Warblers are feasting on fall sweets

The weather here in Northwestern Ontario has been incredibly hot for this time of year. We have had daytime temps of 28 C which is in the 80s F. That anomaly is probably why we are still seeing warblers. In fact our yard here in Nolalu is abuzz with the little guys shown above. 

If you are a birder you know how difficult it is to distinguish warbler species in the fall. My bird book has an appropriately-titled page called "Confusing Fall Warblers." I frankly quit trying years ago but the ones we are seeing all over the lawn are pretty easy. The clue is the birds' rear ends. Yellow-Rumped Warbler. 

The other dead give away comes from where these warblers are feeding -- the ground. To my knowledge, they are the only warbler in these parts anyway that catch their prey on the ground. It would be nice to think they are eating the cluster flies that are just everywhere at this time of year but as I was manning the barbecue the other day I could see that at least some of them were picking off the white-coloured fruit flies that are very difficult for humans to detect. It usually takes bright sunlight with a dark background to see these minute flies.

Up at camp we saw ring-billed gulls catching the same tiny flies in mid-September. 

The fruit flies are found wherever there are asters which are  late-summer flowers that grow almost everywhere. They must be super nutritious for big birds like gulls to bother catching them out of the air. I would imagine the Yellow-Rumped Warblers are using the flies to fatten up before they head to Central or South America for the winter.
 

So close to finishing but we came home

 

The front room just needs the kitchen stove and fridge moved into it and all the trim.

Scene off the deck the night before we left.

We are sleeping in the big cabin and can heat it with our wood stove which we did a couple of times. But we planned from the start this summer to button up the place and go home to Nolalu on Sept. 16 and that is what we did. We have things at home that need to be done in the fall and they have gone by the wayside the last five years while we were building the cabin on Red Lake.

It seems to me that we have been building this place for a decade but Brenda proved to me before we left that it has actually been just five years. We began by pulling a dock loaded with lumber all the way from town in 2019. From there we built a landing for the dock and a 12x24 cabin which we call the dockhouse and in which we have lived until this September.

Then we had the covid setback in 2020. I just finished the dockhouse that year. I started the main cabin in 2021 and got the foundation and subfloor completed. In 2022 I built the walls and roof and put on the steel siding. In 2023 I completed the interior walls and much of the interior paneling and plumbing. With help from my brother-in-law, Ron Wink, we installed the solar system and wired the joint.

This year I finished the paneling, installed the kitchen cabinets and put down the finished floor in about two thirds of the building. Only the two bedrooms still need the finished floor. 

Brenda and our neighbour Kim Austen have painted all but one bedroom. The flooring is just waiting to be put down. We have gone with 9-inch luxury vinyl planks.

I anticipate finishing the move from the other cabin, hooking up the main bathroom, including hot water, in two weeks when we go back next spring. And that is taking into account my formula for how long things take now that we are older. I take the estimated time and multiply it by pi.