Birding is an experience that changes daily. Seeing familiar species is exciting and seeing new ones is exhilarating. While it is great to get a good picture when you see a new bird (new to you), the moment is not diminished if you don’t. That is often the case. While you click away with your zoom lens cranked to its max, excited by the sighting you aren’t really focused on focusing, perspective or setting.
Yesterday morning was one of those moments for me at the ponds I frequent. The morning sun was high by then and the first pond on the left has the sun coming from that direction. It seems like the birds favour that side (they must know that anyone coming in on the road will have a hard time seeing them in that bright light, I wonder if anyone has studied that!).
I was trying to figure out the group of birds that were there and I saw larger, chunkier, funny billed ducks. Surf Scoter came to mind right away and I clicked away trying to get some pictures to identify them. They looked like Scoters, but not quite Surf Scoters, which we have seen before and many of them go to the lake by Marten Beach where my friend lives. She gets photos of them far out in huge groups doing their mating behaviour. My sightings have been of a pair that hung out by the weir for a few days last Spring.
After the Scoters headed to the farthest part of the ponds in the reeds, I kept on birding and the day was capped off with the Songbird Festival out at the Boreal Centre for Bird Conservation. A great day!
At home, downloading the pictures, I clicked on the Scoter ones and realized they weren’t Surf Scoters, they were White-winged Scoters, a first sighting for me.
Why is it so exciting? Hard to say, except that our brains are wired for novelty and I am no exception. For me, seeing a new bird takes me to researching about that bird. It helps me learn more about birds and the more I learn about birds, the more appreciation I have for the immense diversity of life and the incredible duty humans have to be “stewards” of the earth. This sometimes leads me to despair when I see our incredible footprint on the planet and how it has impacted all life on earth. Stewards, we are NOT. Pillagers, plunderers, invaders, murderers, rapists we are when you look at how we treat the earth and all its life. Whether by ignorance or design, matters not.
For now, I am keeping the excitement of seeing this new bird and focusing on how I can be a steward.
White-winged Scoters winter on the coast (there are some that winter on the Eastern Great Lakes and seem to be increasing in numbers, may be because of the Zebra mussels). They breed on freshwater lakes and some ponds. They often nest with breeding colonies of gulls even though the gulls may eat their eggs, they nest in dense cover of vegetation away from the water. They are diving ducks and they eat mollusks and other crustaceans. Cool fact: the oldest recorded White-winged Scoter was a female at 18 years of age. Impressive!
Find out more about White-winged Scoters at this site: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/White-winged_Scoter/overview
Happy Birding!