On the Open Tundra

Moving away from the treeline into the open tundra brings with it a lot of excitement for those of us who live in the south and don’t get to see tundra birds in their breeding habitat very often. Of course, one has to come prepared for the bugs, which can be absolutely horrendous up here… you get a SMALL sense of this in the photo below where I forgot to fan the air before taking a habitat shot…

(and that’s just the ones around the camera – there were many, many more around me!)

After wading through the numerous floating sphagnum bogs of the central boreal forest for much of June, the tundra offered the relief of walking across more open country  and I was greatly looking forward to that. However, it was not all easy as, especially around Seal River, I encountered many large willow swales that had to be negotiated, including a lot of weaving and swimming through the dense branches. After getting cut up and my clothing ripped I eventually lost a few toques and a mosquito jacket thanks to those willows. So much for easy walking! The other promise of easy walking that the tundra offers is embodied in the word “permafrost” – even when traveling through the dens of the Hudson Bay lowlands, you never sink to the same extent that you do in the boreal biome because usually the ground is permanently frozen justa  few feet below the surface (although in reality the permafrost is not evenly distributed). As anyone who has read anything about global climate change will know, changes to the permafrost are occurring across the north and could have huge knock-on impacts for wildlife and humans alike. Around the Seal River, I found several places where the permafrost was exposed, such as seen in the photo below where a chunk of soil and debris had broken off.

 

One of the biggest pieces of news from the Manitoba Breeding Bird Atlas (www.birdatlas.mb.ca) summer season was confirming Long-tailed Jaeger as a breeding species in the province for the very first time. Ken De Smet and Joel Kayer found a nest at Nejanilini Lake and I found three pairs near Schmock Lake. These are both inland tundra sites as opposed to the much more visited coastal tundra sites and could explain why they have flown under the radar for so long. As Long-tailed Jaeger are said to be less kleptoparasitic (steal food from other birds such as gulls and terns by forcing them to regurgitate their catch) than the Parasitic Jaeger that breeds regularly in Manitoba’s coastal tundra, they may be more confined to inland tundra away from the larger and heavier Parasitic Jaegers and where they can capitalize on lemmings and such. Having said that, there was no real evidence of a lemming peak in northern Manitoba this year and other lemming opportunists like Snowy Owls and Rough-legged Hawk were not found to be breeding.  We just have to keep going north to determine how common these birds are and what their breeding distribution in Manitoba looks like but we now know that they do breed, at least occasionally, in several locations in our province. So here are a series of photos of some of the pairs that I found at Schmock Lake, perched and in flight and from various angles and showing them in their habitat sailing across the open tundra with true poetry in motion.

For the benefit of those Manitobans who don’t see this species very often, the Long-tailed Jaeger features to look for in the photos below include:

• VERY LONG tail (the most obvious feature but from some angles parasitic can surprise you with a longish tail and Long-tails can have missing or broken tail feathers)
• evenly brown underwing with lack of strong white crescent as shown in adults of other jaegers and juvenile Long-tails too
• fine black line along trailing edge of upper wing (and underwing) that contrasts with the pale brown wing and mantle (Parasitic also shows a dark trailing edge but with much less contrast to dark brown of wing and Pomarine is even darker still with even less contrast)
• buoyant flight style (not so visible in still photos)
• clean white breast lacking smudgy brownish breast sides or near complete smudgy breast band as in other jaegers
• grey flanks and lower belly bleeding upwards towards clean white breast but lacking a clear demarcation from the breast (Parasitic usually shown dark undertail coverts clearly demarcated from white belly)
• pale grey legs (not as dark as other jaegers)
• short, all dark bill (but with long nail) – the bill is shorter than Parasitic’s and lacking the pale coloration at base of bill typically shown by Parasitic or the bicoloured bill of Pomarine

got that…. So look for those features in the photos below (I’ll post some photos of Parasitic when i blog about the coastal tundra)

 

One of my favourite aspects on the tundra is all the breeding shorebirds to be found. This next series of photos shows some of these in their tundra habitat. It is hard to say why I love them so much but it probably has something to do with their magical display flights and songs; raucous behaviour when you pass through their territories, often perching in trees wherever these are available so their calls carry further; and their stunningly beautiful plumage, be it cryptic or colourful, that is always breathtaking. Enjoy this series of the shorebirds that breed in Manitoba’s tundra (in no particular order)…

We start with one of my absolute favourites, the American Golden-Plover, a magical combination of crypsis and contrast, of camouflage and colour.  Their distinctive whistled call wafting across the tundra is a little bit magical and a photo doesn’t do it justice but nonetheless here is a photo of a calling bird in their tundra habitat followed by a close up.

