varied Thrush

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Varied Thrush

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We must have spent a good half hour with this bird, watching him from all angles while he posed, sung, posed again, and eventually moved just a little higher in the trees as the sun came around to illuminate him a little bit. It was probably the best look at a Varied Thrush some members of our group had ever had, as these birds can be quite flighty, even where they are abundant.

Have a great week, and good “spring” birding!

Mid-winter birding in Votier’s Flats

Feb24

Posted by Dan Arndt

As any birder knows, it’s nearly impossible to predict what your success will be like on any given day out in the field. Some days, you can go out and find a huge variety of species in the gloomiest and most terrible weather, while on a perfect weather day the birds all seem to disappear. My last few outings have been a lot quieter than usual, but with the above-seasonal weather we’ve had since late January it’s not entirely unusual. Our visit to Votier’s Flats on January 31 was one of those rather quiet days, but we still managed to see some good birds on the two outings I attended that week.

Votier’s Flats – January 31, 2016

While I attended one walk earlier in the week, and my regular Sunday outing, I only tracked the walk on Sunday, so one of our better sightings isn’t mapped here.

We had a fairly typical array of winter birds at Votier’s Flats, with Pine Siskins, White-winged and Red Crossbills, Black-capped and Boreal Chickadees, and of course the ever present Black-billed Magpies and Common Ravens were readily apparent. As we entered the woods, we were hailed by the calls of a White-breasted Nuthatch high up in the trees, claiming this particularly good territory for itself and announcing its presence to any female that might be paying attention.

White-breasted Nuthatch

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Mid-week, we had found a recently killed White-tailed Deer carcass, likely taken down by coyotes in the park, but that didn’t deter the rest of the White-tailed Deer from roaming around seemingly without a care in the world. This deer was photographed less than 30 meters from where we had found the kill.

White-tailed Deer

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One of the things we’ve been observing recently is Pine Siskins feeding a bit lower in the trees than usual, allowing us much better looks at much closer distances that we have for much of the winter so far. They yellow tones in the flight feathers and underwing are really starting to pop now too, making them a little nicer to photograph than your typical Little Brown Jobs.

Pine Siskin

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Pine Siskin

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After we cleared the wooded area made up mostly of spruce trees, things got really, really quiet. We headed up the hill to the area that borders on the south end of Fish Creek Provincial Park, where a number of homes have bird feeders set up, and even up there it was incredibly quiet. The only bird to be found when we checked on our first pass was this lone sickly looking Black-capped Chickadee. You can see in this photo that the feathers surrounding the eyes are all missing, and that the eyes themselves also appear a bit puffy. I have no idea what might be the cause of this, but suspect it could be ticks or some illness caused by these feeders not being cleaned regularly. It’s vitally important if you put out bird feeders to ensure that they’re cleaned regularly. The rule of thumb that I always use is that every two times I fill a feeder, I run it through the dishwasher for a good, thorough wash.

sick Black-capped Chickadee

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We did a quick loop up top, but aside from a few magpies flying by overhead, and a few other small finches flying overhead, the only bird we were able to get close to was yet another (healthy this time) Black-capped Chickadee.

healthy Black-capped Chickadee

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We headed back down the hill and through the wooded area a second time, but following Fish Creek itself in hopes of finding some birds along the creek bed. Unfortunately for us, our only additional sighting was this near-perfectly camouflaged Brown Creeper, with its high-pitched trills and even a brief little attempt at a song!

Brown Creeper

On the earlier outing that week, we had headed over towards Raven Rocks to search for Townsend’s Solitaires, and sure enough we found two singing high on the slope, and one even popped down to check us out for a few minutes before my camera decided to stop working for the day!

Townsend’s Solitaire

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Townsend’s Solitaire

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Following our outing on January 31, I headed out of town for the next two weeks, and so our next week’s update should bring us up to our outing on February 21 where we returned to Bebo Grove!

Have a good week, and good birding!

Ron Pittaway’s 2014-2015 Winter Finch Forecast

Sep23

Posted by Dan Arndt

The moment many birders wait for each fall has arrived. Ron Pittaway of the Ontario Field Ornithologists has been publishing the Winter Finch Forecast since the fall of 1999, and his record has been relatively spot on. He relies on input from citizen scientists, environmental scientists, and enthusiasts throughout Canada’s northern region to determine the abundance of the cone crop of trees in the boreal forest and across the Canadian Shield. Though the majority of his data come from Ontario, these forecasts have been pretty reliable even out west here in Alberta since I was made aware of his reports in 2011.

Pine Siskin

You can find the original report by clicking here, but I’ll give you the distilled version for Alberta below:

Across northern Alberta, spruce cone crops range from poor (MB-SK) to average (southern Yukon). Based on what I saw up north earlier this summer, I’d say it’s closer to poor in the areas I surveyed. Birch seed crops are poor to average, while Mountain-ash berry crops have had a bumper year here in the west.

White-winged Crossbill

What does this mean? Well, we will likely not see large numbers of Pine Grosbeaks, Red and White-winged Crossbills, Evening Grosbeaks or Bohemian Waxwings (no, these aren’t finches) given the abundance of food further north and west. We can look forward to seeing both Common and Hoary Redpolls, given the state of birch cones further north, and Pine Siskins have already been seen in and around Calgary already this summer. Red-breasted Nuthatches (also not finches) are also expected to make their way south this winter.

Common Redpoll

Why is this important? Well, all of these winter finches are regular visitors to bird feeders, and will readily feed on nyjer seed (for finches), peanuts, and black-oil sunflower seeds (for non-finches), so if you’re a regular bird feeder, it’s quite likely you’ll find some, or if you’re really lucky, all of these birds at your feeders this coming winter!

Good birding!

Common Redpoll

By Cathy Warwick

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