Great Egret

Great Egret Visits Salisbury

Great Egret

For the last week there has been a Great Egret feeding at the lagoon in Salisbury.  I saw it on April 23.  A visit early in the morning left us empty-handed but a visit in the afternoon gave us a good sighting of this visitor from the south.  This egret has a smudge of something dark coloured on the left side of its head, probably sludge from an oil slick acquired somewhere on its travels.

The Great Egret (Ardea alba) is a rare visitor to New Brunswick, usually occurring in spring and fall.  Occasionally we will have two together but it is usually a single bird.  Once I saw one at Chance Harbour accompanied by a Tricolored Heron.

Great Egret

 The Great Egret is a large white egret with a long neck and large yellow bill.  Its legs and feet are black.  In breeding season the adults grow long plumes on their backs which extend beyond the tail.  This, unfortunately, almost led to their demise when these plumes (aigrettes) were highly sought after for the millinery trade in the 1800s and early 1900s.  Severe population declines resulted but fortunately they have recovered.  In breeding season the Great Egret develops a pretty turquoise green colour lores (around the eye) which beautifully sets off the yellow eye.  Also, the bill changes from yellow to orange.  This egret is 99 cm (39 in) long with a wing span of 130 cm (51 in) making it North America's largest egret.  A distinguishing characteristic of this species is its slow flight with the neck retracted.

The only other bird you are likely to confuse this bird with is the Snowy Egret which is smaller, has a black bill and black legs with yellow feet.  They do, however, frequent the same habitats.  The Cattle Egret is much smaller (51 cm/20 in) and has a different shape.

 Great Egret

The Great Egret prefers wetlands; freshwater, brackish or saline.  It feeds on fish, aquatic invertebrates and reptiles.  It has the advantage of size and can wade out deeper than other egret species to reach food unattainable to them.  It nests in trees in colonies along with other wading bird species.  The nest is usually 6 to 12 metres (20 to 40 feet) above the ground.  It breeds mainly in the southern US but strays in summer up the Atlantic coast and up the central part of the continent to Michigan and Minnesota.  It has never bred in New Brunswick.

An interesting fact about the Great Egret is that it is the symbol of the National Audubon Society.  Let's keep this beautiful image there and leave their plumes on their backs where they belong.  I am glad we no longer value hats decorated with animal parts!

Redhead

Redhead Duck Seen in Saint John

Redhead

A Redhead duck (Aythya americana) visited Rockwood Park, Saint John for about a week in late March/early April.  It spent most of its time sharing a small pond with other local ducks; mallards, black ducks, american widgeon and many Ring-billed Gulls.  It was finding food and safety there so spent several days resting and restoring its energy stores before moving on to points further north.

Redhead and Mallard

The Redhead is of the genus,  Aythya, along with the Canvasback, Ring-necked Duck, Tufted Duck, Greater Scaup, Lesser Scaup and Common Pochard.  Most of these genera are North American except the Tufted Duck and the Common Pochard which are European.  To share the same genus indicates that the ducks are closely related and therefore similar in appearance and behaviour (usually).  For example, the Redhead looks much more like the Ring-necked Duck than the Mallard, which is an Anas genus.  The keen eye can see the difference in shape between the Redhead and the Mallard in the photo above.

The Redhead is a beautiful duck with its deep rusty brown head and deep yellow eye.  It is often seen alone here since it is a rare visitor and seen mainly during migration.  I have seen large rafts of them on Lake Ontario where they gather before moving on in their migration.  Most Redheads spend their summers on their breeding range on the prairies and in central Alaska.  It appears there is a small population that breeds in southeastern Ontario and in south-central Labrador.  Redheads winter in the southern US and Mexico.  

Redhead Male

The male Redhead has a deep rusty head and upper neck, yellow eye and a tricoloured bill (black, blue and white, see photo).  Its back is gray; dark gray above and lighter gray on the sides.  Both are vermiculated (showing wavy lines) and are beautiful to see up close.  Its breast is black.  The female is very different looking.  She is brown overall with a paler face and a dark crown.  Her bill is also tricoloured but with gray rather than blue.  

"Birds of New Brunswick: An Annotated List" says that nearly all modern records of the Redhead have occurred since the 1960s.  The only confirmed record of breeding in NB is from 1944 from Middle Island, Sunbury County.  This is unusual and almost all records are from spring and fall as the birds pass through to breeding grounds in Labrador.

Redheads feed by diving in shallow water.  They feed on both plants and animals:  seeds, rhizomes and tubers of pondweeds, wild celery, water lilies, grasses, molluscs, aquatic insects and small fish.  They often associate with other Aythya ducks.  The only other species that could be confused with the Redhead is the Canvasback which has the same colouring but is larger and shows a different head and bill profile.  For distinguishing the female it is best to refer to reliable field guides, for example, "The Sibley Guide to Birds" 2014.

Pink-footed Goose Returns

Pink-footed Goose Visits Keswick

The Pink-footed Goose (Anser brachyrhynchus) has returned!  Or, this could be another individual.  For the purpose of this blog I am assuming this is the same bird that has been seen for the last three years in the Fredericton area.

