Conestoga Lake

My Dad and I made a quick check up to Conestoga Lake early this morning, before work. Overall alot of birds, with some good stuff. Before getting into Wellington County we stopped in Hawkesville for the Red-shouldered Hawk. We found him (or her) in its usual spot along the river, as well as 2 Cooper's Hawk's.

Heading up to Conestoga Lake, we found an adult Bald Eagle, ~3,000 gull's, of which Ring-billed's surprisingly made up the majority of gull's, though an adult Great Black-backed Gull was seen in a flock standing on the ice. Lots of geese (again about 2,500), though nothing unusual with them. While we were standing at the dam, we saw an odd Junco. My initial thought was a female Oregon, though I'm not 100% sure, as this can be a tricky id. Whatever it was it wasn't a 'pure' Oregon or Slate-coloured and I thought something somewhere in between as likely an integrade.

Hawk numbers weren't too bad, our jaunt up to the lake is about 50-55km, and we observed 10 Red-tailed's, 4 Rough-leg's, 1 Red-shoulder, 4 N. Harrier's (these are really good numbers for this late), and 2 A. Kestrel's.

As we were heading south from the lake towards Linwood in Waterloo Region, just south of 86, we had a flock of finches flying along the spruce hedgerow. We were able to drive alongside the flock until they landed and turned out to be White-winged Crossbill's! About 20 were in the flock.