The Egret Article

By Laura Foy

We tend to take up a lot of space as North Americans. Canadians rank third in the world for average house size. It is estimated that lawns occupy a total area of more than 50 million acres across the continent. That’s an equivalent land area more than 25 times the size of Algonquin Park. Canada currently has protected 13% of our land and water area, with a pledged goal of 30% by 2030. However, most of that protected land exists outside of population centres.

The Carolinian Zone, the ecoregion in which we live, is home to a quarter of Canada’s human population and one third of its endangered and at-risk species. As much as 95% of the land is privately owned and only 2.5% is protected.

Our lawns are taking up valuable real estate and giving very little back. While we can never hope to fully replicate nature in our gardens, there are many ways that you can provide habitat at home and give back to nature some of the space we take up but rarely use.

What is habitat?

Habitat is made up of the physical resources that all living things need to survive and reproduce. In our gardens we can narrow this down to the following features:

1. Food
2. Water
3. Shelter
4. Places to raise young
5. ‘Green’ gardening

1. Food

Your garden habitat will eventually become host to everything on the food chain, from predators down to detritivores and decomposers.

Fruit and berries

When choosing plants to add to your garden, consider fruit bearing trees and shrubs. These species serve a dual benefit by often being species which bloom early in the season and offer pollen and nectar resources when many other flowering plants haven’t bloomed yet.  

Pollen and nectar

It’s not an exaggeration to say that pollen and nectar fuel thousands of species in our gardens. In Ontario we have more than 400 species of native bees. When you factor in the flower-visiting wasps, flies, lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), beetles, and ants among others, it becomes clear what an important resource flowering plants are to wildlife. These creatures are active anywhere from April through to November. It’s not a coincidence that there are native plants that also bloom throughout this same time period.

Seeds and nuts

As the growing season wanes plants put their energy into their own reproduction in the form of seeds and nuts. These little high-energy packages are the perfect food for animals in the winter when not much else is available.

Other food resources

You may choose to offer supplemental food in your garden in the form of bird feeders. Be careful to follow good food and hygiene practices for bird feeders to prevent the spread of illness and disease.

Food availability in your garden can be as simple as leaving a log to decompose, leaving fallen leaves and letting your dried and dead plant stalks stand over the winter. You might find yourself surprised and delighted when a downy woodpecker shows up to peck a tasty morsel out of a hollow stem!

2. Water

Adding a water feature to your garden can be as simple as a solar powered fountain or a bird bath. A bubbling rock, pond or rain garden are other ways to provide water for wildlife. You’ll find more than birds coming to access a nice source of clean, fresh water to drink and bathe.

3. Shelter

Shelter can come in many forms but serves the same purpose to all creatures, protection from predators and the elements. Shrubs provide a good spot for birds to retreat if a cat or a raptor shows up. We often find birds roosting overnight in the vines that grow on the one side of our house.  Small stones and logs can offer shelter to smaller creatures. Dense plantings can provide a spot to keep out of the elements and provide a shady retreat from intense midday temperatures and a covered spot to forage on the ground.

4. Places to raise young

Trees and shrubs are frequently hosts to nest-building birds, but even a dead tree can be home to cavity nesting species such as woodpeckers or even screech owls.

You may find your garden being used as a nursery to an array of animals, from small mammals to birds, and more insects than you probably ever knew existed. Butterfly and moth species spend most of their lives as caterpillars feeding on specific species or groups of plants, known as host plants. If you want the most bang for your buck, oak species are considered one of a handful of keystone tree species, known to host more than 500 caterpillar species.

Another group to consider are the creatures that live and reproduce in the litter and ground layers of the garden. If you mulch every bare inch of soil and rake up every fallen leaf, you’re eliminating the nesting habitat of hundreds of species that help build your ecosystem. Many of our native bees and wasps are solitary ground nesters that require access to bare soil. These species do not build colonies and will not guard their nests aggressively, so it’s safe to invite them into your garden and share your space. You will also be providing the right conditions for fireflies to complete their lifecycles. Who doesn’t love fireflies?

5. Green gardening

Green gardening means adopting sustainable practices in your yard. Reducing your lawn to reduce the amount of gas-powered equipment usage. Installing drip irrigation instead of using traditional sprinklers. Composting your kitchen scraps and yard waste. But in my opinion the most important green step you can take for your habitat is moving away from pesticides and herbicides.

Much of creating habitat comes with a shift in the way you look at your plants. Gone will be the instinct to track down the creature chewing on your leaves so you can determine the best way to eliminate it. Instead, you’ll find yourself trying to track it down to see which new creature you’ve invited into your space. By creating a functional habitat, your aphid infestation will soon be followed by a wave of aphid predators. Your spiders will become cached food for pupating wasps. Your slugs and snails become prey to firefly larvae, reptiles and amphibians. Your mosquitos may be hunted by tree swallows, dragonflies and bats. Your caterpillars will become food for fledgling birds. It’s okay to have mixed feelings about that last one!

