Enjoying the Birds of the Ottawa Valley
250 Valley Species in a Year

Most bird watchers keep lists - tabulations of species seen - in a lifetime, from a residence, in a single day, in a province, etc. But, the most popular are life and year lists.

A year list restarts at zero every January, so the incentive to better last year's total is maintained over the years, while the incentive to compete with others is only temporarily dampened by setbacks such as sleeping in on the day that a dozen rarities show up.

The ultimate target for a year list in the Ottawa region is 250 species, in the Pembroke area and west, 200. Dozens of birders have exceeded 200 species a year around Ottawa, some for many years. But, to the best of my knowledge, only six have achieved 250 (as of 1985): Bruce Di Labio, Roger Foxall, Tom Hince, Ray Holland, Paul Jones and Rick Poulin. Bruce holds the all-time record, 267 in 1982, and has cleared 250 species 10 years out of the last 12.

The longest life list in the Valley is also held by Bruce, 307 species. Runners up are Monty Brigham and Roger Foxall, who tie with 300 each (again, as of 1985).

Here are some tips and strategies that will help you to join this august company. At least one top birder agrees with each detail that follows. Virtually no one agrees with them all. Treat them, therefore, only as ideas worth considering, not as prescriptive certainties. By the time you can find and recognize 250 species, you will have developed your own ways of looking at birds.

It is important to understand the extent to which special skills developed to their utmost characterize top birders. Of course, they all know their field marks. And, they know wing-beat frequencies and patterns cold. But, they all seem to use in addition some special skill to transcend the limits of field mark identification.

One seems to remember every single early and late record and usual behaviour for each site he visits. When I went to Shirley's Bay with him, he called a female golden eagle at a distance of some 10 km, without even lifting his binoculars, a distance at which even 10x binoculars could not discern field marks sufficient for the identification. Observation showed that his birding habits were characterised by regular lengthy visits to relatively few locations in the Valley. I believe he knew that, at that time of year, only goldens normally appeared coming down that particular valley at that time of day. Only that way could the reliability with which he regularly identified birds by sight at extreme distances be understood.

Another could identify almost any little brown speck darting across the road at impossible distances. After observation, I realized that he was heavily relying on the micro-habitats between which the bird was flying, but again with flight pattern and wing frequency in mind. Another relied on sound 'quality' - harmonic content - and could call any bird that uttered so much as a peep at any distance at which it could be heard. With my experience as an airplane pilot, I learned to spot the flight control dynamics of the buteos so that I could call most of them at distances that matched the top birders.

Anyway, the following tips are organized under calendar months because that makes for clear writing. But, birds don't look at our calendar, only at nature's. Most of the tips are useful for much more of the year than just the month under which I have put them.

What makes a top birder?

Dedication. Get out in the field at every opportunity: in all seasons, in all habitats, at all times of day, in fair and foul weather. The average "250 list" took 290 days out of the 365 available in the year. It takes time to learn and to adapt to the patterns of the Valley as birds see them.

A respect for nature. Birds are part of nature. Their appearances are a part of habitat, season, geography, weather, and other natural forces that you must understand, not fight.

A car. Or, a bicycle and the competitive instincts of a Bruce MacTavish.

Singlemindedness. As one birder put it, "Anything is fun if taken to excess". (Is this the reason that virtually all really "bug-bitten" birders are male?) Always check every one of those gulls at Ottawa Beach, every visit. If you assume that they are all ring-bills, you will miss the rare ones.

A self-questioning attitude. Always look for one more field mark than you "need". Accept that most birds you see will be common, that most rare birds will be in typical plumage. ("Almost" a western sandpiper is a no-no.)

Timing. Real addicts hold only jobs that can be dropped at a moment's notice, for the best time to look for a rare bird is five seconds after you have heard about it. The next best is when weather changes are imminent. "When things are quiet at the office" just doesn't work.

Some birders, dare I say it, are as much fun to watch as birds!

