The Long-tailed Ducks of Lake Ontario

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

The view of downtown Toronto, from Tommy Thompson Park. Sometimes known as the "Leslie Street Spit", this place extends about three miles out into Lake Ontario. The park is a case of making lemonade from lemons. The origin of the "spit" is dredged material from the harbor, which began in 1959. Over the years, millions of cubic meters of dredge spoil were pumped into diked embayments, creating the "islands" that form the park. Over time, Tommy Thompson Park developed into a legendary birding site.

Shauna and I spent most of a day here, and the action came hot and heavy. Scads of waterfowl of many species use the surrounding lake and often offer great photo ops. It was a decent workout, too, as we ended up hiking 7.1 miles, armed with our heavy gear. It was worth every step, though.

A young Gray Birch (Betula populifolia) forest has sprung up in places. It was one of relatively few native plants that I noticed. I bet when Toronto experiences redpoll irruptions, this is a good place to be. The birch produces copious catkins, a favorite food source of redpolls.

Probably the coolest non-waterfowl bird that we saw was a Snowy Owl. It, unfortunately, was the victim of overzealous birders chasing it around and flushing it.

Three drake Long-tailed Ducks (Clangula hyemalis) land among a small flock. Some Common Goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula) are in the foreground.

We saw hundreds of Long-tailed Ducks from Tommy Thompson Park vantage points, maybe thousands. Evidence from aerial surveys suggest that as many as 700,000 Long-tailed Ducks winter on Lake Ontario. That's approaching 10% of the overall North American population, although the total population is just an estimate. Long-tailed Ducks are tough to get a handle on, due to their remote northerly nesting locations, and often difficult to access/survey wintering grounds.

A hen Long-tailed Duck swoops low over two Red-breasted Mergansers and three Common Goldeneye. Both of those species are also very common here.

Three drake Long-tailed Ducks lead a hen. This species is often very active, either feeding via long dives, scoot/flying short distances across the water to new feeding sites or just making rapid flights in small squadrons. One can often hear the baying of flocks from quite some distance.

Three hens drop into the water in near-perfect synchronicity. Tommy Thompson can be a goldmine for in-flight shots of waterfowl. I was using my Canon R5 and 800mm f/5.6 lens. The day before, I used the same rig but with the 1.4x teleconverter attached, for a focal reach of 1120mm. However, the addition of the teleconverter leads to more missed shots and reduces sharpness somewhat. In general, I've found that just using the bare 800mm delivers a noticeably higher rate of keepers, especially with fast-moving species such as waterfowl.

A hen Long-tailed Duck preens her feathers. I find that I often go for hen waterfowl first, in regard to picture-making. After all, everyone generally prioritizes males, so there is less imagery of the hens. Yet female ducks are often incredibly ornate in feather detailing and coloration. Long-tailed hens also have a lovely little wren-like tail.

A hen shows off one of her giant webbed feet. That foot is the size of her head. Long-tailed Ducks are known to dive to at least 215 feet (unfortunately, because that's the deepest that one has been caught in a deepwater fishing seine). But the undoubtedly can go deeper, perhaps much deeper. It takes big, webbed feet to dive to such depths.

Another view of a hen Long-tailed Duck, with her all-dark bill.

A young male, sporting its mostly pink bill. It was a treat to be able to watch so many Long-tailed Ducks and enjoy their calls and behavior. They're highly social and mixed flocks of adults of both sexes, along with juveniles, were the norm.

We hit about a dozen lakefront sites, from Grimsby, Ontario to Toronto. Just about all of them produced lots of birds, although good photographic opportunities varied from site to site. If I were to do another winter western Lake Ontario trip - which I will - and only had two full days - as we did on this trip - I'd likely just hit two spots. They'd be Fifty Point Conservation Area near Hamilton, where we had lots of action, and Tommy Thompson Park. But we always chat up locals and met many on this trip. They often have great ideas for places that weren't on our radar screen, so one should be ready to adapt plans based on new intel. But visits to Fifty Point and Tommy Thompson should yield oodles of cool photo ops.

The Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec

A gorgeous sunset paints the skies over the Chic-Choc Mountains of Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula.

I just returned from a long-awaited trip to the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec, one of the most scenic areas in the northeastern maritime region of southern Canada and the northeastern U.S. There were stops in the Adirondacks of upstate New York along the way, and all told it was two weeks on the road.

Following is a random smattering of photos from the trip. I have MUCH more, and hope to share some other images and information about certain locations later. These images were lifted from posts I made to Facebook during the trip - if you're on Facebook (and who isn't?), you can follow me HERE.

The cold gravelly shores of the Gaspe Peninsula, which is surrounded on three sides by the icy waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, hosts some interesting plants. This one is common: silverweed, Argentina anserina.

I was excited to get the opportunity to photograph the common ringlet, Coenonympha tullia, a small butterfly of open habitats. Its caterpillars feed on various grasses and rushes.

A pair of black-legged kittiwakes greet each other on a ledge high on a sea cliff in Forillon National Park. The male, presumably, had just returned with a bill full of kelp for use in the nest. Kittiwakes are abundant in this region.

Porcupines are quite common, and this one was rooting about along a roadside at dusk. "Porkies" are fairly tame and sometimes allow close approach. I would advise not approaching too closely, though.

A quintet of harbor seals, hauled out on rocks along the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This species, and to a lesser extent the gray seal, are common and easily found along the shoreline of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Here's a juvenile harbor seal, a rather cute little beast. His rock and nearby ones sported about two dozen seals when I made this image.

This is a prostrate beach-dwelling bluebell, believe it or not. It's oysterplant, Mertensia maritima, which is in the same genus as our familiar Virginia bluebells of rich woodlands.

