A rare bird landed — then came the flock of humans
When Denise Smith spotted a songbird on her backyard feeder, she wasn’t prepared for how rare it would turn out to be, or for having her home staked out by enthusiastic birders.
The lazuli bunting is a little fluffball from the southwestern United States. It is the 11th time the species has been spotted in Ontario, and it’s the first time in winter anywhere in Canada. It should be in Mexico now.
Now the power of listservs — an electronic mailing list for subscribers — has kicked in, bringing birders from all over Ottawa with cameras and binoculars.
More are expected on the weekend, when they have time to drive up from Southwestern Ontario. Others are expected from southern Quebec and the northern United States for what birders call a “megatick,” or very rare sighting.
The situation has the Smith family on one side, saying they are tired of people pointing binoculars at their house, and birders on the other side, saying they are on public property and just innocently watching a bird.
The bunting, to make things worse, shows up for a couple of minutes and then disappears for hours. That means birders are staked out for hours at a time.
It began innocently. Smith shot a photo of the bunting more than a week ago and emailed it to someone asking what it was. Turned out the little fellow was rare, and word got around in the ultra-connected online birding world where any rare sighting is posted and draws a crowd quickly.
“My house is small and it is all windowed at the back, and they are focusing with binoculars right in my backyard towards my house, which is really uncomfortable,” Smith said Tuesday.
“I understand they are not looking inside the house, but it’s still uncomfortable.”
She said she agreed to a deal; the birders would come for a week, and then stop.
“I tolerated it all week because I knew there was a timeline. But it didn’t stop then. I don’t want to keep (birders) from seeing the little guy. I understand he is special. But I don’t want people looking into my backyard and my house. It’s frustrating,” she said. “I respect them. I’m just angry at the situation.”
She said she was also upset to see her full name and address on the birders’ listserv as well, and regrets telling anyone about the bird in the first place. She and her husband were sick on the weekend, lying on the couch and just wishing everyone would go away.
The birders are not trespassing. They are standing on National Capital Commission property.
Jeff Skevington, a birder who is also a research biologist at the Central Experimental Farm, said birders have tried moving around to stay out of sight. They shifted to a spot behind the neighbouring house, but the owner said they were scaring squirrels away from his squirrel feeder.
“We keep adapting. I suggested that we … put food on the ground on the NCC property so that it can be viewed from out of sight of the house. The trick is getting the bird to come to that,” he said.
“In the interim, everyone wants to go and look in the yard, so that is going to be hard. You can’t control people on public land. But hopefully that will work if it starts eating on the ground there.”
Buntings are ground feeders. This one has been dining on millet seeds and bark butter.
“But everything causes problems, even parking,” said Skevington. He has stopped to chat with local residents, showing photos of the bird and explaining what all the visitors are doing there. “I think it’s working out well.”
He said much of the time, landowners and birders can find ways to work together, as happened last fall when a rare calliope hummingbird (from Oregon) showed up in Goderich, Ont.
Local bird expert Bruce Di Labio said it’s fairly common for homeowners to welcome birders at first when there’s a special sighting. But the welcome can wear out.
“Over my life of birding, this happened so many times,” he said. “It always starts off that the (homeowner) is very happy to have people, but they don’t realize how many people may come by, and how many will park themselves and not leave … Especially now: social media puts it out way beyond when I started out” in the late 1960s, he said.
This bunting is a young male with dull plumage now, but should turn bright blue for breeding season when spring arrives. The species weighs 13 to 18 grams, about half an ounce.
Where it will go is anyone’s guess. Di Labio said the bunting must have found a warm place to spend the nights, possibly where heat escapes from a house.
Skevington said the feathers on its underside were standing up when he saw it on Sunday, which either means it had bathed itself or that it is dying.
“Buntings are tough little birds,” and he suspects it will survive if it gets food.
That means more human visitors will come, he said.
“It wasn’t seen Friday and so a lot of people aborted their plans to come from Southwestern Ontario … and then I re-found it Sunday afternoon, so most people will be coming this weekend.”