Likewise, the beautiful Stilt Sandpiper, with their unique banded plumage. Here again are two photos, the first showing a Stilt Sandpiper in their tundra breeding habitat and the second a closer photo showing the beautiful chestnut coloration of the bird’s breeding plumage…

And why not show the same for the cryptically plumages Whimbrel, another awesome tundra denizen…

There is a great deal of variation in the sandpiper family, from the large Whimbrel to the tiny Least Sandpiper, shown here. The first photo shoes a Least Sandpiper in breeding habitat on the tundra, the second photo shows a bird giving a distraction display to draw me away from their nest, and the third shows one squawking at me from a lone tundra tamarack in protest of my presence. Trees are such a valuable resource up here because itf you want to broadcast a territorial call far and wide they offer an energy efficient way of sending your message FAR (as I have blogged about previously) so it is not uncommon to see many shore birds species in trees on the breeding grounds where trees are available of course.

Other shorebirds that breed up here include the Dunlin, Short-billed Dowitcher and Red-necked Phalarope as shown in that order in the three photos below…

And lest I forget another little beauty – the Semipalmated Plover. This sequence below shows two different individuals in distraction display, feigning a broken wing to draw my attention away from their nest or babies; followed by some photos of the babies stumbling in the grass and trying to hide in the open before running back to hide under the breast feathers of mom or dad… very adorable but i had to leave quickly to avoid stressing the birds and never got the photos i really wanted to them sticking their heads out… 

One big part of this year’s success was the numerous nests I found in northern Manitoba. Here, in addition to the ones I showed in the last post, are a few examples. We start with the big one for me – the first time in my life I have found the nest of Red-throated Loon and the first confirmed breeding of this species for the Manitoba Breeding Bird Atlas (www.birdatlas.mb.ca). The first photo shows the nest (not much of a nest really, just an egg laid in a depression) and the then the owner (actually the photo is of a different individual but once again, I had to leave in a hurry and decided not to return to the nest site as I was doing survey work and did not have a hide / blind with me).

Here are some more example – see if you can identify the nest before you look at the subsequent photo of the nest maker!

Did you get that?? They were:

Willow Ptarmigan nest up close

Willow Ptarmigan nest in surrounding habitat (did you spot the eggs?)

Willow Ptarmigan

American Black Duck nest (I tried to trick you by not showing the bird)

Horned Lark nest

Horned Lark

Savannah Sparrow nest

Savannah Sparrow

The Savannah Sparrow nest is intriguing. I flushed a Savannah Sparrow off this nest and the eggs for the most part are consistent with Savannah Sparrow; however, I still am uncertain about the identity of the pale bluish egg that accompanies the brownish Savannah Sparrow eggs…. Anyone with any thoughts on this, please get in touch!

Off to the coast in the next post!

Treeline to Tundra

As part of our Manitoba Breeding Bird Atlas (ww.birdatlas.mb.ca) efforts this year, I was fortunate to travel to northernmost Manitoba this summer. In particular, the atlas owes a great debt to the Webber and the Reimer families for their truly exceptional in-kind contribution to the atlas this year that enabled me to survey Dymond Lake, the Seal River Important Bird Area and Schmok Lake near the Nunavut border.

Dymond Lake is situated northwest of Churchill across Button Bay. This area has very little tundra and is mostly forested except for a narrow strip along the coast. Nonetheless, coast ponds and the intertidal zone were beginning to attract many migrant shorebirds in mid July.  The Dymond Lake Lodge is well situated between Dymond  Lake and the coast.

The Seal River meets Hudson Bay 60 km northwest of Churchill and 8 km north of the river mouth lies the simply MAGNIFICENT Seal River Heritage Lodge offers bay-side dining with phenomenal views and bear, beluga, seal and bird watching. The incredibly rich intertidal zone is a major staging site for staggeringly large shorebird and waterfowl flocks that have earned this area the designation of a globally significant Important Bird Area (e.g. apparently flocks of several thousand Black Scoter move through the area each year). There was still ice in the bay when i first arrived in late June this year but it soon melted away and by mid July the polar bears were swimming ashore.

 When you travel over 50 km northwest of Churchill you expect to see tundra, but i must confess to being a little surprised at the habitat in Seal River area, when i encountered mile after mile of willow swales that made for very difficult walking.  A treed ridge approximately 3.5 km inland made for better walking and the tundra – treeline transition here was very rich and especially good for Smith’s Longspur and Harris’s Sparrow.

Schmok Lake sits in a fascinating part of Manitoba with some exceptional topography by Manitoba standards of tall rocky outcrops and hills, lakes with forested edges, and open wet and dry (rocky) tundra in a mosaic of exceptional beauty. I am told the area is stunning in fall when the bearberries turn the landscape red and the caribou migrate through in numbers. As it turns out, this summer I even got to set foot in Nunavut by virtue of a 24 km round-trip hike from Schmock Lake across some truly beautiful tundra as in the photo below.

As one approaches treeline in northern boreal forests, a variety of different species occur that are either rare or absent in the taller forests of the central boreal. One highly sought-after species of the treeline to tundra transition zone is the Harris’s Sparrow – the only species whose breeding distribution is confined to Canada. The mournful whistled song of the Harris’s Sparrow is a common and unmistakable part of the northern treeline soundscape, although sadly they seem to be declining from the Churchill area proper. This photo shows one foraging on the ground, as they frequently do, on a peaty hummock beside a forested copse.

