10 Ontario birds that deserve more attention

The black and white spruce grouse is also known as the Canada grouse—so don’t confuse it with the Canada goose, or, for that matter, the spruce goose. Spruce grouse are quiet dwellers of coniferous forests, eating mainly spruce needles. Their crops can store up to 10 percent of their body weight in food, which is then digested at night.

About the size of a large gull and with an easily spottable read bill, the Caspian tern is the largest tern in the world. Nesting in colonies that consist of thousands of breeding pairs, Caspian terns are long-lived, aggressively defending their territory from predators—including humans, who have been known to end up with nasty wounds on their legs after an encounter with one of these birds. You can see Caspian terns on islands in the Great Lakes, which provide important migration stopping points. You might also spot them around Lake Ontario, closer to urban centres.

This charming blue bird can be seen in bushes along rail trails, in fields, and in scrubby areas. Male indigo buntings are bright blue and sing loudly, giving them the nickname “blue canaries.” These birds migrate at night, using the stars for guidance. Interestingly, their feathers aren’t actually blue, rather their feathers refract and reflect blue light, which makes them look blue.

Trumpeter swans—the largest of North America’s waterfowl—disappeared from Eastern Canada about 200 years ago because of over-hunting and habitat destruction. Re-introduced in the 1980s, populations are now established in many areas, including the Wye Marsh in Midland, Ontario. White with black feet and beaks, trumpeter swans are long-lived and monogamous, often pairing with a mate for life.

This is a bird not to be messed with. The largest member of the accipitinae family—which includes sparrowhawks, sharp-shinned hawks, and Cooper’s hawks—the northern goshawk swoops through forested areas scooping up squirrels, grouse, and hares. It will fiercely defend its nest against intruders. Fun fact: Attila the Hun wore a picture of a northern goshawk on his helmet.

Walk through any Ontario forest and look on a dead or dying tree for rectangular holes—they’re the work of the pileated woodpecker. Roughly the size of a crow, with a flaming red crest, pileated woodpeckers are best known for their loud, persistent hammering on trees and logs as they drill for carpenter ants and other insects. Nicely, other birds, including other species of woodpecker and house wrens, use pileated woodpeckers’ holes to find their own bugs.

The winner of “best bird name ever” is the bufflehead, a white duck with a large, greenish-purple head that has a striking white patch (female ducks are grey-brown). Buffleheads migrate through Southern Ontario, Quebec, and small patches of Alberta, and nest in much of the rest of Canada east of Ontario. The bufflehead, unlike many other ducks, is monogamous, remaining with the same mate for several years.

Why let Canada geese get all the attention? Although most snow geese are white, just as their name suggests, there’s a colour variant that means some of them have a white face with a dark body. Sometimes forming flocks of several hundred thousand geese, snow geese migrate through Eastern Ontario each year. And if they can’t fly? With their chicks in tow, snow geese have been known to walk up to 50 miles to better brood-rearing areas.

Often seen floating gently on updrafts along the Niagara Escarpment, turkey vultures are an essential part of the forest ecosystem, feeding on the carcasses of dead animals it can smell from the air. Turkey vultures’ bare pink heads mean it can feed off decomposing meat without getting its feathers dirty. Grossed out yet?