Whip-poor-will

[V. Kirkwood]

This past Friday evening, around 8:30, just when a gentle drizzle began to fall, a Whip-poor-will started to call right outside my bedroom window.

What a surprise! I hadn't heard one on my property for more than 30 years, back in the pre-sugdivision, pre-horrible traffic on the highway days. Back then, I would occasionally hear them calling from the woods behind the pasture.

While I admit that my back lawn is 're-wilding' , I had not thought of it as prime Whip-poor-will habitat. Indeed, it called for a while, moving farther east toward the hay field hedge row. Alas, I did not hear it calling last evening.

Valerie Kirkwood

Acton's Corners

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Visit my fine art photography page at http://valerie-kirkwood.fineartamerica.com/

[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 19-May-24 9:47 a.m., 'V. Kirkwood' via NatureList wrote:
> What a surprise! I hadn't heard one on my property for more than 30

> years, back in the pre-subdivision, pre-horrible traffic on the highway

> days. Back then, I would occasionally hear them calling from the woods
> behind the pasture.

* without subdivisions or really horrible traffic, and doing auditory
monitoring every night, we've only heard them only very occasionally
here, usually only once in a year: 1994 (2 nights), 1995, 1999, 2000,
2001, 2003 (2 nights), 2004, 2006, 2007 (3 nights), 2010, & 2020.

fred.
------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Fragile Inheritance Natural History - https://fragileinheritance.ca/
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6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W
(613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca>
------------------------------------------------------------

[rmb...@istar.ca]

I'm spoiled living out here in the middle of the woods. I have 3 of
them, one right close to the house, and one on either side of the
lake. I'm loving that they're singing again.

Rose-Marie

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[Frederick W. Schueler]

* last night we went to Deeks Quarry so the grandson could shoot off
some Victoria Day fireworks, and there was a Whippoorwill calling in the
quarry - at first loudly along the south wall, and then, after a CPR
train and the fireworks, from along the east wall. Also a fly-by of five
Great Blue Herons, lots of Treefrogs calling, and Killdeer aroused into
calling by the fireworks.

fred.
================================================

\

[andrea...@sympatico.ca]

I heard a Whippoorwill in Merrickville on one occasion this spring (date unavailable at the mo.). Not since, unfortunately. Haven't heard them in the last two years.
Andrea

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[Candice Vetter]

Spotted the red-headed woodpecker again! I have sometimes thought, is that it? But seeing one again (didn't see it last year) reminded me how obvious they are with their orangey-red, almost glowing heads and the bright white flashes under their wings when flying.

Also in the last two weeks I have seen (around or near Quarry Lake in Russell Twp) a bobolink, a great blue heron, a rose breasted grosbeak, a northern flicker, an American redstart, a bunch of little sparrows or warblers or something that I didn't get a close enough look at to positively ID, small flocks of goldfinches, and we have been SO enjoying a mockingbird that has taken up residence just outside our house.

---

Candice Vetter
Writer/Freelance Journalist/Photographer
Tel: +613 445 0553 cell: 613 715 2223
email: cve...@xplornet.com
News Director and radio host at CJRO Radio
Co-author: Island of Biodiversity: A Natural History of the North Russell Red Shale Hill,
      with Aleta Karstad and Frederick W. Schueler, available from www.lulu.com

 

[rmb...@istar.ca]

Mockingbird?? I so enjoyed listening to them when I lived in the
States. See if you can get a good look at it, catbirds often sound
very much like a mockingbird. We used to have a catbird here but the
past few years I haven't heard one.

I've been wanting to get out and about with the long lens and see if I
can get photos of some of the warblers that nest here, but once again
there is a lot to do and this week is just too HOT. Both loons have
been swimming near the beach again, not a good sign, their nest must
have been raided. Last week I just saw the one out and about which
means one was sitting on the eggs. Had 3 whipporwills competing with
each other when I was out on the balcony last night looking at the
moths (have lights at the window). A merganser was at the beach by
herself this morning, likely has a nest somewhere nearby and came out
for breakfast.

That's it, I'm going down to the beach to do a bit of raking at the
shoreline, maybe go right on in for a swim. I hate the heat.

Rose-Marie

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[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 20-Jun-24 11:22 a.m., rmb...@istar.ca wrote:
> Mockingbird??  I so enjoyed listening to them when I lived in the
> States.  See if you can get a good look at it, catbirds often sound very
> much like a mockingbird.  We used to have a catbird here but the past
> few years I haven't heard one.

