If you have followed the Manitoba IBA program for a while, you may have noticed that we have held annual shorebird workshops in the spring for the past couple of years. With COVID-19 we have had to adapt, holding a shorebird identification webinar instead. This spring we were able to hold the practical portion of the eastern Manitoba shorebird workshop in person, but the situation worsened just before we were able to hold the western Manitoba practical portion of the workshop!

Luckily shorebirds migrate through the province twice a year – so we were able to catch them during fall migration to hold our in-person western Manitoba workshop. We usually use spring migration for these workshops as the shorebirds are in their fresh breeding plumages – about as easy as they get to identify. However, we had a great group of workshop attendees out to explore the identification of shorebirds in their fall plumages. Thank you to Gillian Richards, Glennis Lewis, Linda Boys, Carol Holmes, Brian Duff, Ken and Colleen Barclay and Tom and Renee Will for joining us!

The second challenge we faced this year was the low water levels due to the drought in Manitoba. My shorebird habitat motto this year has been “look for shorebirds where you would normally find ducks”. The usual shorebird habitat has dried up, but areas that usually hold deeper water are often at a good water depth for shorebirds now.

With that in mind, our group headed out to two different sites in southwestern Manitoba. First we went to Griswold Marsh. At our first stop on the eastern edge of the marsh there was a small group of shorebirds but unfortunately, they all took off as we pulled up – not helpful when trying to identify them! Luckily, we were able to head just a bit further west to get a different view of the same waterbody, as well as another couple of smaller ponds on the other side of the road.

Here we were able to see a good variety of shorebird species. The highlight of this stop for most of us were the Black-bellied Plovers. They are as eye-catching in their non-breeding plumage, but their stocky bodies and bills still make them stand out. We also had a very obliging individual who did a short flight to show the black “wing pit” that sets the Black-bellied Plover apart from the similar-looking American Golden Plover in any plumage.

Other shorebirds spotted were American Avocet, Killdeer, Pectoral Sandpipers, Greater Yellowlegs, Lesser Yellowlegs and Short-billed/ Long-billed Dowitchers. Dowitchers are always a tricky ID but they get especially tricky in the fall! Unfortunately, they were too far away, and not calling, so we cannot say for sure which species we were looking at.

In recent years Griswold Marsh is usually more of a duck habitat, and waterfowl were still there aplenty. We saw Green-wing Teals, Blue-wing Teals, Northern Shovelers, Northern Pintails, Mallards and Gadwall. We were also treated to four Tundra Swans coming in for a landing right in front of us!

Next we moved further west in the marsh, closer to the town of Griswold. We saw a few new species here including a Semipalmated Plover, Semipalmated Sandpiper, and some very well camouflaged Wilson’s Snipe. We were treated once again to views of American Avocet, Killdeer, Greater Yellowlegs, Lesser Yellowlegs and Short-billed/ Long-billed Dowitchers.

Our next stop was the boat launch and then Lakeshore Drive (the road out to the weir) at Oak Lake Beach. Once again, in recent years this would tend toward duck habitat, but with the lower water levels this year the water along Lakeshore Drive has been shallow enough for a variety of shorebirds. We had a few repeat species here (Killdeer, Dowitchers, and Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs) but also still more new shorebird species!

We saw 14 American Golden Plovers, whose more delicate features were a contrast to the stockier Black-bellied Plovers seen at Griswold Marsh. Another new for the day shorebird species was a single Marbled Godwit that was hanging out amongst the Dowitchers. The highlight at Oak Lake Beach was a White-faced Ibis – a lifer for one of our workshop participants and always a joy to see!

A few other highlights at Oak Lake were a good view of a young Cooper’s Hawk and some distant flocks of Sandhill Cranes, who provided an atmospheric fall soundtrack to our birding.

