Grassland Birds

There are always new birds to see.  We found a couple of these recently

The Chestnut-collared Longspur is known to nest in the Grasslands National Park so I hoped to go there one year in the early summer just to find the bird.

Instead we saw it recently while visiting the area around Estevan, Saskatchewan, very close to the US/Canada border and not far from the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border. 

 Once again, Ray was the first to realize we'd found a new bird.  We watched several flit in the grass.  They may have been closer to us than the Chimney Swifts in the last post, but they were harder to see as they kept disappearing in what appeared to be short grass.  It is so familiar to see a bird land in the grass and totally disappear.  Familiar but not a familiarity I enjoy.  I may still need to plan that trip to the Grassland Park.  My photos leave a lot to be desired.

Our other new bird was the Dickcissel, a strangely named bird that I never thought I'd see.  I'd put it in the category of rare birds that only full-time birders ever see.

But we saw and heard several near Roche Percee, Saskatchewan.  They weren't in any special birding spot, just in a grassy field beside an unnamed road and, obligingly, on the power line.

Chimney Swifts

 These birds were not on our life list, even though back ten or so years ago a guide pointed above our heads and said something like "Those dots up there are Chimney Swifts."  I have occasionally added a bird to our life list that I felt I barely saw but I drew the line at dots in the sky.  A different guide some years later said about swifts in general "If you don't consider that seeing a swift, you are never going to get one." (or something to that effect.)

Well, patience paid off.

We were in Manitoba in the beautiful town of Souris walking across their claim to fame, a swinging bridge.  As we stepped onto the other side, Ray looks up in the air and says "There are Chimney Swifts."  I look up and see swooping birds everywhere. 

 I am holding my phone in my hand, opened to the Merlin app.  I press the right button and the phone flashes its opinion.  House Sparrow.  Song Sparrow.  Red-winged Blackbird.  Chimney Swift!

How did you know? I asked Ray as I rapidly and mostly fruitlessly tried to photograph these flitting creatures.  "Well, they weren't swallows," he replied, "and they weren't Purple Martins, so that left Chimney Swifts."

What a great birding companion!  Would I have made the same conclusion?  I don't know.  At the moment he saw them, I was probably trying to photograph a blackbird!

These swifts are sometimes described as cigars with wings. The following photograph shows where that came from.