The basic strategy for a year list is: let the common birds look after themselves. Concentrate your search effort on species that can only be seen for a limited time each year. Plan to look for a bird before it is "due" to arrive. Always be looking for those species that are so few in number that they simply require hours spent in the right habitat to find.

Make sure that everyone knows that you are "trying for 250". Keep your telephone available for calls from anyone who might find a once-a-year bird. Get your name on the Bird Alert list run by the Ottawa Field Naturalists and memorize their bird status line number (613)860-9000 and that of Le Club des Ornithologues de l'Outaouais (819)778-0307. Buy the Saturday Citizen and read the bird column (Elizabeth Le Geyt) for names of people with whom to keep in contact. Other Valley newspapers with bird columns are the weekly Pembroke Advertiser-News (Jacques Bouvier), the North Renfrew Times, and The Renfrew Mercury (Jim Ferguson). The Wednesday Globe and Mail bird column covers all of southern Ontario.

If you want your year list to be respected by other birders, there are some additional points.

Whenever you see a rare or out-of-season bird, phone a fellow birder so that at least one other person can confirm your sighting. It is easy, under the competitive pressure of building a list, to feel "it must be" when, in fact, insufficient details were seen to be truly certain. Many top birders don't count a bird that no one else confirms. (Besides, you want them to call you about birds too.)

Take field notes of rarities on the spot, and don't add to them later. During sleep, our brains fill in details after the fact, in order to make memories self-consistent (see "Why Do Birds Sleep").

Official list status is granted only to birds that are living in a wild state. The mute swans on the Rideau River are not. They are clipped and released each spring by the NCC, then rounded up in the fall before the canal is drained. Many people in the Valley keep exotic waterfowl such as ruddy shelducks and barnacle geese. Every year a few escape to cause gnashing of teeth by listers who can't count them. Probably, ring-necked pheasants will soon be all treated as released birds, not to be counted. Bobwhites, parrots, java finches, turtle doves ... all are seen here at times.

Preparations for any lister's year shift into high gear with the area Christmas Bird Counts. The CBC tradition was started in 1900, to counter the practice of the time of going out at Christmas and shooting anything that moved. It has become a continent-wide social event, as well as a fund-raising vehicle for the American Audubon Society.

The biggest Valley count (at one time the second-largest in the world) is in Ottawa-Hull during the third week in December. It enlists a veritable army, many hundred strong, to look for birds for you. Some may still be alive on New Year's Day. Carleton Place, Deep River, Grenville, Pakenham-Arnprior, Pembroke, and Vankleek Hill hold counts between Christmas and the New Year. The last, Dunrobin, is held in January, thus starting your year off in style.

January

Theoretically, January is not an important month to list species. At least, that's what my computer tells me. Over the 1981-85 period, not a single bird was reported to The Shrike in a January that was not seen again later the same year.

But, such an attitude dooms your list in advance! So, January 1st must be spent looking for every unusual bird found on the Christmas counts. Your next target should be any rare and erratic winter visitors that are around, since you might not find them the next December: the two three-toed woodpeckers, the two crossbills, great grey, boreal and hawk owls, gyrfalcon, boreal chickadee and hoary redpoll in particular.

A very useful technique for luring winter finches and owls out of hiding is squeaking. To do it, place your lips against your hand so that the line of your lips lies against the notch formed by your hand and the base of your thumb. Press your lips together somewhat, and suck in air by drawing your tongue back into your throat. (Chapman calls it "vigorous kissing".) Practise until you can produce a strangled squeak, that sounds like a small animal in distress, or like one that's angry. Moistening your lips may help (but not if they chap as easily as mine!).

Squeaking works best when birds can't see you. In fact, squeaking in the open frequently scares birds away. The sound carries quite a distance, so wait around for several minutes to spot everything lured in. Birds are too intelligent to be fooled for long, and become "squeaked out" for several days after a session, so the technique has its limitations. Don't just look in the trees when squeaking. You may attract a weasel or fox as a bonus.

