In Praise of “Ordinary” Birds

If you’re a bird lover, spring might be the best time of the year around here. The birds are back, busy courting and nesting and nurturing their babies, and before the trees are fully leafed out, you can see them better. I am disappointed to have missed some of the more colourful migrants this year. But I’ve really enjoyed watching, and photographing, the “ordinary” birds… and I have loved every minute of hearing their cheerful songs every day.

So here is a celebration of some “ordinary” birds.

~

Male Red-winged Blackbirds are known for their striking red and yellow wing bars and black bodies; but the females don’t get nearly enough attention! I think they’re beautiful.

This White-Throated Sparrow was chowing down at the bug buffet: a spider web full of the little midges that annoy us all in the spring!

A new bird for me: a Swamp Sparrow. I had probably seen them without knowing it because now I realize there are a lot of them.

A young crabapple tree in our yard provided a gorgeous setting for this American Goldfinch. The Goldfinches had just changed from their muted, buff-coloured winter feathers, to their bright breeding colours, and some of them were still a bit patchy.

Tiny Yellow Warblers are a challenge to catch on camera, so I was happy to get a picture of this one collecting nesting materials!

And this one feeding a fledgling.

Then there’s the black-masked Common Yellowthroat. You can hear their “wichita-wichita-whit” calls from the bushes, but they’re often deep inside the branches and tricky to find even with that bright yellow breast. If you squint you can see how their colouring provides camouflage.

A Savannah Sparrow seems plain until you notice its lovely yellow eyebrow.

I’m a little unsure about this one. Possibly a Greater Yellowlegs. It’s not, as you might think, on a shoreline; it’s standing in a flooded field!

Like Red-Winged Blackbirds, male Bobolinks are much more striking than the females, often perching atop bushes to sing out their musical, burbling, R2D2-like sounds. Bobolinks are considered of “special concern” mostly because of habitat loss–they nest on the ground in fields and prairies, so our hay won’t be cut until late July when the babies have all fledged.

This female Bobolink was looking a little wet after a rain.

And finally (for this post), who doesn’t love swans? I still think of them as fairy tale characters. We mostly see Mute Swans, which are actually an invasive species here, that threaten native species of waterfowl and plants, but they’re so beautiful! When they fly over, you can hear their wingbeats from a distance, getting louder as they get closer.

And sometimes, they’re just sitting pretty with a beautiful reflection, just like in the story books.

I have more birds to share, so stay tuned!