If you would like to brush up on your shorebird ID, Manitoba IBA has put the Shorebird Identification webinar that Christian Artuso gave for us this spring up on our Youtube channel. You can find it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7X0Lxnb33g&t=857s

Our Griswold Marsh bird list:

Species	Count
Canada Goose	153
Tundra Swan	14
Blue-winged Teal	30
American Wigeon	15
Northern Shoveler	60
Gadwall	450
Mallard	165
Northern Pintail	35
Green-winged Teal	75
Dabbling Duck sp.	350
American Avocet	5
Black-bellied Plover	5
Semipalmated Plover	1
Killdeer	10
Semipalmated Sandpiper	1
Pectoral Sandpiper	14
Short-billed/Long-billed Dowitcher	4
Wilson’s Snipe	3
Greater Yellowlegs	31
Lesser Yellowlegs	39
Ring-billed Gull	6
Turkey Vulture	1
Northern Harrier	2
Red-tailed Hawk	5
Merlin	1
Common Raven	4
Marsh Wren	3
Savannah Sparrow	10
Total # of species	27

Our Oak Lake Beach bird list:

Species	Count
Tundra Swan	3
Blue-winged Teal	65
Northern Shoveler	2
dabbling duck sp.	30
Ring-necked Duck	2
Mourning Dove	1
Sandhill Crane	350
American Golden-Plover	14
Killdeer	4
Marbled Godwit	1
Short-billed/Long-billed Dowitcher	50
Greater Yellowlegs	7
Lesser Yellowlegs	18
Bonaparte’s Gull	3
Double-crested Cormorant	1
American White Pelican	11
White-faced Ibis	1
Northern Harrier	1
Sharp-shinned Hawk	1
Barn Swallow	3
Marsh Wren	2
Total # of species	28

• Amanda

On August 28^th the Manitoba IBA program held our first IBA blitz at Whitewater Lake since the start of the pandemic. We thought it would be a challenging day to find shorebirds due to the dry weather but we ended up finding a few key pockets of a good number and variety of birds.

As we all know it has been a very dry year across Manitoba, and our western IBAs are no exception to this. I suspect it played a role in our low attendance numbers at our Whitewater blitz – it is a long drive when you expect shorebird numbers to be very low. However, we had our small, but mighty force our to bird on August 28th! Myself and the IBA program’s two summer students (Ariel Desrochers and Vicky Tang) made one blitz team. This was a fun last outing as August 28^th was their very last day on the job! The second team was made up of Kathryn Hyndman, Doug Ford and Carla Keast.

The IBA staff took the eastern half of the IBA while Kathryn, Doug and Carla took the western half. Our plan was to meet up just after noon at Sexton’s Point. I had predicted a few sites in each part of the IBA which were most likely to still be holding shallow water based on recent eBird reports that our volunteers had been sending in. I had hoped this would both maximize our chances of seeing shorebirds and concentrate our searching to the most likely spots, rather than try to cover the massive amount of ground in this IBA.

Starting off on the western portion of Whitewater Lake Kathryn, Doug and Carla were able to cover a great amount of the IBA along the lakeshore. Unfortunately, they didn’t see a great variety of shorebirds, however they certainly saw a diversity of other birds! It was also Carla’s first trip to Whitewater Lake, so we are glad she had a great time!

On the southwest side of the lake, they came across a mixed group of migrating swallows including Tree Swallows, Barn Swallows and Cliff Swallows. They also saw a good-sized flock of Brewer’s Blackbirds, counting 100 individuals. No shorebirds were seen on this part of the route, the closest they got to water-associated birds were six Pelicans.

On to the west size of the marsh, a highlight was a Grey Partridge who was certainly not hiding as it perched atop a pile of vegetation. The pattern of bird sightings continued from the south side as another flock of swallows was seen, this time comprised of 65 Barn Swallows, and representing the blackbirds was a flock of 500 Red-winged Blackbirds. They did manage to find two shorebird species along this route. 10 Greater Yellowlegs and one Lesser Yellowlegs were spotted.

As they rounded the northwest corner of the marsh a few more shorebirds crept into sight. Three American Avocets, one Killdeer, eight Greater Yellowlegs and six Lesser Yellowlegs were spotted. Some other highlights included 120 Franklin’s Gulls, three Red-tailed Hawks and a Bald Eagle.

I had expected the Manitoba IBA staff group to be able to get through more of our side of the IBA than we did! Our first stop along the lakeshore netted us a few shorebirds, but our second stop along the remains of the old viewing mound took us almost all morning! With some careful driving and walking (watch out for those holes!) we saw more shorebirds than we had first expected. This was my first time out to the mound, but I could certainly tell that there were areas of sand/ mudflat exposed that are not normally exposed, and shallow areas of water that are not normally shallow. We had a great time birding at the old mound, with both Ariel and Vicky remarking it was their favourite site they had visited with the IBA program all summer.