Another easy method to persuade birds to "say hello" is pishing, making a loud whispered "sh", modulated once a second or so by closing the lips to make a "wshwsh" or "psh psh" pattern. It is often effective on sunny days with warblers. It is nearly always effective at exciting chickadees, whose chatter then lures in other "stuff".

Naturally, you should check all patches of open water regularly during winter: the des Chênes and Remic rapids, the Manotick Back Channel, and the patch of the Ottawa River near Cumberland kept open by the Masson ferry. Especially, check the day after a mild spell starts. That often encourages birds overwintering on the St. Lawrence River to move farther north.

The best spots for rare owls have long grass, scattered cedars, and dead elms for perches. For the winter finches, drive the Low-Poltimore road if you have any gaps in your list by the end of January. For woodpeckers, newly-dead elms are the favourites, along the Jack Pine Trail or behind the Montfort Hospital. Check steaming manure piles (and the Nepean Dump) for overwintering longspurs, sparrows and blackbirds.

Three species of small finches fly around in flocks at this time. Redpolls fly as if each were bouncing on a spring. Their wings do not completely close when not flapping. Goldfinches fly with deep dips, with closed wings more than half their flying time. Pine siskins often appear to be intermediate between redpolls and goldfinches. They close their wings completely for only a short period between flapping.

February

The quiet month of the year. Keep checking feeders, particularly the Moore feeder on Pink Road operated by the Ottawa Field Naturalists and le Club des Ornithologues de l'Outaouais. Chase down birds like northern shrike, great grey owl and boreal owl that you are still missing. It's just the time to study the variation of birds, to forestall the ever-present tendency to be over-confident about field identifications.

Study the Federation of Ontario Naturalists' warbler and sparrow recordings. They cover many dialects of birds, not just a brief "cheep" or two.

Visit the Ornithology Section of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Aylmer, and arrange to study specimens of the national collections, a unique resource in Canada. Study a tray of hairy and downy woodpeckers, and compare a hairy from Mexico with a northern downy. You will quickly appreciate why species splitting and lumping seems never to end, for a species is made up of populations. In nature there is no absolute line dividing population from subspecies from species. There is just variation.

Study a tray of sandpipers (don't forget the semipalmated that fooled many of the best birders in Ottawa into believing that it was a species of stint!) to understand the limits on your field identifications. Look at examples of birds that are considered possible accidentals here, such as ash-throated flycatcher, whose breast is cream yellow in spring but bright yellow, like a great crested, in fall when the young disperse. Check the Nutting's flycatcher in the same tray, and judge whether or not you could really separate one from an ash-throated in the field. Fall sparrows and immature gull plumages are other subjects that specimen trays quickly show to be inadequately covered by field guides.

Always, to end a study session, pick just one tray, study it for ten minutes, and leave. That is the best route to right-brain learning.

March

The time to be owling. Great horned owls set up territories by February. March can even be a bit late for them. Saw-whet owls call much less frequently once they are paired off. They can be brooding eggs by the end of March.

During day trips, note the locations of mature deciduous woods on uplands and along streams (favoured by screech owls), pine stands (frequented by great horned), mature mixed deciduous-coniferous stands containing swampy land (barred, long-eared, saw-whet), hayfields along cattail marshes (used by short-eared), and small cedar wood lots (any small owl is possible there). Never plan to stop near a farm house. That will inevitably set off a deafening chorus of barking dogs. Traffic noise often is a limiting factor. Use back roads whenever possible.

Choose a night without interfering noise from wind or rain. Cut interfering noise in half, and you hear twice as many owls. Your best results will be obtained between midnight and dawn, although calling does occur after sunset. Stop at suitable habitats. Turn off your engine and walk away from your car. Parked cars make an incredible variety of noises that mask faint sounds.

