Naturalists Notes
By W.F. ROBINSON
The sun was already up and the ground fog was lifting as I headed out towards the Pitt Polder green belt on a clear and beautiful morning last week. Birds were singing everywhere and the walk took twice as long as usual while I stopped here and there to watch what each one was doing. The black-headed grosbeaks sang the loudest and longest, trying to attract their less vociferous females. Yellow warblers trilled from the dead branches of willows fallen along the edge of the slough. Below them the busy form of a beaver pushed through the dark water, occasionally ducking under and using his tail to strike the water with a thundering clap and a mighty splash, letting everyone know who owned the pond. The sun had not reached the sphagnum bog as yet, and I was surprised to see the whole expanse covered in a soft white bloom, as though the Labrador Tea had blossomed early. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be curtains of cobwebs enclosing the tip of each branch on every bush in the bog. The dew-covered webs glowed in the morning light and created the illusion of masses of white flowers. Further along the trail a huge cock pheasant preened in a patch of sunlight. Two heavy Canada geese in their bizarre yellow collars plodded along the muddied shore of the slough. Too tame to fly at my approach, they bellowed and honked before sliding into the water. Beyond the slough, the mountainside pulsed with the booming calls of the blue grouse, and a heron rose from somewhere in the marsh and flew with labored strokes to some new fishing area nearer the mountain.
The trail rose now, up a rocky incline. A mourning dove whirred from her nest on the branch of a sprawling pine tree. Warbling vireos and olive-sided flycatchers called from the trees above the trail, while out on the marsh the yellow throats repeatedly warned everyone “the witch is here! The witch is here!” (At least that’s what it sounded like to me). Another call came from the top of a fir, “Richard, Richard! Sweeties Come Here!': Investigation proved it to be a solitary vireo. About 200 feet above the meadow, I reached my vantage point. A western tanager, brilliantly yellow and red, called from the pine above my head. His loud robin-like call sounds like it is being cranked out by an organ-grinder. A tiny rufous hummingbird investigated the scarlet flowers on the tips of the pine branches, her whirring wings loosening a cloud of pollen from the male bloom nearby.
I turned my scope on the marsh below, where we have had a sandhill crane's nest under surveillance for almost a month. The young are due to hatch any day now. As I adjusted the focus, I was startled to see a crane just landing at the nest. I had not even seen him arrive. He walked to the nest,threw back his head and shattered the morning air with his loud and vibrant bugling. His mate joined in from her position on the nest, both calls blending as one. After this noisy and obviously sincere greeting, they quickly changed places on the nest, the female leaving almost immediately for the feeding grounds. Further out on the marsh, two cranes flew to the edge of a green grass-slough where they too, called loudly before settling down to the business of searching for breakfast.
Over on the old dyke-line, in the top of a wind-worn poplar a Red-tailed hawk fed her young from the edge of a bulky nest. Three wobbly heads could be seen eagerly stretching for their share of food.
Towards the noon hour things settle down and resume their normal pace, but the mornings on the Polder are lively and rewarding to those who can take the time to see and appreciate nature unlimited.
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