Most of the shorebirds were seen in clusters on the east side of the road and mound, difficult to see with the sun climbing in the east. However, we were still able to ID a good number and variety of shorebirds and other species. This includes 974 American Avocets, two Semipalmated Plovers, seven Killdeer, four Stilt Sandpipers, 81 Least Sandpipers, 28 Baird’s Sandpipers, two Semipalmated Sandpipers, nine Wilson’s Phalarope, two Spotted Sandpipers, two Greater Yellowlegs, 13 Lesser Yellowlegs, one Willet, 23 Short-billed/ Long-billed Dowitchers and 8 other peeps.

A non-shorebird highlight while driving along the road between our first stop and the viewing mound was two young Peregrine Falcons! It took us a bit to double check what we were looking at between our various books and bird apps to be sure of what we were seeing before reporting it. None of us had seen one outside of a city landscape before.

The mound took up a large portion of our morning, but while we were making our way up to Sexton’s Point, we took a quick drive up the ISS sites on the east side of the lake. Gillian Richards, one of the Whitewater Lake IBA Caretaker and International Shorebird Surveyor extraordinaire, had mentioned in her last visit to Whitewater Lake that these ISS routes were totally dry. Due to a few good rains since then, they actually had shallow standing water in a few places, but only a couple of Yellowlegs were seen here and there. There are a few portions of the ISS routes that require walking, which we didn’t do, so perhaps there was still more to see there.

At Sexton’s Point there was also more water than we expected! Kathryn had been out to Whitewater Lake around a week earlier and remarked how much the water had come up with the recent rains. An area where she had previously walked out to see shorebirds was now flooded. That is not to say all was back to “normal” as the water was still very noticeably low. However, it did mean there was a decent collection of shorebirds to count, and for Kathryn, Doug and Carla to see, as their route was sparse with shorebirds.

The most numerous birds at the point were Franklin’s Gulls with a total of 511 individuals. We also added three Semipalmated Plovers, 35 Least Sandpipers, three Pectoral Sandpipers, one Wilson’s Phalarope, 11 Greater Yellowlegs and 56 Lesser Yellowlegs to our shorebird total for the day.

After doing some birding together, and sharing some muffins and fruit, we headed our separate ways. Overall, we saw 51 species and 3,531 individuals. I am not sure about everyone else who joined that day, but I was certainly thinking about what a difference a couple of days of change in weather can make in a bird’s habitat! It is marvelous how adaptable they can be!

Whitewater Lake August IBA blitz bird list:

Species	# of Individuals
American Avocet	977
American Crow	2
American Kestrel	1
American White Pelican	9
Baird’s Sandpiper	28
Bald Eagle	3
Baltimore Oriole	1
Barn Swallow	105
blackbird sp.	2
Blue-winged Teal	2
Bonaparte’s Gull	7
Brewer’s Blackbird	146
Canada Goose	301
Cliff Swallow	5
Common Raven	2
Eastern Kingbird	22
European Starling	10
Franklin’s Gull	639
Gray Partridge	1
Greater Yellowlegs	31
gull sp.	6
hawk sp.	1
Hooded Merganser	1
Horned Lark	18
Killdeer	8
Least Flycatcher	2
Least Sandpiper	116
Lesser Yellowlegs	76
Mallard	65
Mourning Dove	73
Northern Harrier	5
Northern Rough-winged Swallow	12
Northern Shoveler	10
Pectoral Sandpiper	3
peep sp.	8
Peregrine Falcon	2
Red-tailed Hawk	14
Red-winged Blackbird	554
Ring-billed Gull	149
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)	12
Rusty Blackbird	1
Savannah Sparrow	1
Semipalmated Plover	5
Semipalmated Sandpiper	2
Short-billed/Long-billed Dowitcher	23
Song Sparrow	2
sparrow sp.	6
Spotted Sandpiper	2
Stilt Sandpiper	4
Vesper Sparrow	5
Warbling Vireo	1
Western Kingbird	15
Western Meadowlark	23
Willet	1
Wilson’s Phalarope	10
Yellow Warbler	1
Total:	3531

With this latest instalment about grassland birds from Nate we will hear about the Short-Eared Owl!