Stand perfectly quietly for two to three minutes. Cup your hands behind your ears to reduce noise from unwanted directions. It can be a mystical experience after a minute or so. (A naturalist's mysticism is receptive outward, not directed inward.) Your ears will float over the landscape, touching down on distant dogs and cattle, one by one. Gradually, you will fill in distant roads from tire noise, wooded areas from the creaking of trees. The zinging of travelling waves along hydro wires, and the unlocatable aeolian music of the air flowing past them, will become part of the landscape. And then, you may hear it - the whinnying cascade of a screech owl, a sound as manic and gripping as that of any loon (and occasionally mistaken for one).

If there are no owls calling, play appropriate owl calls on a tape recorder, or imitate them by voice. Start with the calls of small owls. Large owls eat small ones. A great horned call in particular will silence small owls. Spend about five minutes at each site, calling at varying intervals. If you have a parabolic microphone, use it. You will hear owls a great distance away.

Long-eared owls display a fascinating repertoire of screeches, yowls, screams, squeals, barks and grunts. There is some truth to the saying "if it sounds like an owl, and it isn't anything else, it's a long-eared". But, around Ottawa you will most often hear them giving a quiet low "hoo", repeated at short intervals in a long series. Squeaking is often effective in making them betray their presence.

Some owls call more on unseasonably warm or moonlit nights. But, owls often are active when atmospheric conditions seem terrible. My only "rule" is - if the first three or four stops in good habitat yield no owls, go back to sleep and try another night! We really don't know why owls are so active some nights and so quiet on others.

April

Raptor and waterfowl migration time. The raptors arrive first, usually peaking the second week of April, while most of the waterfowl peak two weeks later. Their best locations, Dunrobin and Thurso respectively, will keep you passing the fields around Shirley's Bay often enough that you might spot a now-rare loggerhead shrike.

The flight techniques of raptors make some quite distinctive. In order for a bird to soar, it must keep its wings at the proper angle (pitch) to the oncoming air. Too shallow or too steep an angle, and insufficient lift is created. Tail movements do the job: tilt the tail up, and the moving air pushes down on it and hence steepens the angle of attack of the wings. The more slowly a bird is flying, and the shorter and narrower the tail, the greater the tail movement must be to apply the proper force. So, a red-tailed hawk nearly always fans its short tail open during such manoeuvers to make it more effective, in a manner unlike any other buteo.

A rough-legged hawk also stands out, for it can soar so slowly that very large wing twitches and tail movements are required for stability. One small male in Cumberland could soar, to hold himself motionless over a rodent hole, at an air speed of slightly less than one meter per second. At this minimum speed, his tail was flicking through an arc of up to 30 degrees. Utterly distinctive!

Wings must be kept aerodynamically level (no bank) when straight flight is desired. Paradoxically, one way of accomplishing this is to tilt both wings up in a V, as turkey vultures and harriers do, even though this decreases the efficiency of the wing slightly. It results in a distinctive rocking motion in flight. An osprey bends its wrists so that only the inner wing forms a V. Its wing tips are almost level with the body, giving a distinctive kinked appearance.

To change from straight to banked flight, the wing profile can be changed by bending at the wrist joint, or the tail can be twisted. Again, a red-tail is distinctive, frequently fanning and twisting its tail so much that you will notice it several kilometers away.

A harrier hunts slowly, low over long grass and cattails ("harrying" in old English), with wings in a slight V, locating rodents by sound. When one soars high, however, it often holds its wings horizontal. Usually, the broad tail bands and chunky proportions of a broad-winged hawk are visible, while a butterfly-like flight alerts you to check for red-shouldered hawk. Accipiters, having short rounded wings, do not soar as easily as buteos, so they normally fly with a regular pattern of several quick flaps and a short glide. Falcons (except for the smallest, kestrels) zoom by with strong flicking wing beats.

Three raptors regularly hover with beating wings here: ospreys (over water), rough-legged hawks and kestrels (over meadows). The small size and falcon wing beats of a kestrel separate it from the others. (Warning: red-tails can hover too.)

