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On the Wild Side!
July 2009 Notes
The Raven nesting at 565 Acacia was not successful, the attempt was abandoned between May 2 and 17. When I first became aware of the nest on April 3, both adults were around. But after that, on each of many visits I saw only one. That is unusual; at the Raven cliff in Cantley that I visit, when one adult is on the nest the other is nearby, calling at my approach.
On the lake, the Canada Goose family that started with 7 goslings now has 4, guarded closely by both adults. There have been several sightings of Wood Duck broods, including 4 small ducklings with a female on June 27. An adult Black-crowned Night Heron has continued to hunt the shores almost every day, in contrast to markedly fewer visits of a Great Blue Heron than in previous summers.
Early this morning, a young Merlin circled and called loudly and repeatedly for food near the nest tree, the tall spruce in the southeast angle of the Mariposa/Acacia intersection. The nesting was in the same former Crow nest used by Merlins in 2006. This could be the same pair that nested nearby on Roxborough last year. Later in the morning, Diana Rowley alerted us to a hawk bathing in a thorough, leisurely, fashion in a pool of rain water in her trampoline at 245 Sylvan. It was a large Cooper’s Hawk, presumably a female, with an unusually faint wash of pink on its barred breast and belly. It was a delight to have that long a look. Back in my garden I found that Chickadees are now feeding a second brood in the nesting box used in May.
Birdsong along Village streets has settled into the summer pattern of languid notes of Red-eyed Vireos in the tree canopy above and the busy trills of Song and Chipping Sparrows in the shrubs below. Yet another summer without House Wren songs.
Anthony Keith
September 2009 Notes
Michael Venables photographed a hawk perched over his driveway at 599 Fairview on July 28. It proved to be a Broad-winged Hawk, smallest of the buteo hawks in our area. This is our woodland-interior buteo. Its size, shorter in length than a Crow, allows it to maneuver between branches and hunt underneath the canopy of woodlands. In this way it doesn’t compete with its larger buteo relative, the Red-tailed Hawk, commonly seen soaring above open farmland and wooded edges. The Broad-winged Hawk’s prey in Rockcliffe could include frogs, mice, insects and small birds. It hunts by quietly watching from a perch under the tree canopy near an opening, just such a scene as Michael encountered. His photograph is posted here and on the notice board outside the Community Hall.
Broad-winged Hawk photo taken July 28, 2009 by Michael Venables.
I have been expecting Broad-winged Hawks in Rockcliffe because the gradual transition from the mostly-cleared land of the Village’s origins in the 1860s to today’s wooded landscape is producing the right habitat.
So far, our only confirmed breeding raptors are the Merlins, in the falcon group. The Merlins nesting at Mariposa/Acacia this summer raised at least four flying young.
The east marsh of the lake, so noisy with nesting Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds from mid-April on, quietens down in July. By the middle of the month, virtually all the Grackles had left and only a few Red-wings called. These gregarious blackbirds are now off in large flocks foraging in farmland. They will move south of the Great Lakes in winter.
The Phoebe pair at Hillsdale Bridge successfully brought off at least two broods. I first saw the adults on April 12, and as late as July 23 an adult appeared to be feeding young in a towering nest that had been built up for each brood. Today an adult hawked insects from a perch in the Mile Circle. Phoebes seem to be the first of our flycatchers to arrive and the last to leave.
The Milkweed Tussock Moths that consumed the milkweeds in our garden last summer returned in force this year. Every single plant was eaten, first the fleshy part of the leaves, then the leaf stems, finally leaving a single standing stalk for each plant. The brightly coloured and tufted larvae are remarkably mobile. One day they are highly visible in clusters on the plants, the next they are marching in all directions on the ground many metres away.
Anthony Keith