Down the garden path
For the birds
by Judith Rogers, Master Gardener

photo by Yvonne Menzies

I love bird watching; for me it's as therapeutic as gardening and both can be done at the same time. Crouching down to do a little weeding you're out of sight but still able to see what's happening with the birds and wildlife nearby. It always amuses me to see fluffy headed baby birds as big as their parents flapping their wings and squalling for food just like a human baby.

Grackles (the black birds with the purple/blue heads) can be a nuisance and recently they took over an old robin's nest in the juniper by the side of the house. Anyone that has a pond or pool knows that these birds like to remove the fecal sacs from the nest and lay them neatly on the stones around the waters edge and then wash their mouths out. It's not a pretty sight but certainly makes for conversation when someone who's never seen this before asks why you ring your pond with mini marshmallows. In nature only the strongest survive so when one of their babies was failing, it too was laid out on the stones around the pond in the hot sun.

On our deck young cardinals and downy woodpeckers are as inquisitive as a puppy and baby blue jays look funky while their crest is coming in. Early one morning when walking my dog I heard a tapping and looked up to see a jay trying to open what it thought was a peanut in the shell. The home owners had left up their clear Christmas lights and to a bird, I'm sure they did look like a whole row of peanuts there for the taking.

The Innisfil bird walk on June 3 was a great learning experience for the seventeen people who met to become more aware of the birds in our area and glean interesting facts from our guides, Ernie Jardine and Garth Baker. We discovered that the meadows along the third line east of the 20th Sideroad have an abundant number of bobolinks and are home to several types of sparrows.

In the woodlands further along the third line, a winter wren serenaded us with its very long bird song. Hoping to see a beautiful blue indigo bunting, we weren't disappointed as several of them were seen and heard from the tops of tall trees and are known to breed in the area. A great-crested flycatcher was heard and we learned that it uses old woodpecker holes and will often find a moulted snake skin to hang outside the hole to deter other birds and predators. The red-eyed vireo was heard again this year and a flicker that flew overhead was recognized with its distinctive call.

On our way out of the wetlands where we had heard a swamp sparrow, common yellowthroat, and seen many pairs of red-winged black birds, Garth demonstrated pishing to us. This is a series of sounds made to fetch a response from birds with the result of them popping up out of a tree to see where the noise is coming from or, possibly as a prey species to gang up on a predator. Loud pishing is done by making the sound psh-psh-psh; regular with ssh-ssh-ssh and a high tone with ss-ss-ss; each will generate a reaction from specific birds allowing a birder or photographer to achieve a sighting.

I would like to recommend a great book you can find at Costco and Chapters called 'Bird Songs' that contains a listing with pictures of 250 North American birds with an attached digital player to hear their vocals. This would make a nifty gift idea for the birder in the family or a learning tool for children.

Thank-you to everyone that came out to make the bird walk a success; Yvonne Menzies for her photography, Ernie and Garth our guides and to Craig McPherson for supplying the refreshments.

We plan to do this again next year and in the fall Garth is hoping to host a public demonstration of banding saw whet owls during their migration. He says it is an exciting event to witness, particularly for the children who participate.