Two points of raptor field marks are not covered well in most field guides. A juvenile red-tailed hawk often has clear fine banding on its tail. In fact, red-tails are very variable in colour at all ages. Many have no red at all on the tail. The motions of the tail and the belly band are always present. A sharp-shinned hawk can have a rounded tail due to feather wear. It's usually only slightly rounded, however, while Cooper's is unmistakably rounded. The head of a Cooper's appears massive at close quarters, a point often visible in a woodland sighting. Overhead, if the head does not protrude beyond the wing wrists, it's a sharp-shinned.

Fox sparrow is also an April bird. The Rockcliffe Rockeries, the area south of Clyde Woods, and the end of the Ridge Road are well known haunts. Most years, the Thurso Marsh does not thaw until late April, but check it early. It can be good for small migrant land birds while still ice-bound.

May

Migrating time for just about everything. You should check the woods at Britannia at every opportunity, as well as the other spots mentioned in the Checklist of Locations for migrating warblers.

May is your chance for a month list of 200 species in the Ottawa region. Bruce Di Labio listed 226 species during May 1982. Others who have "cleared" 200 in one month are Robert Bracken and Ray Holland. May is also the time when "big day" records are set. Bruce Di Labio spent 19 hours, and drove 542 km, to achieve the current record Ottawa day list of 162 species, May 17, 1985.

It is tempting to identify spring warblers only by song, particularly those pine and palm warblers that can be so difficult to see. Be warned that some warblers imprint on the wrong song. The result can fool even experts. A Canada warbler in Vincent Massey Park a few years ago not only used a Connecticut warbler call, but responded to a Connecticut tape as well. You should not accept any warbler for your list unless it has been visually identified. But, you will locate most uncommon warblers only by knowing all the songs, and by developing the skill of picking out the unusual ones from a clutter of calls.

May is also the time when black-billed cuckoos use the yellow-billed call. (Yellow-billed cuckoos are extremely rare here.) One male chose the garden outside my bedroom window (two years running) to demonstrate the technique. It squatted on top of a fence post, singing the "yellow-billed" song, until a female (black-billed) was attracted. Then, it flew to the adjacent open understory of a sumac grove and, perched erect, switched to the normal black-billed call. Whenever the female seemed to lose interest, the male returned to the fence post and the yellow-billed call. By the end of two weeks, the yellow-billed call was no longer needed, and they nested in the woods nearby.

While on the subject of confusing songs, both shrikes can imitate the calls of their prey species, much more realistically than the so-called mimics, catbird, thrasher and mockingbird. (These three all make their true identity obvious within a minute or two.) There is an overlap in the range of calls of juncos and some chipping sparrows, and also of coots and moorhen. Some warbling vireos consistently use a four-note "yellowthroat" call, a blue jay or sapsucker can sound much like a red-shouldered hawk, chipping sparrows can sound much like clay-coloured, and rufous-sided towhees mimic several species. Don't get upset at bird record committees that question records of birds that are only heard, not seen.

Late May is the time when arctic terns pass through. You may at some time run across the British term "jizz", the "combination of ill-defined elements which allows a bird to be labelled as elegant, powerful, impressive, etc." (Peter Harrison). It is, of course, the same thing as the "right brain method" described previously. Well, the jizz of arctic tern is a flock, zipping up the river in a line, with deep beats of immaculate white wings, and tail kinked up at the tip. If you are not familiar with common terns, arctic tern jizz has no meaning. Of course common terns fly up the river, but they don't quite act as though they had 2000 kilometers to go. They are more likely to fly in loose formation, rather than in a line. All terns have deep wing beats compared to many birds, but arctic's just seem deeper than common, somehow. Common terns usually only partially moult in South America, and arrive here with darkish outer primaries, so arctics, which complete their moult in the Antarctic, are a "cleaner" white. If you think you "have" arctics, head for a possible stopping spot, such as Britannia, and hope that you get a chance to work on the field marks that will convince your compatriots.

