Sweet sounds of early spring
After months of winter nothing sounds better than a bird breaking out into spring song. Our local juncos have been sparking up their singing engines on nice sunny days ever since February. Flocks of goldfinches sit back on sunny afternoons and cook up a little singsong. If you were lucky enough to have a song sparrow at your feeder over the winter and it is a male then surely it is singing lavishly every morning. Flickers are kicking up a racket as they stake out potential nesting territories by drumming on trees. Pairs meet and check each other out with animated motions and calls. In late March one song stands out a little above the rest. It is the song is the purple finch.
The purple finch is a common Newfoundland finch. It is a widespread nesting species across the island of Newfoundland. In some years a good many decide to stay through the winter, but the majority leave for the worst part of the winter but they do return early. There was a widespread arrival of purple finches at bird feeders across the province starting in early March this year. Within a couple weeks most well-stocked feeders were blessed with a few purple finches. The song of a purple finch is an explosion of bubbling warbled notes. It is unlike anything else this early in the spring. It is a very uplifting sound. During the practice season they do not hesitate to sing in our backyards before they head off into the woods to nest in May.
As is typical among the songbirds, the male is the pretty one and does the singing. The males are a raspberry-red colour over the head and breast.
The females are brown with a distinct dark cheek patch and brown stripes ,but this is where it gets tricky. Immature purple finches of both sexes look like the female for their first year of life. Right now, in early spring there are still some young male purple finches that have not yet been dunked in the raspberry sauce. So, if you see a brown purple finch singing its heart out it is actually just a young male rocking and not a female gone rogue. The young males will acquire their full colours by early summer.
Around the Easter weekend, or a few days after, we expect the first robins to return from the South. It will be impossible to know a newly arrived robin of spring from all those robins that happily survived the winter
in Newfoundland. The flocks of wintering robins are breaking up and some birds appear to be on territory already. Every morning I hear a robin singing from the same location across the road where I heard one all last summer.
Also arriving with that first wave of migratory robins from the south will be the much-anticipated fox sparrows. The sweet carolling of the fox sparrow arising from the woods and barrens across the land tells us we have a foot seriously into the doorway of spring.
Meanwhile there was a brief injection of deep southern roots winds during a storm on March 23. Birds likely migrating around the Carolinas at the time were carried offshore
and did not see land again until they were whisked to the southern edge of the province. First report was a great egret at Ramea by Richard Northcott. On the same day a great egret made local news at Lewin near Marystown as first reported by Austin Clarke. Meanwhile on Saint Pierre-miquelon an amazing five great egrets and one little blue heron appeared. That news thanks to Roger Etcheberry.
In the following two days things started to get out of hand as additional egrets appeared at all three of these locations. Cliff Doran photographed a great egret in the river at St. Shotts thanks to a tip from a buddy. As this report goes out the door there were rumours of two more egrets on the Southern Avalon Peninsula and Lillian Walsh sent us a photograph of three great egrets together on the edge of a pond near St. Lawrence. This story is still unfolding. If you see a white heron, I would like to hear about it. See the email address at the bottom of the column.
The egrets should be able to hunt for fish in the open ponds that in most years would be mostly frozen over at this time of year.
As winter gives up its rule and spring moves in there is a lot to look forward to. New species of birds will be returning to province every week. Spring is made for the birds.