In 2022, the Eastern Bluebirds in Essex County had a good year. I collected statistics from 24 trails, which had a total of 167 birdhouses. We counted a total of 24 successful pairs of Bluebirds, which produced a total of 119 fledglings. 

This is a significant increase, compared to the previous years numbers. In 2021, we only counted 16 successful pairs of Bluebirds, which produced only 69 fledgling Bluebirds.

 

INSPECTION  TIME . . . Any time in February or early March is a good time to inspect, repair, repaint or re-locate your birdhouses. If any of the Pine Straw beds are dirty or wet, replace them with new ones.  Also, please remember to inspect your predator guards. It is best to have your birdhouses ready, sooner than later. In the past few years, some of our earliest Tree Swallows arrived in our County between March 10^th and the 17th. Also, some pairs of Bluebirds start building their nests in mid-March.

 

VAN  ERT  LIVE  TRAPS . . . Once again, I am selling Van Ert live traps at cost. [$18.50 + $2.41(H.S.T.) = Total $20.91] Cash only.  Please contact me, if you need to buy one. {Don Bissonnette ... (519) 738-3279.}

 

The Ontario  Eastern  Bluebird  Society​ has scheduled their Annual  General  Meeting​ on Saturday, March 18th. This is their first face-to-face A.G.M. since 2019.  This meeting will be held at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario. Registration starts at 8:30 am. The meeting starts at 9:00 am. For more details, visit the OEBS web-site. 

 

Thanks to every-one who sent me their 2022 Bluebird and Tree Swallow nesting statistics. Best Wishes for the 2023 Nesting Season!     

Over the Christmas holiday period we were talking with old friends who live in New Zealand.  They reminded us that Radio New Zealand still uses identified bird calls just before the news in the mornings – every morning.  Over the 16 years that we were living in New Zealand, these recordings were for us a useful introduction to the variety of birds in that country and the fact that this has been used now for 30 years is an indication of how popular it still is.  One result of this broadcasting is that in New Zealand there is a greater proportion of the population than in Canada that have more than a passing understanding of the birds in that country.  One drawback is that not all birds have attractive and instantly recognisable calls.  Seabirds that make up so much of the bird population there, such as the Royal Albatross, do not have ‘pretty’ calls. 

The link is to the list of NZ birds that Radio NZ play, along with the Māori names https://www.rnz.co.nz/collections/birds.  If you go to this site, many of the birds are listed alphabetically by their First Nation (Māori) name  Would it not be appropriate for CBC to introduce this type of introduction to the news as a reconciliation project.  Try it by listening to my favourite, the Bellbird or korimako at: https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=1872915.

We tend to take up a lot of space as North Americans. Canadians rank third in the world for average house size. It is estimated that lawns occupy a total area of more than 50 million acres across the continent. That’s an equivalent land area more than 25 times the size of Algonquin Park. Canada currently has protected 13% of our land and water area, with a pledged goal of 30% by 2030. However, most of that protected land exists outside of population centres.

 

The Carolinian Zone, the ecoregion in which we live, is home to a quarter of Canada’s human population and one third of its endangered and at-risk species. As much as 95% of the land is privately owned and only 2.5% is protected.

 

Our lawns are taking up valuable real estate and giving very little back. While we can never hope to fully replicate nature in our gardens, there are many ways that you can provide habitat at home and give back to nature some of the space we take up but rarely use.

January 31: Cypher Trail at the ‘Grand Canyon’

Five members of the club braved the coldest morning of the year at this delightful location between Concessions 2 and 3 on the western end of the Cypher Trail.  Known to some as the site of the ‘Grand Canyon’ ,certainly in terms of relative topography, this valley is quite a sight from the old railway track.  We saw 14 species of birds, including a Hermit Thrush and heard two Carolina Wrens.

 

February 11: Point Pelee National Park

With unbeatable clear sunny, windless weather, 18 members and prospective members joined Jeremy Hatt at The Tip to look for water birds on the ice and in the lake.   Good to hear the Red-winged Blackbird sounding like a phone ringing right next to us.  Also seen on the DeLaurier boardwalk was a Hairy Woodpecker, American Tree Sparrows more blackbirds, and a tribunal of American Bald Eagle. 

We finished up at the Marsh Boardwalk, not seeing much else, but in all it was a successful birding morning.  It was good to see family groups using the PPNP even as early as 9 a.m.

 

February 26: East Riverside Park and Blue Heron Trail

Sixteen people, members and relatives met at the East Riverside Park on a delightful Sunday afternoon to walk around the Blue Heron Lake and the local ‘mountain’ of decommissioned landfill.  The engineering side of me is filled me with pleasure to see that these mounded wastes can be made into a attractive forested hillsides, here, and at Malden and at Little River. 

While we met no unusual birds, it was good to see the American Tree Sparrow, Cooper’s Hawk, and Red-winged Blackbird in amongst the gangs of House Sparrows , Mallard and Canada Goose.

 

A review and map of the pop-ups held over the last twelve months will be shown at the AGM on Wednesday 8^th March.

2022 proved to be an exceptional year for birding in Essex County. The 304 species recorded in the county constitutes the highest county total ever recorded and the highest total for any single county in a year for the province of Ontario. The previous record (both county and provincial) of 301 species was set in 2005. Almost 23,000 checklists were submitted to eBird this year for Essex, along with over 20,000 photos, almost 200 audio recordings, and 42 videos. The names of
92 unique observers appear in this summary, though dozens of other birders also made significant contributions to the 2022 list (see also the Top 100 for species and checklists).

To keep this report succinct, not all notable records of the year are given a full write-up. There are a few known records pending decision by the Essex eBird Regional Review team which could increase the year total. The complete checklist to all accepted species observed in the county, with early and late dates and high counts for all notable species, can be found in the link below.

Above Photo: Townsend's Solitaire, by P.Pratt