The flowers of oysterplant reveal its alliance with other bluebells. This one is a cold-hardy species of northern climes, barely reaching as far south as the northernmost states of the northeast maritime region.

Another classic plant of northern latitudes, the fireweed, Chamaenerion angustifolium. It commenced blooming during my visit, but was not yet in full swing.

A Quebec meadow full of fireweed, and it's not even peak yet. Large stands of this plant often figure prominently in northern landscape photographs.

A moose! I saw three of the beasts, all at dusk as is to be expected. Poor light prevented excellent images, but it's always exciting to see these massive beasts, photos or not.

Sea cliffs in the Gaspe region support large colonies of nesting seabirds, including this razorbill. I visited the enormous northern gannet colony on Bonaventure Island, and hope to share a piece specifically about that. But the razorbills are my favorite of the alcids, and were plentiful.

I'll be back with more later.

American marten!!

The west entrance to one of North America's great protected wildlands, Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. I made a whirlwind trip here over the last week - a journey I could be writing about for some time. There were other stops, including Niagara Falls which was a mind-numbingly beautiful icy wonderland, and Lake Ontario near Toronto. There, scores of long-tailed ducks and other fowl congregated.

But it isn't everyday one gets a "life mammal", at least someone like me, who has made an effort to see mammals for a long time. So, if I post nothing else about this northern foray, I will at least share this new mammal, an extraordinary beast by any accounting.

Ontario Route 60 slices through the park, and the scenery along its entirety is stunning. There was a fair bit of snow but not that much, so getting around wasn't too tough. One mammal to watch for while driving is moose. The massive beasts are frequently seen along 60, and sometimes come to the roadside to lick salt in winter. Didn't see any on this expedition, though.

Sunday evening turned out to be crisp and clear - a frosty minus 10 F. The utter lack of light pollution in Algonquin means that night skies are bold and vibrant, and celestial bodies can be seen in a way that they no longer can in much of North America.

Photographing such a sky was irresistible so out we went into the cold. This image is a composite of 16 exposures, each made at ISO 800, 30 seconds, and f/2.8. I used my Canon 5D IV, and Canon's sensational 24mm f/1.4 lens. This lens is amazing for astrophotography, despite what more than a few "experts" on various photography Internet sites claim. The trick is to stop it down to at least f/2, and f/2.8 works better. Then, it is scarily sharp.

A true bird of the far north, the gray jay. These tame corvids were fixtures around campgrounds and anywhere that people frequented, but there are plenty more of them off the beaten path. Gray jays deal well with cold - it had been something like minus 30 F a few days prior - and routinely encounter temperatures plunging below 0 F. Biologists have been conducting research with the Algonquin birds for about three decades, and it's hard to find a jay that isn't ornamented with bands on both legs. This one had 'em, but has its feet and legs tucked in to keep them toasty.

Another denizen of the north woods and a sought after species by birders, the spruce grouse. This bird was one of three males foraging in a white spruce, and they were eventually joined by a hen. Spruce grouse specialize in feeding on the needles of spruce and pine. They are incredibly tame, which led to one of their nicknames, "fool hen". Such tameness makes them easy photo subjects - if you luck into one. When not out feeding, they often retreat into dense boughs near trunks, and you'd never know they were there.

Here it is - the American marten, the protagonist of this post! I had heard that martens were fairly plentiful in Algonquin, and not only that, they would frequent campgrounds, picnic areas and such. So, there was always a chance of at least getting glimpses of these stout weasels.

We had stopped at a picnic area with a complement of various trash and recycling bins to look for birds, when a rapid scurrying movement caught our eye. We had caught a marten unawares, and it rapidly dashed into the paper recycling bin!

I knew he/she would be back out sooner than later - they are curious beasts - so we retreated to distant cover and waited. Sure enough, it wasn't long before the triangular-faced weasel popped from his box to scan the surroundings.

After a while, the marten jumped down to the snow's surface and began snuffling about. This was awesome in the extreme, and I had secreted myself behind the forked trunk of a maple, with my camera lens poked through the fork. The mammal apparently didn't know I was there, permitting an excellent series of shots.

Martens are about the same size as a mink, but look more robust to me. An adult like this measures about two feet in length, with males being somewhat larger. The bushy tail adds another half-foot. A big one weighs around three pounds. Their tri-toned coloration is striking: whitish face and bib, black legs and tail, and yellowish-brown body.

PHOTO TIP: When shooting wary subjects - as was this marten, movements or sounds sent him scurrying back into his lair - use "silent" drive mode on your camera. It isn't truly silent, but probably cuts the sound of the shutter by half. Shooting off high-speed continuous bursts without muffling the sound will often send shy subjects fleeing, if you're close. The downside to silent drive mode is you lose several frames a second in burst mode, but that's often not a big deal, at least with slower-moving subjects.

As fantastically good fortune would have it, we found another marten, and this one was bolder. Martens are voracious carnivores, feeding on mice, voles, and even prey up to the size of snowshoe hares. But they'll eat seeds and other vegetation, and that's what this one was foraging for.

A snowy muzzle gives away the marten's feeding behavior - the hole he dug in the snow to reach the ground can be seen. While the first marten would run into hiding at the first sign of movement or noise, this one was far bolder. Here, he takes pause to scrutinize your narrator, but quickly returned to his hunting.

While martens may look cute and cuddly, a glance at their impressive set of teeth should shatter that illusion. You certainly would not want to be a small rodent and find yourself in a marten's path.

American marten (formerly pine marten) once occurred in Ohio. There are at least two specimen records from Ashtabula County, and one from Ross County. It's likely that they disappeared by 1850. By then, Ohio would have been at the southern periphery of their distribution, and it may be that most remaining animals were trapped out for their fur. Now, the southern border of the marten's range is considerably farther north and it'll be interesting to see if the range keeps contracting northward in future years.