Resources

People to Follow

• – Doug Tallamy
• – Lorraine Johnson
• – Heather Holm

Websites

• Windsor-Essex Native Plant Gardening https://www.facebook.com/groups/717320459068175/
• VASCAN (Database of Vascular Plants of Canada) https://data.canadensys.net/vascan/search
• NatureServe Explorer https://explorer.natureserve.org/
• In Our Nature https://www.inournature.ca/resources
• Blooming Boulevards http://www.bloomingboulevards.org/

Nurseries

• Native Trees and Plants, Amherstburg
• Heavenly Earth, Bothwell
• Maajigiin Gumig, Aamjiwnaang First Nation (Sarnia area)
• Golden Alexanders, Sarnia
• Ontario Native Plants, online at www.onplants.ca

My Top Recommendations

If you’re just getting started and feel a bit overwhelmed by unfamiliar plants, here are some of my top recommendations of easy to find and easy to grow native species.

Trees

1. Oaks (Quercus sp.)
2. Willows (Salix sp.)
3. Cherry (Prunus sp.)
4. Maples (Acer sp.)
5. Hickories (Carya sp.)

Shrubs

1. New Jersey tea (Ceanothus americanus)
2. Serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.)
3. Dogwoods (Cornus sp.)
4. Spicebush (Lindera benzoin)
5. Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus)

Flowering plants (full sun)

1. Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum)
2. Virginia mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum)
3. Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa)
4. Milkweeds (Asclepias sp. especially butterfly and swamp)
5. Joe-pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum)

Flowering plants (part sun to shade)

1. Wild geranium (Geranium maculatum)
2. Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)
3. Canada anemone (Anemonastrum canadense)
4. Wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
5. Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

By Howard Williams

Over the Christmas holiday period we were talking with old friends who live in New Zealand.  They reminded us that Radio New Zealand still uses identified bird calls just before the news in the mornings – every morning.  Over the 16 years that we were living in New Zealand, these recordings were for us a useful introduction to the variety of birds in that country and the fact that this has been used now for 30 years is an indication of how popular it still is.  One result of this broadcasting is that in New Zealand there is a greater proportion of the population than in Canada that have more than a passing understanding of the birds in that country.  One drawback is that not all birds have attractive and instantly recognisable calls.  Seabirds that make up so much of the bird population there, such as the Royal Albatross, do not have ‘pretty’ calls.  The link is to the list of NZ birds that Radio NZ play, along with the Māori names https://www.rnz.co.nz/collections/birds.  If you go to this site, many of the birds are listed alphabetically by their First Nation (Māori) name  Would it not be appropriate for CBC to introduce this type of introduction to the news as a reconciliation project.  Try it by listening to my favourite, the Bellbird or korimako at: https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=1872915.

I write some of this script on the actual darkest morning of the year, around the date of January 3.  By that time, the evenings have been getting lighter for over two weeks (mid-December), one of the quirks of Earth having an spinning axis that not parallel to its orbital axis around the Sun.   Perhaps we need an astronomical talk as part of our member presentation meetings to explain it better.

I heard my first American Robin singing rather than squeaking on Jan 4, on a particularly mild morning.  I wonder if we were thinking along the same lines, that Spring must be on its way.  The trouble with not having much snow in Windsor during the winter is that most birds (not House Sparrows and European Starlings) find more natural food and do not frequent feeders as much.  I am in a specist frame of mind – how can I discourage House Sparrows and European Starlings yet feed those songbirds that are less aggressive?

The software platform, Merlin, concluded that a passing train beside Jackson Park was a white throated sparrow as I was trying to ID what I thought was the call of an owl but turned out to be the repetitive male mating call of the White-breasted Nuthatch on 17^th and 18^th January.  I am pleased to report that the nuthatches now regularly sing these repetitive notes around Mercer Street.  At the end of the cold spell at the beginning of February, the nuthatch call was even louder.  Even better, a Red-breasted Nuthatch has taken up residence close to my house and regularly comes to the suet feeder.

The third week of January has been frustrating because, just like last year, starlings have renewed their propensity to mimic Killdeer, which they do very effectively.  For much of the year, Killdeer fly around Jackson Park and take advantage of all the bugs that live in the grassed baseball and cricket fields.  I would like an explanation of why birds pick up and emulate the calls of other birds, or telephone rings.  Birds in New Zealand did this too, in fact I have met a Tui that could ‘talk’, listen to the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij78s460oQM to enjoy Woof-woof as he talks to his keeper.  Sadly, he died at 16 years.   In Australia, the Lyrebird also has a repertoire of songs and calls, see link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSB71jNq-yQ, including a chainsaw that it uses to serenade David Attenborough.

Also, that third week in January was the start of spring bulbs, I have been noticing them peeking through the ‘soil’ in the laneway behind my property.  The cold weather of late January – early February may kill them off but I am betting the small thickness of snow may be enough to protect them from the extremes.  The South Asian cricketers were out in force mid-February now that the pitch is all-weather – good to see the park being used.  With what little snow we had, now melted, the accumulated litter from poorly-behaved denizens of the park is becoming so obvious I took matters in hand and did a massive clean-up in mid-month.

