Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks nest again in Ohio, producing scads of chicks

 

This rather innocuous-looking place was our destination last Sunday, October 20, 2024, and it's a spot I had been hoping to visit for a few months. Better late than never, and in this case, late was probably better.

Shauna and I packed the gear and drove the hour and a half to Ohio State University's sprawling Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center campus near Wooster, in Wayne County, Ohio. The locale in the photo is perhaps most noteworthy for its string of six little ponds. Parts of two of those are visible in the photo. This is where the latest crop of nesting Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks (Dendrocygna autumnalis) has been hanging out.

This tropical duck was first found nesting in Ohio just a few miles from this spot, in 2022. I wrote about that RIGHT HERE.

While I knew finding and seeing the large "tree ducks" would not be difficult, in this case it was ridiculously easy. We pulled into the site, and before even getting out of the vehicle I heard the squeaky peeping whistles of the whistling-ducks. A glance in the direction of the pond revealed the extended head of an adult, peeking up and over the embankment. It didn't long to walk into a good position and start getting shots of the beautiful fowl. Here, two adults with pink bills bookend three dusky-billed juveniles.

But wait! There were more! It didn't take long to realize that the pack had expanded from the eBird reports I had recently seen, which listed 10 juveniles and two adults. In total, we saw 19 juveniles and six adults. We arrived right around sunrise, and the ducks were still resting on the banks of one of the small ponds, in three discrete pods, each with two adults. It would appear that three pairs of whistling-ducks bred somewhere locally, and then merged the troops here after the young became flighted. As we were leaving, Jethro Raber, an ace local birder who has been keeping tabs on the ducks, told us that the assemblage of this big pack was a recent event, just a day or two prior to our visit if I recall correctly.

As always, you can click the image to enlarge and if you do with the photo above, you'll see the frosty rime on the grass. It was in the low 30's F the prior night, and nighttime temps have been getting consistently frosty. I suspect these Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks will not hang around much longer.

As the sun warmed the earth, and the birds, they began foraging and moving around. We saw them skimming lesser duckweed (Lemna minor) from the pond's surface and plucking at other plants. While they didn't venture far, some short flights were made, and we saw all 25 birds flying and flying well. The juveniles will soon be ready for their southward journey, if they aren't already. A juvenile stretches its long wings in the image above, and shares space with four other young birds. An adult is to the far right.

An adult whistling-duck strikes a pose. It is atop a long linear pile of who knows what. I suspect the material is a mixture of manure and other offal of farming operations, but I really have no idea. There was something in there that pleased the ducks, though, and they avidly rooted about in the stuff. Perhaps corn kernels or other edible plant matter.

Once the ducks became active, they wasted little time in heading to these piles and remained on and around them the rest of the time that we were there. I wonder if this stuff, whatever it may be (and if you know, please leave a comment) is what made them fixate on this particular site.

A juvenile strikes a subservient posture before an adult. It was great fun observing the interactions and dynamics of these charismatic birds. While highly social, there are pecking orders and squabbles to establish them. Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks can be incredibly tame, and these birds weren't exactly shrinking violets. Nonetheless, we maintained a good distance from them which allows for better opportunities to observe natural interactions while avoiding the possibility of spooking/flushing the birds. There's no reason to do that, in this situation especially.

It seems that we are seeing the genesis of a breeding population of Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks develop before our eyes. From one pair three years ago, that produced (if memory serves) four surviving chicks, to the current crop of three apparent broods and 19 chicks. All of the last three year's nestings were within a few miles of each other. It'll be interesting to see if and how the Wayne County population continues its expansion, and if and where other future breeding records occur. I don't know offhand the exact number of Black-bellied Whistling-Duck records in Ohio, but since the first report in 2004, there have probably been a few dozen. It seems likely that other vagrant (if we can still call them that) whistling-ducks will remain to breed elsewhere in the state.

A very cool moth

 

On July 28 of this year, I did some backyard mothing - something that I should do more of here, as I usually get cool bugs. And who doesn't like cool bugs. This uber-cool bug is a Lesser Grapevine Looper (Eulithis diversilineata), a moth that arches its abdomen up and over until it points at its snout. While conspicuous on a white shed wall, this bizarre posture may serve it well as disruptive camouflage when hiding in vegetated haunts. Its caterpillars feed on grape and Virginia creeper and I've got plenty of that. Worthington, Ohio.

Shale-barren Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium), white-flowered form

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

Last Saturday, Shauna had to give a program on Bobcats to a group at the Arc of Appalachia's Highland Nature Sanctuary and following that we headed down to Lynx Prairie in Adams County to drum up some late-season flora. One species that was high on my list to photograph was Shale-barren Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium). It is in peak bloom in early to mid-October, and we soon found ourselves admiring this large colony.

