A SPRING AWAKENING EVERYWHERE 

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Visitors to the now famous Kaiser Crossroad cornfields, at Cressy, have been seeing a lot of white this month. Over 600 snow geese arrived in mid-March, their numbers steadily increasing from when a mere 200 were initially seen by birders from Belleville and Napanee. It has only been in recent years that the Quinte area has enjoyed such numbers of snow geese. Prior to the 1990s, to see a snow goose in these parts was something of a novelty. The greater snow goose winters along the Atlantic coast in the United States and migrates to and from its Arctic breeding grounds through the province of Quebec. The lesser snow goose migrates via the Mississippi Valley and is the one we normally expect to see here. This is the one that often shows up in a blue colour morph; at least four have been spotted in with the masses that appeared at Kaiser Crossroad.

The cornfields along this crossroad become flooded every spring and now attract avid birders from across eastern Ontario to witness the proliferation of waterfowl that comes to feed. This past week it has been the variety of species one would normally expect to see in such habitats, including mallards, black ducks, tundra swans, etc., but a few lucky observers have also added gadwall, wigeons, hooded mergansers and northern pintails.

As the water dissipates later in April, the mudflats then begin to attract shorebirds. It takes a while to spot them amongst the corn stubble, but a good spotting scope will usually produce numerous species as they make their way to the sub-Arctic tundra to nest. Kaiser is just a refuelling station for them. Among them will be the odd rarity such as the Wilson’s phalarope we found last May, and the year before that it was a ruff, an Old World species that is considered to be only casual in Ontario.

With the ice succumbing to warmer days, there are other signs of a spring awakening too. The first chorus frog was heard singing on March 20th north of Picton, only four days later than the first one was recorded last spring. This is good news for volunteers with the Marsh Monitoring Program, a venture that I have had the pleasure of coordinating in the Bay of Quinte area since 2002.

One by one, as the air and water temperature increases, more frog species will be joining the chorus. However, the chorus and wood frogs are explosive breeders, exploiting the flooded ditches and vernal pools created by snow melt and spring rains. Once their season draws to a close and the water warms up even more, then it is time for the spring peepers, leopard frogs and American toads to start calling. Bullfrogs and green frogs prefer their surroundings to be near room temperature, and they won’t start calling until much later, usually by mid-June.

There are some 24 frog and toad species in Canada; however, in eastern Ontario, we have only 10 species, eight of them common to the Quinte area. Pickerel frogs are seldom encountered and seem to prefer colder streams and lake shores. The mink frog is restricted to more northern areas and I find their staccato calls almost synonymous with Algonquin Park. However, they are moving south from their normal range and I have heard them calling as far south as Madoc, but the chances of them moving much farther south are slim as these anurans prefer the cooler northern waters.

And what’s with the turkey vultures that circle every year over Roger’s Street in Picton? Last week there were 20 doing so, and often they will congregate in the conifers at one end of the street. Residents can expect them every year at this time and so far, no one can figure out what the attraction is along that street. The street does, however, run behind the Whattam Funeral Home!

Hikers who are out enjoying the better weather these days should consider inserting something else in their pockets along with the water bottle and snacks – their tick puller! The ticks are out, this according to a South Bay resident who informed me by e-mail that they had been out with their dog and came back with five of the little blood sucking varmints attached to the dog, along with one tick on their son. It seems a bit early to be worried about ticks and we generally don’t see any sign of them until mid-April, but all it takes are a few nice warm, sunshiny days to activate them.

Ticks, turkey vultures, tundra swans and toads. It’s all happening right now, so get out there and experience the offerings of spring.