As relatively few nests of Harris’s Sparrow have ever been found, I was fortunate this year to find several of their nests, each containing three greenish eggs with dark brown splotches. This first photo shows the typical nesting habitat of this species (the nest is situated near the base of the tamarack in the left of the photo) and the second photo show the nest (lower right corner of photo).

Another special bird of the treeline to tundra transition zone is the Smith’s Longspur, although unlike Harris’s Sparrow their range extends slightly into Alaska. Their very limited winter range and their ability to hide within mixed longspur flocks (non-breeding plumages of several longspur species are similar) makes them tough to find away from the breeding grounds. Nonetheless, most of their breeding grounds are difficult to access, making this a key target species for visitors to the Churchill area. Like the Harris’s Sparrow, the Smith’s Longspur seems to spend most of their time foraging on the ground and singing from tree perches, although they arguably prefer slightly more open habitat and I have often found them associated with small rocky outcrops as shown in the composite photo below, where I found several pairs.

And now for some photos of the birds themselves on those rocks - first a female Smith's Longspur in her habitat and then a closer look at her subtly beautiful plumage.

And now for a couple of photos of a male Smith's Longspur in his habitat and then a closer look at his unique orange and black plumage, followed by one silhouetted in the rising sun. 

Lapland Longspur sometimes co-occur with Smith’s Longspur but they are more a tundra bird and not tied to the treeline transition. Here are two photos of a female and a juvenile Lapland Longspur to compare with the Smith Longspur above.

In addition to the thrill of finding Harris’s Sparrow nests, I was also lucky enough to find the nests of other secretive species such as Blackpoll Warbler. Here are three photos showing one of the Blackpoll Warbler nests in a “zoom out sequence” (if you can spot the nest in the last photo, kudos!)

There were other species that I didn’t manage to find nest of but I still was able to confirm breeding by seeing adults carrying food for young, as in this photo of a Northern Waterthrush.

And this year, thanks to a slightly later visit (July), I also got to confirm breeding of many species in the northern forests by finding recently fledged young – here are a few examples:

A young Bonaparte’s Gull just out of the nest and already swimming,

Two shots of a family of recently fledged Northern Shrikes,

A young Rusty Blackbird, apparently eying up a fly that they’ll never catch,

A fledgling White-crowned Sparrow doing their level best to hide,

And one of my favourite moments from the summer – two young Northern Hawk Owls waiting patiently for mum and dad to return...

In our next post we will go out onto the open tundra for more avian treats!

A Taste of the Manitoba Prairie

As has become a bit of a tradition, I treated my hard-working atlas summer crew to a 2-day birding trip of Manitoba’s southwest corner and Whitewater Lake after they had finished their point counting assignment. This year’s results were spectacular with the grassland birds putting on quite a show.

Two of the best moments were offered up by two extraordinarily cooperative Sprague’s Pipits. Mere minutes after I explained how difficult Sprague’s Pipit were to see, we got crippling views of one walking on the ground, shown here.

As if that wasn’t enough, I later spotted another Sprague's Pipit sitting on a fence pole that provided prolonged close views and allowed me an unprecedented photo op – here are three different photos of the same bird that show the elongated hallux (rear toe) and also the bird’s prairie habitat

Another grassland species that is very difficult to see in Manitoba is Baird’s Sparrow, so I was equally amazed when one tee-ed up on a small patch of antelope bush right in front of us and sat still while I focused the scope. Better yet, we later saw this bird briefly with fledged young. The photo below shows this cooperative sparrow in their typical habitat – grassland with scattered bushes...

Alongside the Baird’s Sparrow, we found fledged young of Grasshopper Sparrow and got to study the plumage closely – note the detail in this photo of a youngster on a wire…

This year’s Dickcissel invasion did not disappoint either – here is one of the many singing males we found in cropland!

We also enjoyed great looks at the specialties this area has to offer such as Ferruginous Hawk, Burrowing Owl, Loggerhead Shrike with young, Chestnut-collared Longspur, Say’s Phoebe, the Willow Flycatcher photographed below and others.

A truly unexpected treat was knock-your-socks off views of the male Lazuli Bunting southeast of Lyleton that has been on the same territory three years in a row. A female Passerina bunting was also seen and did not appear streaky on the breast; however, views were insufficient to determine species… I need to make a return visit if I can! Here are two photos, first showing the habitat and then a closer look at his magnificent colours…

In the Whitewater Lake area, we enjoyed a great showing of White-faced Ibis (first photo below); Great, Snowy and Cattle Egrets (second photo below); Black-crowned Night-Heron (third photo below), California Gull and others, plus a good selection of migrating shorebirds including American Golden Plover, Semipalmated Plover Hudsonian Godwit, Stilt Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper and all four peeps.

 

A truly exceptional day and a half in the prairies – thanx team!!