Shale-barren Aster is well-named, as can be seen from this image. It favors dry, rocky ground, and in Ohio often occurs on slopes like this. The plant is rhizomatous and can form sizable colonies. But in our state, it's a rarity and is listed as threatened by ODNR. Shale-barren Aster barely gets into southern Ohio and is known from only three-four counties and Adams County hosts most of the populations.

Here's the typical flowers of Shale-barren Aster. The rays are a showy pale purplish color, offset by bright yellow disk flowers.

PHOTO NOTE: Sometimes, to better isolate plants in crowded environments, I place a piece of black velvet behind the subject. That's what was done here. It also allows me to use a smaller aperture without penalty of creating a distracting image with lots of background clutter confusing the issue. This image was made at f/16, 1/125 second, and ISO 800. The only reason that the ISO was so high was due to breezy conditions and possible subject movement, but since very little cropping was required and the Canon R5 handles higher ISO settings well, it's not a problem. The lens was the stellar Canon 100mm f/2.8L macro.

As we walked towards the main colony, Shauna drew my attention to a white-flowered aster. Wow! It was an odd plant of Shale-barren Aster with snowy-white flowers! I had never seen, nor heard of such a thing. There were only three specimens, fairly close together and I suppose they could have essentially been the same plant, interconnected by rhizomes. This image shows the distinctive herbage, with alternate slightly clasping oblong leaves.

Here's a closeup of a flowering head. Not even a tinge of pink, purple or rose in those rays.

I've scouted about a bit and cannot find any references to white-flowered forms of Symphyotrichum oblongifolium. That's not to say it doesn't occur elsewhere, because anomalous white flowers regularly turn up in flowers that are ordinarily other colors. But it must not be common, or botanical manuals would mention it, and someone probably would have described it as a named form. The great botanist Merrit Fernald was big on noting variations such as this, yet his 1950 Gray's Manual of Botany makes no mention of white-flowered variants of Shale-barren Aster. He does note a forma roseoligulatus, which has rosy-colored rays. That, however, would be far more subtle and probably often insensibly grading into typical flower colors.

It will be interesting to see if these plants persist and expand, or eventually vanish.

NOTE: In botany, the equivalent of a subspecies in animals is termed a variety. Varieties are typically stable and distinctive variants but do not rise to the level of a species and are clearly closely related to the nominate, or typical variety. An example involving another aster would be Purple Swamp Aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum). It was long split into "subspecies": Symphyotrichum puniceum variety puniceum (the nominate, or typical, subspecies) and S. puniceum var. firmus. As sometimes happens, these two varieties were later shown to be distinct, and both are considered separate species now. Forms do not rise to that level and are minor variants. In the case of Purple Swamp Aster, two forms have been described, Symphyotrichum puniceum forma etiamalbus with white flowers, and forma rufescens with reddish flowers. These forms only different in flower color, thus are minor variations, and possibly best treated as occasional anomalies, not stable characters of the species, hence the forma designation. That's undoubtedly the case with the white-flowered Shale-barren Aster that we found.

Alder and Willow flycatchers, side by side

Back in early June, Shauna and I traveled to rural western New York, to attend the Allegany Nature Pilgrimage. It's quite the event, with hundreds of attendees, scores of field trips and other activities, and lots of speakers. I was there in the latter capacity, speaking about - what else, this year - moths.

The Pilgrimage takes place in a beautiful region with lots of interesting places nearby, so we took the opportunity to tack on a few days and visit some new sites. We saw lots of flora and fauna, managed to eke out some decent imagery, and learned lots about various things. One of the more interesting avian experiences for me was stumbling into a large shrubland that was occupied by both Alder Flycatchers (Empidonax alnorum) and Willow Flycatchers (E. traillii), in about equal numbers.

This vast shrub-dominated meadow is in Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, about 40 miles northeast of Buffalo, New York. We were slowly cruising by when I heard the song of an Alder Flycatcher. As this is a species that I am very much smitten with, we quickly pulled over and got out to better assess the situation. To my surprise I soon heard a Willow Flycatcher, then another Alder, another Willow, and so on.

This site is near the southern overlap of these species' ranges, and maybe shrublands full of both species isn't that unusual in this zone, but I had never seen it. Where I live, in central Ohio, Willow Flycatcher is the common species, and Alders only occur sparingly in northernmost Ohio, especially in the northeast corner which has the most boreal-ish habitat. But I've spent scads of time in the north country, such as the northern tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula, where Alder Flycatcher is very common, and I know it well.