Pink-footed Goose 

The Pink-footed Goose is an European species that is very rarely seen here.  It normally breeds in eastern Greenland, Svalbard (northern Norway) and the interior of Iceland.  It normally winters along the shores of Denmark and eastern Scotland in the North Sea and sometimes a bit further south. 

So, what is it doing here?  Well, it is not unusual for birds to get blown off course during migration.  Also, sometimes the migration patterns imprinted in their brains can get jumbled.  We do not really know why but wonder if pollutants, radiation, or disturbances in the Earth's magnetic fields, for example, could be causing deviant migration patterns.  In any case, a Pink-footed Goose is now living on the eastern shores of North America.  

Shown above is the individual seen at Keswick, near Fredericton on April 9, 2018.  It was associated with a very large number of Canada Geese (250) and 6 Snow Geese.  These birds were feeding on the Keswick flats where the spring snows had begun to melt and there was vegetation upon which they could feed.  What a wonderful sight it was!  See below for a photo of the Snow Geese that were with the flock.

Snow Goose

There have been other sightings of Pink-footed Geese in New Brunswick.  This rare visitor is making itself available to birders!  The present sighting was first made about the 1st of April in the same area.  The last sighting that I am aware of was on April 9.  In 2017 a Pink-footed Goose was seen in Sheffield east of Fredericton on 14 April and a few days around that date.  In 2016, one was seen at Fredericton at Carmen Creek Golf Course for several days in November.  Before that only one sighting had been made (as far as I know) and it was in 2010 on October 30 at Cocagne on the east coast of the province.  In my opinion that was a different individual from the one that has been seen in the Fredericton area for the last 3 years.  See below for a picture of the individual that was seen in Fredericton in 2016.

Pink-footed Goose

Arthur Cleveland Bent, in his Life Histories of North American Wild Fowl, 1923, gives some additional interesting facts about this species.  Only once before was it recorded in North America.  That was on September 25, 1924 from Essex County, Massachusetts.  He tells us that this species normally nests on the tundra in the very north of Europe and usually lays just 3 to 5 eggs.  After the young have been raised the adults moult and during that time the birds are vulnerable because they can only run away on their feet for protection.  Their only predators in past times were Arctic foxes.  Of course, now they must fear humans.  He relates that during the moulting period on Spitsbergen in northern Norway the biologists found great numbers of their wing feathers strewn along the shores.  He reports that they are the wildest and most unapproachable species of geese in Europe.  That is probably a good thing.  

I am hopeful that their population has increased to the extent that the occasional individual has found its way to eastern North America.

Early Spring Birding

Weather System Brings Early Migrants 

American Robin

Adverse weather in the last few days has brought an influx of early migrants.  Over the weekend there was a southwesterly flow of warm, wet weather that brought in a large number of migrant birds.  On Sunday, April 1, we visited the Mactaquac Dam and the area between Douglas and Mactaquac and found about 300 American Robins, 125 Canada Geese, 20 Killdeer, 4 Song Sparrows and just 1 Bald Eagle.  The eagle has likely been around all winter so does not count as a migrant but was impressive never-the-less.  

The Robins were in the bushes and on the ground practically everywhere gleaning for leftover fruit, worms and insects.  The ground was partly snow-free and melted so some were getting worms.  The Killdeer were on the open grass looking for worms and insects.  I saw one pulling a worm from the soggy soil.

Killdeer

The geese were grazing on the open ground pulling up whatever fresh shoots of green they could find.  There was a lot of jostling and interactions in the flock as the ganders protected their mates from young suitors.

White-tailed Deer

There were lots of White-tailed Deer watching us from nearby bushes or feeding on grass in exposed areas of fields.  They are hungry this time of year and eagerly seek fresh grass to make up for their winter starvation (in some cases).  In the group pictured above there were 7 individuals and 2 of the fawns looked very thin and poor.  They must have had a hard winter with all the snow and the over-population of deer in the Keswick area.

On Tuesday, April 3, there was a huge number of geese on the Keswick flats, probably 300-400.  Most, of course, were Canada Geese.  However, on a closer look, we found 5 (or 6 at a later check) Snow Geese among them.  These are rare but not totally unexpected.  A few Snow Geese usually show up each year when the huge flocks of geese pass through.  These Snow Geese probably join the huge flocks of Snow Geese that gather in the Campbellton area and Gaspe as they stage before moving north to their breeding grounds in Baffin Island.

Snow Geese with Canada Geese

Also on April 3 a birder found a very rare goose among the huge flock of Canada Geese in the Keswick area, a Pink-footed Goose.  This species is from Europe (probably Greenland or Iceland) and is rarely seen here.  One was seen 2 years ago in Fredericton and another was seen a few years before that in the Cocagne area.

Pink-footed Goose with Canada Geese

The photo above was taken at an earlier time but shows the Pink-footed Goose that was found with the recent Keswick flock.