A surprise winter visitor

While I would never call myself an avid bird watcher, I love watching the birds flit in and out of the many feeders I have erected both at my home in Ottawa and log cabin in Quebec.  They are a splash of colour on a dull winter day or a burst of cheer in a silent forest.  I’ve positioned my various feeders so that when I’m in need of a momentary respite from my writing I can look out the window and watch the day’s activity.

Needless to say the majority of visitors are northern birds, like the Black Cap Chickadee, Red and White Breasted Nuthatches, Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers and of course the various northern finches, like Common Redpolls, Pine Siskins, Evening Grosbeaks and Pine Grosbecks. After more than twenty years gazing at my feeders I pretty well know what to expect.

So last week when I took a break from writing the next Meg Harris mystery and glanced out my window at a bird pecking away at the suet feeder, I first thought it was a nuthatch. And then I realized the colour was too brown, the body too round plus it had an upraised tail. I knew this was a bird I had never seen before. So I hastily grabbed my bird book and soon identified it as a Carolina Wren, a bird, whose range is usually several hundred kilometers south of Ottawa.

Interestingly enough, I’ve since learned that sightings of this southern bird are happening more frequently in the Ottawa area. The experts view this as a northern expansion of their range. And of course, this begs the question. Is this small bird a harbinger of global warming?