Alder and Willow flycatchers were considered conspecific until 1973, although the differences between the two were noticed long before, perhaps most notably by Roger Tory Peterson. Much of the differentiation is in vocalizations, and habitat. They are well-named birds, as Willows typically occupy areas with some willow (genus Salix). Alders prefer, duh, alders (genus Alnus) and thus are typically found in wetter sites as that's where alder thickets thrive. But good luck identifying a silent bird in migration. If it issues a few distinctive call notes, you might nail it, but otherwise it'll have to go down as "Empidonax sp. Even birds in the hand, with measurements possible, cannot always be separated (ever?).

A male Alder Flycatcher in the Iroquois meadow in the first photo. Its singing perch was a willow. Indeed, we could not find any alders in this damp meadow, just willow of several species.

Here is a nearby male Willow Flycatcher, also teed up in a willow singing perch. We walked around much of this roughly 20-acre site and spent much time listening to and watching the flycatchers. In all, we counted 5-6 singing Alders and 4-5 singing Willows. The birds seemed to have marked out well-established territories, and we saw no interactions between the species. It certainly was a great site to hear both of these look-alikes singing side by side.

A brief, greatly compressed video of one of the singing Alder Flycatchers. Sorry, my learning curve with video processing is not very advanced, but you should be able to hear its distinctive song well. It is a burry ascending Free-beer! or Fe-bee-oh!

I was going to post a singing Willow Flycatcher video that was nearby the Alder above, but now my video "editor" is giving me fits and I can't make it work. I'll try to correct this and post it later. Its song is a quite different sneezy Fitz-bew! With some practice and experience, separating these species by song is normally not difficult. Even the call notes are mostly distinctive, especially the dry whit whit calls of Willows and the more robust pip pip notes of Alders. In fact, the latter species reminds me of a miniature Olive-sided Flycatcher as some of its calls suggest that species, and the territorial males seem more pugnacious and prone to singing from exposed perches.

There apparently is no concrete evidence of hybridization between these very similar species, even though they are extremely similar genetically, much more so than most avian species pairings. Our observations in this mixed meadow, the type of site one might think that hybridization might occur if it indeed does happen, indicated that the two species maintained well-defined territories and did not interact much.

Brown-headed Nuthatch

 

I've been playing catch-up with photo labeling and archival - note to self: do not fall behind on this. Anyway, one positive is revisiting many cool sites and lots of interesting flora and fauna. This is one of the world's cutest birds, the Brown-headed Nuthatch (Sitta pusilla). The elfin weighs maybe 10-11 grams, and barely exceeds 4 inches in length. For comparison, the White-breasted Nuthatch is 20 g and 5.5 inches - a comparative giant. BHN's are obligatory pine residents and small troupes of them make a gentle cacophony as cute as the birds: it sounds like a dozen kittens are in the limbs, playing with squeak toys. Hickory, North Carolina, January 1, 2024.

American Copper

 

I was pleased to stumble into a small population of American Coppers (Lycaena phlaeas) last Thursday, September 26, in Wayne County (Ohio). This one is nectaring on white heath aster (Symphyotrichum pilosum), of which there was plenty at this locale.

In spite of the name, there is strong evidence that the "American" Copper was in fact introduced to America long ago, perhaps in hay shipments from Europe. In the Old World it is known as the Little Copper or Eurasian Small Copper, and the two "species" are quite similar. Also, the American Copper's host plants (what the caterpillars feed on) are Eurasian species not native here, primarily sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella) and curly dock (R. crispus). Even if the little butterfly was an unintentional import, it is an attractive and charismatic little butterfly and I'm not aware of any issues that it has caused.

A motherlode of Lincoln's Sparrows

The inaugural Headlands Birding Festival took place last weekend, based at Headlands Dunes State Park. There were a number of breakout speakers on Saturday afternoon, and keynotes Friday and Saturday night. Greg Miller of The Big Year fame was on Saturday, and your narrator spoke about the Great Lakes and their importance on Friday. From what I could tell, there were several hundred attendees, and more people than that wandered through the vendors and exhibitors on Saturday. It was a great time, and I believe this event will only grow. The Lake Erie lakefront in northeastern Ohio is incredibly important for fall migrants, and this makes for great birding as we shall see.

Mentor Marsh was the location of our field trip on Saturday morning, led by Becky Donaldson of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and me. We met our group of about 25 people at 7:30 am and hiked this elevated dike through the marsh. While the trip was scheduled to end at 9:30, many of us stayed until about 11 am. The birding was magnificent, and the glut of Lincoln's Sparrows was right along this dike. We estimated 15 Lincoln's Sparrows on our trip, but I knew far more were present. Note the pale lime-green zone off the left side of the dike, right before the trees. That's rice cut grass (Leersia oryzoides) forming a large drift. Its fruit was ripe and seemed to attract lots of sparrows.