It’s about time we talk about one of the most charismatic and iconic groups of birds found all across the world, owls! This particular species of interest today can be found throughout all Canadian provinces and territories during the breeding season – the Short- Eared Owl. The Short-Eared Owl makes use of a wide variety of open habitats, including grasslands, old pastures, and occasionally breeds in agricultural fields. Preferred nesting sites include dense grasslands. Perhaps this post should have been kept for Halloween as Short-Eared Owls are sometimes called “ghosts of the grassland” or “ghosts of the open country” due to their flight pattern and pale colour.

Identification

These owls can be identified by their almost perfectly rounded head with light brown borders around its cream white face. Their bright yellow eyes are contrasted by black eye patches that fan to the side making this bird look like it put on some mascara and fake eyelashes that slipped to the side. Its breast is cream-coloured with light brown streaking which becomes a dark brown ‘collar’ closer to the head region. This dark brown colouration with caramel streaking continues to the rear portion of the animal and covers the wings. But where does its name come from? Well, if you look rather closely you may see two tiny protrusions from the top of its head similar, albeit much smaller, to those found on the Great Horned and Long- Eared Owls.

What about those ears?

I’ve got some shocking news for you all but the real ears on owls aren’t even visible! What you’re actually seeing is extensions of feathers we like to call ‘ear tufts’ and are scientifically named ‘flumicorns’, potentially the greatest name in anatomy history. There isn’t a definitive answer as to why they have these tufts but some theories include improved camouflage, looking extra spooky to scare off potential predators, or to impress a mate during courtship. The ears of an owl are essentially holes covered in feathers in a rather strategic fashion. Owls hunt primarily with their hearing so their head is modified to capture sound at an impressive rate. Owls have a facial disk profile which means their facial features seem caved in and surrounded by a ‘bowl’ of raised feathers, giving their face an appearance similar to that of a satellite dish. These feathers can then be adjusted to better direct sound to the ear holes depending in the direction of the sound. Their ears also have another adaptation that makes them superb listeners. They are offset, meaning one is higher up on the head than the other, which allows the owl to determine if sounds are coming from above or below. With these combinations of features, owls can precisely triangulate the location of prey, even under a layer of grass or snow.

Life History

Adults feed primarily on voles but will hunt for a mix of smaller mammals including pocket gophers, muskrats and bats; a true variety of prey from the ground, water and sky! They also feed on a range of smaller birds including gulls, songbirds and shorebirds. Short- Eared Owls are one of the few owl species that build their own nest, with the female excavating a bowl-shaped indent and lining the cavity with grass and feathers. The female will lay an average of four to seven eggs and will produce a second brood if eggs are eaten or destroyed. During the breeding season they are easily disturbed by humans and will abandon nests due to nearby human activity. If food availability is plentiful they may stick around in their wintering range to breed.

Conservation

Short-Eared Owls are facing a decline in population size due mostly to a loss of suitable habitat. These birds require large open and continuous areas that haven’t been broken up by activities that cause habitat fragmentation (the division of one large area into smaller patches of land). These fragmentations are often attributed to grassland conversion to cropland, livestock grazing, recreation and urbanization. The presence of invasive plant species and grasslands being taken over by shrubs, further disturbs the habitat for these birds. Although mostly nesting in grassland thickets, tundra with vegetation and occasionally overgrown pastures, these owls can also be found in wetlands and sagebrush thickets during the non-breeding season provided the habitat is large and continuous with no fragmentation. Their wintering habitat is a bit more flexible with owls being found in woodlots and coastal marshes. If habitat fragmentation wasn’t enough, the drainage of wetlands in coastal regions have impacted wintering ranges of Short-Eared Owls. Although the availability of open areas is instrumental in this owl’s distribution, food availability also dictates whether they will remain in an area. Their population size tends to fluctuate with the population cycles of their prey which is common with most predatory species. The COSEWIC listing of Short-Eared Owls was changed from special concern to threatened as of May 2021 but still remains a species of special concern under SARA. They are classified as threatened under the Manitoba Endangered Species at Ecosystems Act. Habitat restoration projects have helped Short-Eared Owl populations by restoring and preserving suitable habitat free from fragmentation and invasive plant species.