By late May, you should also be including in your travels all the sewage lagoons with flat edges (Richmond and Munster in particular) in the search for shorebirds. Particularly after any sudden weather change. Remember that, though publicly owned, they are controlled access places. However, as long as you ask any municipal employee present for permission, individual birders are tolerated. (If walking past a pro forma No Trespassing sign bothers you, ask at the municipal Clerk's office. Permission will almost always be granted if you don't look too disreputable.)

Some May weather notes. A night with a brisk wind from the north means few warblers the next day. "Go for" shorebirds instead. The best warbler morning follows a clear warm night with a gentle wind from the south, especially after a spell of poor weather. A violent thunderstorm in the afternoon is a command: check the Britannia-Shirley's Bay section of the river at all costs! The chance is very high that a real rarity will appear then, purple sandpiper and jaegers in particular.

June

Early June is the time for some "toughies": yellow-bellied and olive-sided flycatchers, least bittern and yellow rail. All like wet places. The best places for olive-sided are beaver ponds in the Gatineau. Listen for the bittern in the marshes between Masson and Black Bay, for the rail in Richmond Fen about an hour before dawn, and for yellow-bellied in the wet brush south of the fen on the way out after sunrise. You will have little trouble hearing the bittern and rail, but seeing them is another matter. By the time you do, you should have a field book full of notes on every other wet-country species there is to see.

It's the time to learn how to use a tape recorder, your most specific method of arousing birds. Make a copy of calls from a record, repeating them until a continuous segment of about half a minute is recorded. In suitable habitat, play the tape, quietly. You want to sound subservient, rather than like a threatening "superbird". Then, listen for about half a minute. Repeat this cycle two or three times for woodland species. Remote birds take a while to come close enough to respond. A tape is by far the most effective technique for owls and rails. Playing its call near the singing perch of a breeding bird is especially effective. A caution is in order, however. Excessive disturbance of a breeding bird can disrupt breeding success. You should not use a tape in frequently birded areas. If we all did, it would diminish the supply of new birds for us to watch next year.

It's a time to wonder at the ways of nature. Male sedge and marsh wrens arrive here before the females, then spend the summer furiously building dummy nests, each the size of a softball, from one end of their territory to the other. One built 27 of them! Male nests are only an outer shell, without the lining necessary to insulate eggs during incubation. When the female arrives, she always inspects the males' nests. But, she then often builds an entire new one, complete with lining, rather than completing a male's offering. Nothing in Nature is without a purpose. Are male nests useful for shelter? Do they impress other males (the most potent aphrodisiac there is for most creatures on earth)? Do they mislead nest predators? Do males with more or better nests attract more females? Perhaps, while looking for wetland birds, you can help find the answer.

A mockingbird, although rare, is easy to find now. Just wait until the bird status line tells you where one is singing its head off this year. A mockingbird is an object lesson in aural tomfoolery. Turn on a cassette tape recorder. As it is recording, write down the names of all the birds you think it is mimicking. Then, go through the tape (at home, so the bird won't pulverize you) and arrange all similar calls together. For example, all "alarm" notes. If your mockingbird is like the one outside my office this last summer, you will find that the low notes sound like a blue jay, the highest like a falsetto downy woodpecker, and that there are two dozen different notes spread out evenly in between. Now, which one was the "robin"?

Mockingbirds don't just mimic calls, they compose variations on them. (So do young song sparrows, although you must listen carefully to discern it.) "Mockers" have favourite themes they return to, such as "robin" followed by "blue jay" followed by "veery". Their individual styles can be separated by the same techniques used by musicologists to separate baroque composers. I'd love to play one the entire Peterson record set on autorepeat for a week (minus the "P a g e O n e H u n d r e d a n d T w e n t y t h r e e ..." of course) and see what happens!

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