While field trips are fun, a great way to showcase natural history, and several of our participants saw new "life" birds, large groups are definitely not the effective way to stalk shy, skittish sparrows, especially insofar as photography goes. In fact, I didn't even bring my camera on the field trip. Probably should have but when one is leading, it's rude to become self-absorbed and get into shooting pics and ignoring the group. I don't even want the temptation, although I would have regretted that decision had a Steller's Sea Eagle or something crazy flown by. Anyway, I got permission to come back to this spot the following morning, at the crack of dawn, camera in tow.

This is the view to the north from that dike. The bulk of the 1,000-acre marsh stretches in that direction. I wonder how many Lincoln's Sparrows were up that way. Probably hundreds. I just sampled a tiny portion of the vast wetland - one-half mile in, and the same one-half mile out.

Here's a nice mugshot of a Lincoln's Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii). It is in the same genus as the Song Sparrow (M. melodia) and Swamp Sparrow (M. georgiana), and is superficially similar to both, especially the Song Sparrow. But once one is familiar with the comparatively dainty and compact Lincoln's Sparrow, with its neatly striped dapper plumage, subtle gray and buff tones, and generally much more animated behavior, they are quite easy to identify.

As soon as I entered the trail, I began seeing Lincoln's Sparrows. At times I could see a dozen at once. In all, I tallied (and eBirded) 75 but am sure that's just a snippet of the true number that was present in the marsh.

Here's a Lincoln's Sparrow in a buttonbush plant (Cephalanthus occidentalis). The sparrows seemed smitten with the fruit - brownish balls on bottom left corner - and this particular shrub often had multiple sparrows simultaneously. I failed to get the money shot of a sparrow with buttonbush seeds in bill, although I saw it happen numerous times.

Many Lincoln's Sparrows were further out in the marsh, like this one teed up in some cattails. They were generally in proximity to the beds of rice cut grass, which is why I suspect they were harvesting its abundant ripe fruit.

In all, I photographed probably 6-8 different individuals. This one popped out very briefly on a branch near the ground. When skulking in dense vegetation, especially on the ground, which is how Lincoln's Sparrows often behave, it can be tough to get even a good enough look to positively identify them.

Here's a front shot showing the fine streaking and subtle buff wash which contrasts with the grayish head. The dapper little sparrows are sometimes said to resemble "well-dressed" Song Sparrows (at least by me).

A Lincoln's Sparrow, on point, showing a classic alert posture with raised crown feathers. This one was part of a group foraging in a small black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) thicket.

A three-fer in this shot: Lincoln's Sparrow (bottom right), Common Yellowthroat to its right (your left), and a Song Sparrow above. The closely related Song Sparrow is quite different even if superficially similar. It is "messier" in appearance - never the neatly dapper plumage of the Lincoln's, nor does it present the obvious gray and buff tones that are often so obvious with Lincoln's. Song Sparrow gestalt is different as well. It is a larger bulkier bird. The average Song Sparrow weighs about 23 grams, while a Lincoln's weighs about 17 grams. That's about 25% lighter which translates to a much different field impression.

I noticed that several Lincoln's Sparrows were drawn to the few and scattered Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina) treelets. This was early on my foray, and as you can see in this photo, the large flat sumac leaves were still copiously beaded with dew.

This is the same bird as above, shortly after I made the preceding shot. We've probably all heard the trendy sillyism "forest bathing" put forth by hipsters trying to get closer to nature or whatever. Well, this is real forest bathing. The Lincoln's Sparrows were bathing in dew: pushing and rubbing into the wet sumac leaves, then vigorously shaking and preening. It was really cool to watch this, and it did make me feel closer to nature.

It wasn't just Lincoln's Sparrows on my 2 hour and 15-minute immersion into the marsh. In all, I detected about 50 species of birds, including seven other sparrow species. The latter tally included a Clay-colored Sparrow, rather a rarity in this neck of the woods. Several Nashville Warblers and a Palm Warbler were working the goldenrods, and several Bobolinks passed overhead giving their melodic "pink" calls. Raucous families of Red-headed Woodpeckers made aerial sorties in between harvesting acorns in the nearby woods. At one point, I saw the whirlwind appearance of an accipiter far ahead, undoubtedly trying to whack the sparrows and warblers that I was admiring. It was just a split-second look, but now I was on point, waiting for it to reappear. A minute later, a female Sharp-shinned Hawk - a songbird's worst nightmare - shot from the shrubs and within ten feet of my head, surprising both of us. The snappy little raptor winged down the dike, then landed on the ground staring around ferociously. As nearly always happens, the songbirds fell silent and waited for the threat to disappear.

I'll try to post some other imagery from this trip later.