Author: Nathan (Nature Nate) Entz

With fall migration still ongoing through the month of September, Manitoba IBA programming is still ongoing as well! We have two events this month, see below for more details.

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Our first event is the long postponed practical component of the western Manitoba shorebird identification workshop held over from this spring when it was cancelled due to COVID-19. While we will no longer be looking at the spring plumage of shorebirds, they are heading back through on fall migration and we will be able to learn to ID the fall plumage.

The workshop will take place on Saturday, September 18th, 2021 at 8:30 am. The location is still to be decided but will include a combination of the Deleau Wetlands, Chain Lakes, Griswold Marsh and/ or Whitewater Lake. We will scout the sites out ahead of time and plan a good route closer to the workshop date to get optimum shorebird viewing opportunities in this dry year. For more information or to sign up please email: iba@naturemanitoba.ca

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Our second event is our weekend Weed Pulling for Plovers event at Riverton Sandy Bar. Our summer weed pull in August left us with some rainy weather, but we are hoping for a sunny September! The weed pull is always a good time and will include some birding up the sand bar in the IBA as well.

We will meet Saturday, September 25th at 8:00 am at the Sandy Bar Beach parking lot for some coffee and refreshments before heading to the sand bar to restore habitat for shorebirds. For more information or to sign up please email: iba@naturemanitoba.ca

History has proven that rain nor cold weather ever stopped the IBA from hosting the Riverton Sandy Bar Weed Pull! Luckily (as it were) this August we were in for a rainy, but not cold forecast. With some back and forth between Amanda and Joanne (the Riverton Sandy Bar IBA Caretaker) we decided to go ahead with the event.

And so, on Friday August 20^th, we had a group of dauntless volunteers head to the Riverton Sandy Bar to pull weeds. Thank you to Joanne, Lynnea, Jon and Bonnie for joining Amanda, Ariel, and I for an active day on the beach!

By removing the weeds from the sand bar, we create the ideal nesting habitat for shorebirds, specifically Piping Plovers. The last time Plovers were confirmed at the Sandy bar was in the year 2000. This is likely due to the encroachment of white-sweet clover and other vegetation taking over the sand bar, as they like open beach. Our mission was to pull as many of them as we could to help make the habitat attractive to them again, should they chose to come back.

We started early in the morning at 8:30 AM with a fresh cup of coffee and some muffins upon arrival. It was lightly raining as expected, but we continued to walk towards the sand bar, eager to get started. We all grabbed a bag and went on our way through the weeds.

The rain stopped by the time we got to the bar and it did not pick up again until noon. We were fortunate to get the heft of the work done by then.

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We first concentrated on pulling the sweet clover, as it does the most damage to the open, sandy beaches needed for shorebird habitat. Once we cleared the clover from our main weed pull area we yellow primrose out too to get a vegetation free area for the birds. By 1:00 PM, we had made a big difference in the scenery.

Everyone worked together, having good conversations, and making new connections throughout. We all agreed that this was a much-needed get-together after a lonely year from the pandemic. Sunshine or not, it was a fun time!

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After we had no more bags to fill (and we were all tired out), Joanne, Amanda and I took a walk down the bar to get some birding done. By this time, it was raining harder with the wind blowing into our faces. The shower was worth it though, as we reached the end of the bar, we saw a threatened Buff-breasted Sandpiper! Other birds we saw included, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Greater Yellowlegs, Killdeer, Sanderlings, Least Sandpipers, Baird’s Sandpiper, Franklin’s Gulls, Ring-billed Gulls, Herring Gulls, Common Terns, Bonaparte’s Gulls, and Pelicans, among others.

We also had a few other interesting flora and fauna sightings. If you are a birder you may have heard of a “leaf bird” – those tricky leaves that hang on to branches or fall just right to look like a bird or a “rock bird” – those tricky things! We came across what we thought was a sad sight, a swan that had passed away and washed up on the shore… happily after taking a look through binoculars it was just an interesting configuration of debris and garbage that had washed up on the sandbar – a “garbage bird” perhaps!

