With the last days of summer upon us, the nesting birds on campus have fledged their young and the campus is full of juvenile birds learning to fly, forage and hunt.
A Black-capped Chickadee perches proudly along the banks of Medway Creek.
Red tailed hawk, American Crow, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Gray Catbird, American Goldfinch, Black-capped Chickadee, Chipping Sparrow, American Robin, Baltimore Oriole, Northern Cardinal and Yellow Warbler, to name a few, are all nesting birds of the Western campus.
With such a profusion of Carolinian forest species on the edge of the Medway Valley, birds have a lot of habitat on our campus.
The noisiest of these birds are our resident Red-tailed Hawk juveniles which, again this summer, fledged three babies. This is a typical number of young for Red-tails.
Red-tail Hawks are the most common raptor in this area and these large buteos are easily identified by the broad wings and wide fanned tail and dark belly band. The juveniles, who want their parent’s attention and feeding, make loud squawking noises, quite different than the lyrical kiree, kiree call the adults make.
This is the fifth summer I have see young Red-tails on campus. Once the juveniles fledge and their ability to fly improves, they can be seen and heard (!) all over campus. In August I often saw them out in behind the Services Building, still squawking for their parents to feed them. The parents would soar in the air above their young trying to entice them to fly and learn to hunt on their own.
A new bird for my Western list is the Cliff Swallow, a colourful and graceful swallow that lacks the long forked tail of its cousin the Barn Swallow. Cliff Swallows have been known to nest under bridges in urban areas but I had not discovered them at Western until this summer. Standing on the University Bridge one hot July lunch, a friend and I watched the swallow parents swoop endlessly on the river to catch bugs and fly to their nests under the bridge to feed their young. It was like watching a ballet.
Many birds are heard more often than they are seen in the summer. The Grey Catbird is an expert at mimicking other bird sounds. Its crazy song is a collection of sounds that often ends with a cat-like meow. The Catbird can be heard almost daily in the tiny woods between Saugeen and the Lambton parking lot. He is difficult to see because this robin-sized bird is a lovely shade of dark grey that blends right into the foliage.
While the many wild areas on our campus are home to nesting birds in the summer, the gardens are often places for them to forage. The white coneflowers outside the Clinical Skills building recently had two American Goldfinches feeding quietly a few feet from the sidewalk. These bright yellow finches with the black caps and wings sang quietly to each other as they moved from flower to flower.
Next time you’re walking the campus watch for gatherings of blackbirds, a sign that summer is almost over and the migratory feeding has begun.
The writer is an employee in the Western Information Systems Group and will be writing this year about some of the natural attractions on and around campus.
