NOTE: this walk is offered this coming Sunday May 23, and again the following Sunday see here for details.
I joined about a dozen people who walked with Marie-Sophie Bourque around the Sugarbush Trail this past Sunday as she expounded on one of her favourite topics: birds. Before the walk—as is usual for these NCC interpretive events—we spent a little classroom time inside the visitor centre. It didn’t take long but Marie showed off a range of bird books from those aimed at the beginner to specialized tomes with a focus on one particular area of birding, such as nest identification or one specific family of birds. In particular she liked the Roger Tory Peterson Oiseaux du Québec et de l’est de l’Amérique Nord for which there is an accompanying audio disk. She likes it in part because she can look up a bird in French and the English name is there too, but since I’m likely to be sticking to English here also is the English equivalent book and CD. She also said she liked Thayers Birding Software, Brirds of North America and used it to show us something called the ovenbird.*
The ovenbird is called the ovenbird not because it is like a turkey that we might cook in our ovens, but because it builds a nest on the ground and that nest has a roof and a small round door. These reminded ornithologists of an earlier era of the domed shape of a village bread oven (there was a time when most houses didn’t have their own ovens but villages shared a common wood burning oven out in the village square).
The bird makes a call that is supposed to sound like petits pieds and Marie-Sophie played the song for us a few times so we would recognize it in the woods, then out we went.
Here’s a sample of the ovenbird’s song:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The first thing we saw was a crow perched on the sugarshack but no one passed comment on that. Instead we turned a small sea of binoculars down into the little Chelsea Creek to espy a pair of Canadian Geese and their two fuzzy goslings which Marie thought were early this year based on our particularly warm spring. We hadn’t even turned around before someone notices a turkey vulture soaring overhead.
But things actually got interesting when we reached the bridge because that’s where Marie showed why birders see more birds. The reason is because birders hear more birds. Who would know to even look for the almost microscopic Chestnut Sided Warbler? Only someone who knew its song and recognized its auditory presence before noticing any flitting between the leaves. And so we spent quite a while listening, pointing up into the leaves and describing to one another which branch to look for to see the tiny profile.
There are 230 species of birds represented in Gatineau Park which is fully half the number of species thought to inhabit Quebec. We didn’t get to see nearly that many. But what we missed in birds we made up for in caterpillars; the tent caterpillars are out with a vengeance. As we walked under the sunny canopy of leafy tree cover we could hear a gentle rain on the forest floor. A gentle rain? Actually it was the collective droppings of a zillion munching caterpillars up in the trees all pooping away as they busily defoliated.
About 10 minutes down the trail, just before it bends away from Chelsea Creek we noticed a Pileated woodpecker. They’re hard to miss; they’re pretty big. But wait, there were two! One went that way; the other one is still on that tree; no wait, it’s gone into that tree, see the hole? Yes there is a nesting pair of Pileated woodpeckers visible from the Sugarbush Trail. The tree is on the east side of Chelsea Creek (the trail being on the west side) in a large Aspen or Poplar tree. It has whitish bark so you could mistake it for a birch. The hole where the nest is located looks like a knot where a branch might have broken off about a third of the way down from the upper leafy branches.
A few paces down the trail Marie pricked up her ears to the song of a Rose breasted grosbeak. With its blood red marking high on its chest it looks quite striking. This one was right over our heads. This is the bird for which all the people in the video are craning their necks.
A few blue jays flew by and we talked about more than saw the Eastern Phoebe and similarly the Nuthatch but one of the younger birders espied once again a turkey vulture soaring over. Marie explained that it could be recognized even in profile by the fact that it didn’t flap its wings much but hung on them in a slight V position, frequently wobbling as it made adjustments. Our young and budding ornithologist then brought up the revolting means by which these birds are said to defend themselves—by barfing on their attackers. Marie responded by saying that the reason the beautiful things have no feathers on their heads is so that they can peck away at rotting flesh (they eat dead things) without getting their head feathers splattered in bacteria (yum).
At last we heard the song of the ovenbird, though we never did see the sneaky thing. Here Marie revealed her secret. Speaking for myself, one bird chirp—although not identical to another—is as unidentifiable as another. Yet Marie seemed to be able to identify each bird by its sound as easily as if she actually clapped eyes on it. How did she do that? The secret she told us, was that she practiced with only one at a time. That’s why she’d gotten us to listen to the ovenbird back in the Visitor Centre. She said you can never keep things straight if you are trying to remember several calls you don’t already know. The thing to do is to concentrate on one particular call. Get it memorized and then go out looking for that particular bird. After a few times that special one will become second nature to you and you can try for another.
We had heard an indigo bunting (above) and so went searching for it in an open space near the end of the trail. At first there was no sign of it and then it appeared. Unfortunately not long enough for me to actually see it though. As we strolled back on the last few steps of the trail one of our company told the story of an evening grosbeak. Evidently, when our storyteller was a child, her mother had found a colourful bird seemingly helpless in the middle of the road. She’d gone to each of the neigbour’s houses asking if they’d lost a bird. It looked so pretty she thought it must be a pet. Finally they took it to the humane society where the official identified it as an evening grosbeak and diagnosed its inability to fly as being the symptoms of having eaten fermented berries and being drunk. Accordingly after a night in the basement wobbling unsteadily on an indoor clothesline the bird was released to fly away with only a suspected hangover.
*Rachel at the NCC has sought out the source for Thayers Birding Software, Brirds of North America
the Wild bird unlimited Nature Shop
Blue Heron Mall,
1500 Bank Street
Ottawa, ON K1H 7Z1
Phone: (613) 521-7333
http://www.yogaretreats.ie/oven.htm
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Branta_canadensis_juv.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turkey_Vulture_%28Cathartes_aura%29_-in_flight.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pileated_Woodpecker_in_a_Tree.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rose-breasted_Grosbeak.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IndigoBuntingonPlant.jpg
