Saila Goes Birding

Winter lasts a long time where I live: it starts to feel cold in November and signs of spring don’t appear until very late March or early April. I like winter, but sometimes it’s pleasant to be reminded that spring is on its way, even when there’s still snow on the ground and a chill in the air.

I saw an Instagram post from the Royal Botanical Gardens, a local conservation organization that maintains public gardens and manages large tracts of natural land: someone had spotted eastern bluebirds in the Arboretum, one of the RBG’s properties. I thought it would be fun to take binoculars to the Arboretum and see if we could see any bluebirds. Saila volunteered to come along; an avid birder, she was interested to see a species that doesn’t occur near her Nunavut home.

It was a cold day, but not as cold as it has been lately, and the setting sun was shining brightly when we arrived. Sure enough, there were birds all over the place! I’ve recently gotten into birding, so I was excited to note that some of them were indeed bluebirds, which I had never seen in person before. We spent some time looking through the binoculars at the birds. The eastern bluebird, Sialia sialis, is native to this part of Canada. Eastern bluebirds used to migrate south during the winter, but due to climate change, some of them now stay here year-round. That means they aren’t strictly a sign of spring, but their bright blue plumage is definitely a cheerful sight on a chilly day.

Birding is a bit like Pokémon. You roam the landscape looking for creatures to add to your (mental or literal) database. Some creatures are common, others less so, and some are so rare you’d be lucky to spot just one in your lifetime. The main difference between birding and Pokémon is that you hopefully aren’t going around fighting and capturing the birds you see. The birding equivalent of the Pokédex is an app called Merlin, created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. When you see a wild bird you don’t know, you can answer a few simple questions and Merlin will generate a list of suggestions. Merlin helps you identify birds, and by using Merlin, you help the Cornell Lab of Ornithology learn more about bird populations. It’s like being a Pokémon researcher rather than a Pokémon trainer. Saila is a video game fan as well as a budding naturalist, so she approves of this comparison.

I would need a much more powerful lens to capture pictures of the bluebirds, but they left evidence of their presence in a form that I was able to photograph.

Although the bluebirds were the highlight of our excursion, there was a more definitive sign of spring on display at the Arboretum. Magnolia trees produce their buds in the summer, then keep them warm over the winter in a furry outer coating. This allows magnolias to bloom early and attract early pollinators. The Arboretum has a large collection of magnolia trees, including lots of Magnolia × soulangeana, a hybrid species commonly known as saucer magnolia. The saucer magnolia has large flowers that come in shades of white and pink. Its parent species are native to China, but the saucer magnolia is a familiar ornamental plant in North America. It isn’t time for them to open yet, but the saucer magnolia’s buds are a reminder that winter won’t last forever.