* in 1998 I heard a "different" Mimic Thrush singing in our Red Maple
tree (NatureList post appended) - and it turned out to be a Mockingbird.
We've now got what-I've-taken-for a Catbird singing across the street,
but it doesn't meow very much, so I really ought to get the binoculars
out and confirm its identity. It seems to have taken over the site from
a Brown Thrasher that was singing pretty raucously there in the spring.

fred.
------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Fragile Inheritance Natural History - https://fragileinheritance.ca/
FI Newsletter -
https://clt1233162.benchmarkurl.com/c/v?e=15E5037&c=12D10A&t=0&l=53EF5F06
2022 annual letter: https://clt1233162.bmeurl.co/EFE49F7
6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W
(613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca>
------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Mockingbird at Bishops Mills
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 10:09:31 -0700

This morning as we were lying in bed, about 07:50, contemplating the
tumult and tyranny of the day's schedule and listening to Phoebes, House
Wrens, Starlings, and Barn Swallows doing their best to dominate the
auditory communication channels outside the windows, we were suddenly
aware of a loud persistent mimetic song coming from the Red Maple NW of
Weirs House. At first I thought, on the basis of the quality of the
mimicry, that a Brown Thrasher must have made a foray in from the
Cedar/Apple bush out back, or, on the basis of the tinny tonal quality
of the singing, that renesting or some social novelty had inspired a
Starling to uncharacteristic heights of mimicry. But the songs weren't
in Thrasher doublets, and the mimicry was just too good and too loud for
a Starling, which left, by elimination, only Mimus polyglottos, a
species hitherto unrecorded here, as a candidate songster.

So I scooped up the goggles, staggered downstairs, scratched the Dog
absently on the brow and told him to stay in the house, went out, and
looked up into the ice-broken prongs of the top of the Red Maple. Sure
enough, it was full of 5-6 Starlings (which nest in old Flicker holes in
stubs of the Maple), but, with typical Starling shyness, one by one they
flew away. But the singing didn't stop. What was left was a greyish Bird
half hidden by foliage at the top of the tree, and when I got the
spotting scope out of the truck I could see by bill and body shape,
colour and wing patch, that my auditory identification had been correct.
This was comforting, for while I may be able to tell a Mink Frog from a
Green Frog at a kilometre and a half, I'm no expert on birdsong, and we
hadn't heard Mockingbirds since we did the Lake Ontario Waterfront in
1994. He continued to sing for about 5 minutes more, and then we heard
him singing from somewhere else nearby, and then he was gone. We wonder
whether or how his singing had attracted the group of Starlings just
below him in the tree.

This is the third of the Birds that I especially pursued in my youth
that has showed up in Bishops Mills since we settled down to be the
BCKCDB in 1990. The House Finches which reached New Haven in the early
1960's reached Bishops in 1991, and we have had a few pairs every year
since. We began to see Ravens (which we are told first nested in
Connecticut, in the 1980s, on Sharon Mountain where I had spent
considerable effort trying to make Crows into Ravens in the 1960's)
locally in 1992, and last October one croaked over the houses like a
good omen just as we were making the first plans for the EOBM. Now
Mockingbirds, which were one of the great avian novelties when I was
taken out of my second grade class in Stratford to go to a wedding in
North Carolina, have reached Bishops Mills. This corroborates Bishops'
status as the centre of the universe, and Uncle Henry David's hypothesis
about the whole world coming through one's garden, if only one will stay
home. Now if only one of the Sandhill Cranes Jeanne Graham reports from
the periphery of the Limerick Wetland would fly over...

[Naomi Langlois-Anderson]

I had a *new to me* bird call in our yard a little while ago. I was in the house when my son came rushing in to tell me to go outside, that there was a bird calling that sounded really different. Sure enough, when I went out, I could here cuh-cuh-cuh, repeated. I had no idea what it was so I got out my cell phone and used the Merlin app and the ID was a Black-billed Cuckoo! I played a recording of the Black-billed Cuckoo to confirm that I had the right bird, and the bird in the tree flew out so I could see it too! It was June 5th at 7:05 pm and it was sitting in a Silver Maple over my driveway. It was a pleasant surprise, as I've never seen or heard this cuckoo in my area before.

-----Original Message-----
From: natur...@googlegroups.com <natur...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Frederick W. Schueler
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2024 11:34 AM
To: natur...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: [NatureList] birds in N. Russell

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[Candice Vetter]

I had thought it was a starling because of the mimicry, but then I got a good look at it one day right outside the bathroom window. If I get a chance to photograph it I'll try, but hard with the lush foliage this year.

---

Candice

[Candice Vetter]

We have had cuckoos in our yard many times. Very distinctive calls.

We have had more varieties of species in our yard and general area the last few years, but the quantities of birds are down. Where I used to have many birds of a species I may now see only 1 or 2.

Found two fallen baby bats at the back of our house where they live behind the chimney. Too far gone and too young to help.

---

Candice

[rmb...@istar.ca]

Quoting 'Candice Vetter' via NatureList <natur...@googlegroups.com>:

> I had thought it was a starling because of the mimicry, but then I
> got a good look at it one day right outside the bathroom window. If
> I get a chance to photograph it I'll try, but hard with the lush
> foliage this year.
>

"Lush foliage". I hear ya on that! The bushes and small trees
outside my house and in my front hilly rock garden were turning into a
forest. I spent morning cutting and trimming and stuffed in my Dodge
Dakota truck, 2 big full loads. I really need to trim out my laneway,
but that chore will have to wait til the fall when things cool down.

Rose-Marie