T.O. Backyard – Hot In The City

“Hot” is the only way to describe August, much like the whole summer of 2016 here in Toronto, Ontario.  Just trying to keep cool and deal with it is what most of us are doing.  While it has been rather quiet a few things of interest have happened around our “neck of the woods”.

For starts, we’ve had a couple unique birds pop in.  An Oriental Frill Pigeon on a neighbour’s roof a couple houses over.  A beautiful fancy Pigeon lost, escaped, abandoned…  only he knows his story.  Unfortunately he left the area before we were able to try and help him.

Then weeks later this African-collared Dove landed in our tree. He rested for about 15 minutes on this branch before moving on to who knows where?

It’s upsetting to say the least when we discover these domestic birds flying free. To date, I have seen here is 3 Budgies, 1 Orange Canary, 1 gray Cockatiel, the Oriental Frill and 2 African-collared Doves. Two of the Budgies now live with us. The Cockatiel was a neighbour’s bird who escaped and I helped catch. Funny thing is my neighbour caught that bird flying around a nearby park years ago. I sometimes wonder if it’s the same person losing these birds, like a careless breeder or ???

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds continued to visit us throughout August. With the high heat and humidity we’ve been changing the 2 feeders pretty much daily.

But despite the heat and the Hummingbirds, a sign of the seasons changing soon was the arrival of a Red-breasted Nuthatch, who was joined by a second bird days later. In past years, we normally do not see this species hitting our feeders until mid to late October.

Another bird that signifies the seasons are going to change soon is the Snowbirds flying over our backyard on Labour Day weekend. We are usually treated to a couple good sightings of these every year.  This was our last view of them for 2016.

Is Summer really coming to an end? I was just enjoying some juvi bird sightings only a couple weeks ago! These young birds I photographed at a park around the corner from our house.

Cedar Waxwing

Gray Catbird

Purple Martin

Red-bellied Woodpecker

We had our share of young birds coming to visit our backyard too. Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals, Downy Woodpeckers a plenty, Baltimore Orioles, the Hummingbirds and the appearance of a young Cooper’s Hawk. The arrival of a Hawk to our backyard is yet another sign that Autumn is just around the corner.

He’s giving all our visiting birds quite a hard time especially one of his favorite catches being the Rock Pigeons.

A very wet young Pigeon on one of the few days we had rain in August.

No shortage of Rock Pigeons in our backyard.

But I happen to like some of them, calling them “my friends”. This is Pierre. He made a unique first encounter to our backyard on July 21st in 2012.

Pierre still comes to visit almost daily over 4 years later. He’s got a bit of a fan club thanks to social media, changing some opinions on his species, and I will be the first to admit he changed mine as well. Pierre even made it on a Global News segment a couple winters ago.

In other sightings of late around here…

We were beyond excited to have two Red-spotted Purple Butterflies hang around our backyard for approximately 1 week.

A family of Skunks are making evening appearances. We’ve had up to 4 at once!

For those who don’t mind the Raccoon species, ours are doing well. The young are growing up so fast.

This one loves this water bowl we set out, which is 1 of 5 water sources we have for all the wildlife 24/7. All the birds and mammals are really appreciative of the constant supply of fresh water during the extreme heat wave.

Our blog a couple months back was about cats and birds. We bought a “kittywalk” to keep the birds (and our cats) safe. Our one cat, Merry, isn’t as keen about the enclosure as our other cat Molly. So we’ve been working with her on getting used to a leash and harness, which is going very well. She will never be left unsupervised even on this set-up. We are very happy she is taking to this though, enjoying the days out back with us all.

It will be interesting to see what happens in our parts as fall migration really ramps up in the next number of weeks.

Thanks for stopping in!