Dreamin' of these....

Despite this being one of the latest springs I can remember, May is literally just around the corner. Having said this, things always seem to even out by the 10th of May.

This year, like many of the past, I'll be off for a few weeks, hopefully enjoying and basking in some serious CMF's. I'll be down at Pelee from May 1-18, so I will potentially see many of you there.

Here's to hoping everyone has a great May, with lots of star-studded rarities, and lots of fallouts.

Long Point - April 10th

I took the day off yesterday, and Lill and I headed down bright and early to Long Point for the morning and part of the afternoon. Overnight we had had lots of rain, thunder and lightning, and the temperature was +14 when I got up (0545)....things were looking good!

Heading straight for the peninsula itself yielded lots of nicely new spring migrants. We saw quite a number of sparrows species, between our time at Old Cut, Hasting's Dirve, and the Provincial Park. Lots of Flicker's, Fox, Chipping, a few Vesper, and 1 Savannah Sparrows as well as our FOY Pine Warbler, Brown Thrasher. Lillian was the official photographer today:

Merlin staking the sparrows out in the fog at the entrance to LPPP.

What does the fox say??? I think it's something about getting enough to eat at home...

Good numbers of Chippers, a few Fields, and tonnes of Junco's along Hwy. 59.

Mr. Savannah (our 1 and only).

Lots of ATSP were moving (around 120 seen throughout LP Proper).

Good numbers of NOFLs too!

And 3 EABLs along Hasting's.

I also saw a really interesting female Junco at Old Cut, right by the banding lab, that looked like a Pink-sided....but alas no photos or good enough looks to confirm.

Here's our eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S22786604

After checking LP, we toured the roads west of Hwy. 59 along the lake, but didn't really see anything of interest, so we went for some lunch at the Boat House. After lunch, we checked the Port Rowan overlook and had a few things, despite the crazy strong winds (gusting to 85km/hr), including our only Purple Martin, and 2 Caspian and 9 Forster's Terns hunkering down out of the wind.

eBird checklists: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S22786715

Next up was Turkey Point, where we really quickly checked and had another FOY: Barn Swallow, as well as 3 Forster's Terns. Deciding we had had a nice day, we headed home, checking for the Eurasian Wigeon, where we dipped, but it offered a nice selection of dabblers nonetheless.

All in all a good day (85 species). Spring is here!!!

Eurasian Collared-Dove nest!

It looks as though the case of the Eurasian Collared-Dove's has finally been cracked!

Before heading to our field site, Nathan (Miller) and I headed by the ECDO spot. We've been in the area intermittently for the past 3 weeks doing waterfowl surveys and hadn't had any luck with the doves, but today things changed...!

Nathan was ahead of me and found one of the birds fly over, land in a tree, and fly off, only to return and do the same thing a few more times. I showed up a few minutes later and we checked them out, when I noticed the bird and its mate had nesting material in there beaks! That's pretty cool in itself, but it was cooler to watch them land in the middle of the tree. The nest is directly to the east of the driveway at 1206 Seacliffe. We watched the birds inspect there rather shitty looking nest and drop them off, before finding some more nesting material and repeat.

Nathan managed a few shots too, see for yourself....