Northern Harrier

 

The Northern Harrier is distinctive from a long distance away: a slim, long-tailed hawk gliding low over a marsh or grassland, holding its wings in a V-shape and sporting a white patch at the base of its tail.

Northern Harriers are the most owl-like of hawks. They rely on hearing as well as vision to capture prey. The disk-shaped face looks and functions much like an owl’s, with stiff facial feathers helping to direct sound to the ears. Cornell All About Birds

Rufous Hummingbird

The Rufous Hummingbird makes one of the longest migratory journeys of any bird in the world, as measured by body size.

At just over 3 inches long, its roughly 3,900-mile movement (one-way) from Alaska to Mexico is equivalent to 78,470,000 body lengths. Cornell All About Birds

Townsends Solitaire

 

The Townsend’s Solitaire is an elegant, wide-eyed songbird of western-mountain forests. Their drab gray plumage gets a lift from subtly beautiful buffy wing patches and a white eyering.

Though they're thrushes, they perch upright atop trees and shrubs to advertise their territories all year long, and can easily be mistaken for flycatchers. 

One study suggested that a Townsend's Solitaire's will eat between 42,000 and 84,000 juniper berries to survive the winter. Cornell All About Birds

Lapland Longspur

 

Lapland Longspurs breed in tundra habitats across the arctic. Their name refers to the Lapland region of Scandinavia, which is partly in Sweden and partly in Finland.

Lapland Longspurs are busy. During summer, they eat an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 seeds and insects per day, plus feed their nestlings an additional 3,000 insects per day. Cornell All About Birds

Peregrine Falcon

 

Peregrine Falcons catch medium-sized birds in the air with swift, spectacular dives. I was happy to get this image recently of a Peregrine just after it captured a Mourning Dove.

Adults are blue-gray above with barred underparts and a dark head with thick sideburns. Juveniles are heavily marked, with vertical streaks instead of horizontal bars on the breast. Despite considerable age-related and geographic variation, an overall steely, barred look remains. Cornell All About Birds

Red-necked Grebe

 

Red-necked Grebes are boldly plumaged waterbirds with pale cheeks and a daggerlike yellow bill that contrasts with a sharp black crown.

In breeding plumage, the neck is a rich brick red. The species breeds on northerly lakes and winters mainly along ocean coastlines, usually singly but sometimes in small groups. During spring migration, flocks may form on large lakes, and pairs begin their boisterous courtship displays well before reaching breeding lakes farther north. Cornell All About Birds

Pied-billed Grebe

 

The Pied-billed Grebe is common across much of North America. These small brown birds have unusually thick bills that turn silver and black in summer. These expert divers inhabit sluggish rivers, freshwater marshes, lakes, and estuaries. They use their chunky bills to kill and eat large crustaceans along with a great variety of fish, amphibians, insects, and other invertebrates.

Cool fact - The Latin genus name for “grebe” means “feet at the buttocks”—an apt descriptor for these birds, whose feet are indeed located near their rear ends. This body plan, a common feature of many diving birds, helps grebes propel themselves through water. Lobed (not webbed) toes further assist with swimming. Pied-billed Grebes pay for their aquatic prowess on land, where they walk awkwardly. Cornell All About Birds

Western Grebe

 

A couple of years ago I had the chance to photograph a Western Grebe in Lambton County. The Western Grebe has a black-and-white plumage with a yellow bill and red eye.

The Western Grebe is an elegant presence on lakes and ocean coasts of western North America. Along with its close relative, the Clark’s Grebe, it’s renowned for a ballet-like courtship display in which male and female “run” across the water in synchrony, their long necks curved in an S-shape. These waterbirds rarely come ashore, instead taking long dives to catch fish and other aquatic animals. Cornell All About Birds

Horned Grebe

 

Familiar to most North American birders in its black-and-white winter plumage, the Horned Grebe is more striking in its red-and-black breeding feathers which we usually see when they pass through our area in the spring.

Its "horns" are yellowish patches of feathers behind its eyes that it can raise and lower at will.

The Horned Grebe regularly eats some of its own feathers, enough that its stomach usually contains a matted plug of them. This plug may function as a filter or may hold fish bones in the stomach until they can be digested. The parents even feed feathers to their chicks to get the plug started early. Cornell All About Birds

Ruddy Duck

 

Ruddy Ducks are compact, thick-necked waterfowl with seemingly oversized tails that they habitually hold upright. Breeding males have a sky-blue bill, shining white cheek patch, and gleaming chestnut body.

They court females by beating their bill against their neck hard enough to create a swirl of bubbles in the water.

This widespread duck breeds mostly in the prairie pothole region of North America and winters in wetlands throughout the U.S. and Mexico.