Beating the winter blahs with birds.
When a red-tailed hawk tells you to cheer up, you bloody-well cheer up!
I’ve been down and out with a bad head cold and the late-winter blahs. Standard work stress (it’s the very busy Annual General Meeting season, and I have many on my schedule), ongoing family concerns (sandwich generation stuff, you know — not terrible; just consistently front-of-mind), some deeply-disappointing petty backstabbing on the professional front (don’t get me started), and an inability to do one of my favourite things — jump in the car before dawn, and launch myself into Northern Ontario for a week or two of truly remote working that sees me trudging wilderness paths with my camera mere minutes before and after my office hours.
Since the illness hit, the camera has stayed in its case, and my occasional forays outside are to walk the dog, and try at least to get somewhere near the 10,000 daily steps to get me in proper shape for my upcoming hikes in central England. Yesterday morning, though, the dog seemed tired out from her earlier walk with my lovely wife, and there was a beautiful waning gibbous moon hanging above the western horizon. I decided to get a shot of it, if possible.
A pair of gulls fly across the surface of the moon.
One image led to several, which led down the street farther and a little farther, and soon I was taking a very long walk indeed. I started a bird track on my eBird app, and the IDs came fast and furious. By the end of four and a half kilometers, I’d recorded fifteen species of birds, and managed my best shots to date of a red-tailed hawk. I see red-tails frequently in Etobicoke, but they tend not to say still for very long, and when they are perched, they’re forever hiding behind a camouflage of branches.
Not this hawk. I turned a corner and spotted it immediately, sitting imperiously at the very top of a tall spruce. Not only was it clear of branches, but its speckled front was lit by golden hour sunlight. I took a few quick shots from afar, and then slowly drew nearer, worried all the time I might spook it. It surely knew I was there, but seemed more interested in scanning the neighbourhood for breakfast. The shot at the top of this posting is one of a few portraits I managed. I then flipped to video just in time to see the regal raptor launch in pursuit of something tasty.
I’m a soccer fan – a long-time supporter of Chelsea FC, the local team in the west London neighbourhood where I spent time as a student in 1987. Back in Canada I’ve been a loyal season seat holder at Toronto FC since they launched in 2007. Soccer is the quintessential long game, much like bird-watching. You can, and frequently do, go the full 90 minutes of a match without seeing a single goal. So, when the ball does hit the back of the net, and especially when it’s a spectacular goal, the excitement is almost indescribable. You feel lifted off the ground, and the internal celebration can last for hours.
A redwing blackbird announces its arrival on the north shore of Lake Ontario. It’s essentially saying “Spring is here!”
Feeling as bad as I have the last week or so, I walked out yesterday morning pretty sure I would not see anything at all. Instead, I came home with three new species for my 2023 list — American goldfinches, evening grosbeaks, and red-winged blackbirds seem to all have made an early return across the lake — and the enduring thrill of that red-tail sighting, as satisfying and long-lasting as a late goal in the run of play on the pitch, when your team has seemed luckless and out of ideas. I’m still buzzing.
An hour and a half immersed in bird song and golden light. Nature’s miracle cure.
This house sparrow, who stuck out the whole winter in Etobicoke, is unimpressed by the blackbird.