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All in all, it was a great weed pull with seven people. Thank you to all the volunteers that came out! We made a great difference in the habitat where we concentrated our weed pulling efforts, but there is still more to do. We hope to have better weather next time and continue this guessing game with mother nature at our next weed pull in September! Stayed tuned for more information about the next weed pull this fall from Amanda, coming up soon.

Here is the completed list of birds we observed that day:

Species	Count
Canada Goose	31
Common Goldeneye	8
Killdeer	6
Sanderling	2
Baird’s Sandpiper	4
Least Sandpiper	19
Buff-breasted Sandpiper	1
Semipalmated Sandpiper	31
Greater Yellowlegs	1
Bonaparte’s Gull	1
Franklin’s Gull	1
Ring-billed Gull	8
Herring Gull	1
Common Tern	16
American White Pelican	7
Great Blue Heron	1
Northern Harrier	2
Bald Eagle	1
Merlin	1
American Crow	1
Common Raven	2
Tree Swallow	3
Barn Swallow	2
Cedar Waxwing	2
Song Sparrow	1
Swamp Sparrow	2
Common Yellowthroat	7
Yellow Warbler	6
Total # of Species: 28	Total # of individuals: 168

~ Vicky

Hello everyone,

Today we are going to take a break from IBA event posts and join Nate again to talk about another North American grassland bird – this time the Baird’s Sparrow.

The Baird’s Sparrow is a rare sight during the summer but their song is an iconic staple of the sounds of a prairie summer. Baird’s Sparrows are a true grassland species, hunting prey and avoiding predators by moving swiftly through the grass. Picture that iconic scene of a person running away from a tiger in the tall grass, except the person is a grasshopper, the tiger is a sparrow, and the grass is 2 feet tall. These birds will often build their nests in small depressions such as hoof prints and are more tolerant of agricultural livestock habitats compared to some of the other grassland bird species.

Identification

I’m not going to lie to you, Baird’s Sparrows can be pretty tricky to tell apart just by looking at them. They have many similarities to other grassland sparrows and be easily confused with Nelson’s and LeConte’s Sparrows. Look for the very light brown eyebrow streak and a ‘Nike swoosh’-like chinstrap of the same colour that creates a bland collar area. Along the cheek area are a number of white and dark brown splotches which resemble moustache stripes. The collar and breast are separated by a dark brown streaky necklace that continues down to border the pale-yellow breast area. Their head is quite flattened on the top that gradually narrows into the beak. The pleasant song of the Baird’s Sparrow has a series of 3-5 descending ‘tinkly’ notes, finishing with a trill that sounds similar to a spring-loaded doorstopper being flicked. Identification by sound, rather than sight, might be your go-to for Baird’s Sparrows!

Life history

These birds breed in the prairie regions of North America and can be found, or more likely heard, in the southwest corner of Manitoba. Little is known about their wintering range but a number of repeat mist net captures in Arizona over 3 years and further studies support overwintering in the Chihuahuan desert. There are often several pairs per an area of good habitat so interspecies competition is expected. Despite habitat crossover with other grassland bird species, there is little evidence of conflicts between different species (intraspecific competition). These fellas like to stay low to the ground, but the males will get up on the tallest piece of vegetation he can find and sing his little heart out to find his one love for the summer. Once paired, they will be partnered with their mate for the duration of that breeding season. The female will lay 4-5 pale gray eggs with brown splotches and can produce up to 2 broods per breeding season.

Conservation

Between 1968 and 2015, Baird’s Sparrows saw a yearly population decline of 2.2%, accumulating to a 65% population decline in 47 years. These birds are currently listed as a species of special concern by COSEWIC and under the federal Species At Risk At (SARA) and listed as Endangered under Manitoba’s Endangered Species and Ecosystems Act. Several factors have influenced the decline of this bird including, urbanization, conversion to cropland and the suppression of prairie fires. As a destructive force it may seem confusing for the suppression of fire to be related to loss of habitat. Regularly burned areas reduce shrub growth and other un-desirable vegetation that is not suitable for grassland species such as the Baird’s Sparrow. Like the ‘phoenix rising from the ashes’, the regenerative growth from the burned vegetation brings Baird’s sparrows to the yard as well as other native grassland animals.

Author: Nathan “Nature Nate” Entz

Stay tuned next week for the last installment in Nate’s grassland bird series!