On Feb 1 Wiarton Willie claimed that spring would be early this year, and the Cardinal in my yard began singing his spring song , perhaps because the White-breasted Nuthatch has been singing his for two weeks now.  We were treated to a Cooper’s Hawk perched high on a neighbour’s tree, looking carefully at both my feeders and wondering why there were no birds to be seen.

On February 11, a House Finch was saluting the rising sun, singing from a tree top in Jackson Park and on Feb 16 I heard my first Red-winged Blackbird in Jackson Park, by the end of the month there was half a dozen competing with each other.

I participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count during the period 17-20 February.  In some ways is was not that special as Feederwatch is something I do each weekend anyway and the usual cast of characters turned up at the feeder, including this Red-breasted Nuthatch that is now a very common visitor.

On 20 February, I heard my first Killdeer, not a starling and on the same day a gaggle of Red-winged Blackbirds were calling along the railway line bordering Jackson Park.

On my trips to the cheese shop just east of Amherstburg it has become apparent that a pair of American Kestrel have taken up sentry duty opposite the landfill on Howard Avenue.  They are quite approachable, I imagine there is plenty of vermin associated with the sanitary landfill.

This past year seems to be full of events caused by Men Behaving Badly, one of the joys of watching birds and plants is the ability of appreciate the balance of Nature, rather than cruel dominance.

By Jeremy Hatt

The Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club (ECFNC) stepped into the role of Caretaker for the Lower Detroit River Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) in 2015 and started conducting waterfowl counts in the area in 2016. Originally named Important Bird Areas, Birds Canada updated the title to Key Biodiversity Areas to better reflect their ecosystems as a whole. There are Key Biodiversity Areas found across North America including six within Essex County. The Lower Detroit River KBA extends from the Detroit River mouth in Amherstburg to the north end of Fighting Island in LaSalle.

The Lower Detroit River KBA is labeled a Key Biodiversity Area for the high numbers of waterfowl that stage here during the winter months. In particular, Canvasbacks can be found in the tens of thousands and the region supports at least >7% of the global population of the species in the winter, but possibly more. Highest concentrations of Canvasback occur in Essex County where the mouths of the Detroit River meet Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair during the coldest months when both lakes are partially to mostly frozen. In mild parts of the winter when waters are open, large numbers of Canvasback can also be seen on the Detroit River north of Boblo Island and Crystal Island, as well as further east in Lake St. Clair.

In 2018, ECFNC reached out to the Detroit Audubon Society to see if they had volunteers who would be willing to count waterfowl from the Michigan side of the Detroit River, particularly in areas where they are not visible from the Ontario side. Detroit Audubon Society was on board and since then have partnered with ECFNC in a bi-national waterfowl count (with the exception of 2021 due to Covid-19 lockdowns). The bi-national counts have been successful enough that efforts are now underway to extend the KBA to include the Michigan side of the Lower Detroit River as well as the Detroit River mouth at Lake St. Clair.

Waterfowl counts in 2022 were held on January 15^th, January 29^th, and February 12^th. That year proved why the count being bi-national is so important since most of the Canvasback tallied were spotted from the Michigan side in areas not visible from Amherstburg or LaSalle (primarily counted from lookouts on Gross Isle). 15,170 Canvasback were counted on January 15^th, 21,607 on January 29^th, and 14,149 on February 12^th. These were the highest count totals since ECFNC started the counts in 2016.

Waterfowl counts in 2023 were held on January 14^th (Michigan side only), January 28^th, and February 11^th. No Canvasbacks were counted on the January 14^th count but 3,125 were counted on January 28^th and 2,502 on February 11^th. Numbers of other species like Common Merganser were also relatively low compared to other years but a count of 2,500 Redhead near Cooper’s Marina on February 11^th was a good number for the species.  

Although the counts for 2023 did not yield high numbers of Canvasbacks, there were still significant counts within Essex County during the winter period. The most impressive was about 40,000 Canvasback on January 8, 2023, carefully estimated by Michael and Steve McAllister from Brighton Beach Park, a small parkette in Tecumseh that looks out onto Lake St. Clair. This massive raft of Canvasback stayed until at least February 5^th when 15,000 birds were still estimated to be present. The only higher counts for our region are a staggering 50,000 birds estimated on January 3^rd, 2014, by Karl Overman and James Fox from Lake Erie Metropark, and 49,631 birds on December 28, 2016; meticulously counted by Jerome Jourdan from a video of a massive raft that took flight near Pointe Mouillee State Game Area in Michigan.

The large congregations of wintering Canvasbacks on the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair are a spectacle birders should try to experience in Essex County. There is nothing like seeing a massive raft of this beautiful duck take flight, or watching large flocks in loose “V” formations by the thousands as they fly between Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie.