Notes From a Northwestern Ontario Backyard – July 2019

Hello again!

Believe it or not, we actually have some colour up here right now that is not WHITE! 😉  Flowers are blooming, the grass is a deep green …. summer in Northwestern Ontario is very short & goes by very quickly but it’s beautiful to see while it’s here.  Not all winged visitors are of the feathered variety in summer. This has been a spectacular year for Dragonflies. At any given time, you can see 100+ floating around. I also saw a quite large bat fly through the street light at the end of my driveway recently. At about a foot across the wings, it was definitely the largest bat I’ve seen here. I narrowed it down to either a Red Bat or a Hoary Bat. Without seeing it up close, the i.d doesn’t get any better than that. And there are a few other critters floating around too, like the two below.

 

 

 

It’s been an excellent season for Woodpeckers around my backyard. I had a pair of Downies & a pair of Hairies coming around since last winter. The Downies were coming to my feeders regularly since then but were feeding their young outside of my yard so I never got to see the babies.

 

 

 

The Hairies, however, actually dropped one baby off here in my pine trees for an entire day before returning to pick him up in late afternoon!  I could hear the young one  calling & calling from my pine trees but it took me a few hours to actually track it down. When I finally spotted him, he was right at my head level!

 

 

 

 

One disappointment for me this spring was the lack of Tree Swallows nesting in my birdhouse. A few years ago, I put up a new feeder in a design that they apparently didn’t like. After 2 seasons of no nesting, I put their old house back up. They check it out every year now but have not nested in it again yet. I remain ever hopeful tho’.

This year after nesting season ended in the neighbourhood, a strange thing happened: the local Swallow family came back to check out my birdhouse again. They were not preparing for a second clutch. They had a half dozen of this year’s youngsters with them and they ALL scoped out the bird house, taking turns going in and out of it. At one point, I counted 9 Swallows (as seen in the photo below), a mixed group of adults and juveniles/immatures. I have never seen this behaviour before. Normally, as soon as all the chicks fledge, the Swallows completely disappear for the season and I don’t see them again until the following spring. Apparently tho’, this behaviour of checking out bird houses AFTER fledging was happening all over the place. I’m still baffled by it.

 

 

 

I didn’t get completely bombarded with Blackbird families this spring/summer. There have been a few small flocks of Grackles & Starlings around on the lawns but certainly not in dramatic numbers.

 

 

 

Pretty Purple Finches have been around all summer long. They are one of my all time favourite feeder visitors. I still have good numbers of Pine Siskins at the feeders daily and every once in a while, a couple of American Goldfinches will arrive. Hummingbird activity has been quieter this year than last but is fairly steady. I’ve been watching a single male Eastern Bluebird floating around my neighbourhood. I believe he nested somewhere nearby.

 

 

 

I’ll end this month with a surprise visit I had one day from a lone male Rose Breasted Grosbeak. He wasn’t here for very long, just a few hours one day. I have not seen him again. He is the only one I’ve seen in my yard so far this season.

 

 

Until next month, thanks for reading. 🙂