On Being Rare

Etobicoke, Canada, where I’ve lived for twenty years, is blessed with wild, rocky, rugged beaches sculpted by Lake Ontario’s often ferocious battering. While I find far too much trash when I beachcomb (come on, people, carry your Tim Hortons cups to a trash can!), I’ve also picked up several crinoids, brachiopods, cephalopods, and trilobite fossils just sort of lying there for a few hundred million years, inexplicably unfound by any other curious human.

One of my finds from Lake Ontario. A crinoid with some small brachiopods embedded nearby.

I was walking my dog, Birdy, on one of these beaches last weekend, and though I’d brought my camera kit with me, I was none too focused on birding. Dog-walking and birding are activities that don’t generally pair well. Birdy has a perfectly doglike habit of lunging at Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds when they land on nearby ground. Makes it tricky to grab a snapshot when my camera-steadiers (as I call my arms) are being wrenched about wildly by the leash.

Not my dog, Birdy, but a reasonable facsimile of her mood on this very same beach.

So, my eyes were more attuned to interesting rocks and sea glass than to anything in flight. But it was hard not to notice the sheer volume of other birders in the park. And these were not casual spotters with binoculars and thermoses of tea. These were the full camo-suited, camo-lensed crew, and they were clearly on the hunt for something special. At one point, there were maybe a dozen of them mobbed near where the trail dropped off onto my beach. So, keeping Birdy on a close hold, I ambled over as quietly as possible, caught the eye of one of the stragglers from the mob, nodded the fellow birder’s silent recognition and whispered “What are we all looking at this morning?”

“It’s a Hoary Redpoll,” she said, her smile a mile wide with exhilaration.

“And is that a good thing?”

“It’s EXTREMELY rare!”

I’ve watched Antiques Roadshow. I understand the thrill captured in the words “extremely rare.” I led Birdy to the very back of the pack of long lenses, and stood watching for a few minutes. A tiny finch hopped into the air from a branch and glided to the ground, where it foraged around, seemingly oblivious to the rapid shutter sounds all around it. Knowing I’d never get through the crowd for a crisp shot — not with Birdy in tow — I fired off a few distant shots just so I could get an ID later. Wandering by the same spot about half an hour later, there were even more crouching and snapping photogs, and the little Redpoll remained carefree in its extreme rareness.

So, is the Hoary Redpoll “EXTREMELY rare”?

Yes… if you never leave Etobicoke, Ontario.

Hoary Redpoll range map courtesy allaboutbirds.org

Back home, I made my official ID to eBird, and then checked out Cornell University’s info page on the Hoary Redpoll. First of all, “hoary” is because of the little bird’s frosted-looking breast, one of the features that distinguishes it from the Common Redpoll. It is undoubtedly a very pretty bird. The one I saw appears to have been a juvenile female.

Another slightly blurry shot of the Hoary Redpoll, showing its distinctive tiny beak, frosty front, and red splotch.

This pretty bird’s rarity, though, is very subjective. Cornell informs us that the global population of the Hoary Redpoll is estimated at 28 million, and that it is scored “low” in terms of conservation concern. There are, in fact, a LOT of Hoary Redpolls about. They just happen to be about in places where there are not a lot of people. You can see by the range map that Hoary Redpolls don’t really get south of the boreal forest, and spend most of their time in the arctic. The rareness of this particular specimen was not because it hardly exists, but rather that it rarely shows up anywhere near all those long lenses. Every few years, though, the little Hoary will make what is known as an irruptive flight outside its usual territory. Clearly, 2023 is an irruptive year for Hoaries.

I spend a lot of my time in Northern Ontario, just within the standard range for the Hoary Redpoll, which means I’ll be keeping my eyes open for these beauties quite often. At my little house on Lake Huron’s north channel, the vastness of the Hoary home country spreads north into the Arctic.

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“Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.”

— Victor Hugo

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The Birds!

I am fortunate to live in two places that attract birds by the treeful. South Etobicoke, on Lake Ontario’s north shore just west of downtown Toronto, and Thessalon, a narrow finger of land jutting down into Lake Huron’s northern channel an hour southeast of Sault Ste. Marie and little more than a stone’s throw from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. That both these spots happen to sit hard by a Great Lake undoubtedly contributes to the wealth of feathers surrounding me. The Great Lakes are inland, freshwater seas, and probably a daunting challenge for migrators. So stopping by the shore on one’s way either north or south is established custom. Many birds pass through Etobicoke and Thessalon, while some have made these places their home.

Thessalon waters are frozen thick between December and March, which means most aquatic birds head south from there. And that’s why when I think of a Thessalon bird, it is most often the overwintering common raven and the elusive, majestic bald eagle. But spring sees the return of many ducks and waders, and in better weather local feeders attract everything from blue jays and woodpeckers to ruby-throated hummingbirds.

A pair of mute swans feed in a calm inlet on a snowy January morning.

Etobicoke’s shores can get mighty icy themselves, but it’s rare for the lake there to go utterly solid for any length of time. That means the mute and trumpeter swans that can so shock and please casual walkers are year-round residents, along with a collection of American black ducks, mallards, scaup, goldeneye, long-tail, mergansers, and other diving ducks. And, of course, the Canada geese. Always, always, the Canada geese. All the shots in this posting are from Etobicoke.

I have wandered the trails and pathways of Colonel Samuel Smith Park for close to twenty years, first just to get out of the condo with the kids when they were toddlers and I was a desperate single father looking for distractions, and now on a weekly duty to walk my dog Birdy in her absolute favourite place in the world. Birdy knows when it’s the weekend, and she paws at me to get out of bed and head to the lake. She wants her wild smells of coyote, raccoon, and beaver, and she craves a drink out of that still wild, unbearably cold lake. She likes the bits of Tim Hortons bagel and cream cheese she can weasel from me as well after the walk.

A fuzzy-bottomed American robin overwinters on Lake Ontario’s north shore.

On these weekly walks, I have observed the many (many) birdwatchers that frequent Samuel Smith. Camo clothing, binoculars, long-lens cameras, and a barely-disguised disdain for all recreational dog-walkers. These folks seem to have secret knowledge of migratory patterns, know each other, and show up in numbers whenever a rare sighting hits the grapevine. I have always known I would one day join their cult. Now that I have, I don’t think they’re going to like me as a member. I have a good camera, and a long lens, but I still bring my dog.

Today, my wife Julia and I walked Birdy down at the park, me with a new long lens, and Birdy intrigued by the occasional murdery evidence of predator activity. We happened upon a couple young boys nudging a duck’s head with their shoes on one of the jutting points of the park. A couple week’s back, I’d spotted a Cooper’s hawk in the park, but this kill looked a bit more coyote-like. On the other hand, why would a coyote leave a perfectly delicious head?

A long-tail duck in flight at Colonel Samuel Smith park in Etobicoke.

The answer came on our walk back to the car. Spotting my lens, a couple approached and asked if we’d seen “the owl.” Apparently, a snowy owl had been spotted, and the birders were out in numbers to get their photos. Would a snowy owl take a duck, and leave its head? Oh yeah.

As I’ve said to friends, my white whale in this birding adventure I’ve taken up is the bald eagle of Thessalon’s Lighthouse Point. I am a cold-water swimmer, and frequent that northern peninsula from May to November. So many times as I swim, I track an eagle above me. I wonder if s/he’s tracking me.

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Important: This is NOT a bird.