Northern Getaway

After all these years I decided to splurge a bit and do a northern Ontario winter birding trip, one that I had never done, but had always wanted to do.

Friday morning (February 7th) saw me get on the road dark and early (4:45am), supposedly beating Toronto traffic (didn't happen), and getting north of the City with sunrise. My first stop was a 'might as well stop', stopping in Bala to stretch my legs and look for the long-staying female Barrow's Goldeneye. I managed to find her within minutes of checking the ducks below the falls. I didn't take any pics, but there are some good one's here.

After a much needed bathroom break (#2) I kept on, with the Gogama burn from last year or 2018 (I can't remember) as the next stop. Tyler Hoar had tipped me off and this proved to be a great stop. Around lunch time I pulled into the happenin' metropolis of Gogama; the burn is easily accessible off Hwy. 144 and I was even able to drive in about 500m before stopping and getting my snowshoes on. I didn't really have a great plan of where to go and was just winging it. I managed some good luck though and within 200-300m of the car got my first Black-backed Woodpecker! I ended up only checking out a very small area of the burn (~3ha or so) and scored 13 Black-backed and a single American Three-toed Woodpecker!! Pretty damn sweet. Here's my eBird checklist.

From here, I managed to make it to Cochrane just as the sun was setting. I stationed myself here for the next 3 nights, staying at the very nice and comfortable Westway Motel. This was actually a bit of a hidden jem (not sure how many things you can say this about in Cochrane!) and was reasonably priced and I'd recommend for anyone venturing up there.

Saturday I woke up and the temperature was a legitimate -35 degrees Celsius!

I think this is the coldest temperature that I've ever experienced, and I was actually concerned that it would limit my birding (in terms of birds being out), though this was short-lived.

After running my car for a few minutes I headed west, towards Smooth Rock Falls (SRF). About 20 minutes in, I spied a dark blob at the top of some trees in a small farm field. Getting a better look, revealed it to be my first Northern Hawk-Owl of the trip!

Hunting in -35 degrees! That is one tough bird!

Reaching SRF I headed north, towards Fraserdale and the Wetum Road. It didn't take long to start getting huge flocks of finches along the road. It was a little staggering at how many Redpolls were present, along with lesser numbers of Pine Siskins, White-winged Crossbills and the odd Pine Grosbeaks. Finches were fairly skittish, but I managed to pick out several Hoary Redpolls too, including some Hornemann's!

Overall, I had the following numbers of finches: 26 Pine Grosbeak, 1,115 flammea C. Redpolls, 1 for sure rostrata C. Redpoll, 6 exilpes Hoary Redpolls, 4 hornemann's Hoary Redpolls, 79 White-winged Crossbill's, and 128 Pine Siskin's! Below are my checklists:
https://ebird.org/canada/checklist/S64254828
https://ebird.org/canada/checklist/S64254844
https://ebird.org/canada/checklist/S64254860
https://ebird.org/canada/checklist/S64254882

I had initially planned to drive up to the start of the Wetum Road to check it out (I'll drive up to Attawapiskat some other year), but because of the numbers of finches, only decided to check the first 40 km, before turning around, having wanted to check areas to the west of SRF.

I didn't end up finding anything else of real note between SRF and Hearst, despite targeting essentially all of the open areas, where I thought I'd run into a Northern Hawk or Great Gray. I did come across lots of more finches, a Northern Goshawk (great views!), and several Northern Shrike's (they appear to all be up north...). That was it for Saturday, and I made my way back to Cochrane.

Sunday I got up and headed straight for Hwy. 652, that runs from Cochrane to the Detour Lake Gold Mine - a total of 182 kilometres! It's surprising, but the road is open year-round and it's sole purpose is to service the mine. I think this hwy. gets Willow Ptarmigan (take a look at eBird and see the sightings in Quebec) and this was my target.

Right off the bat the day started well, and I found the 2nd Northern Hawk Owl of the trip perched in an open area along Hwy. 652.

Again, finches stole the show and in epic fashion. While there are too many checklists to provide (I ran checklists over 20km for the 165km that I drove), the total number of finches was incredible:

Pine Grosbeak - 79
flammea Common Redpoll - 5,245
rostrata Common Redpoll - 40
exilpes Hoary Redpoll - 16
hornemann's Hoary Redpoll - 6
White-winged Crossbill - 899
Pine Siskin - 206

In addition to the finch fest (I think it's safe to say that I now know where all the redpolls in Ontario are...), I had several Canada Jay's, 2 Northern Shrike's and best of all, a group of 4 Sharp-tailed Grouse.

After getting back into Cochrane around 2pm, I decided to check the agricultural areas around town and lucked into a single Evening Grosbeak and 2 Purple Finches. Needing some gas I stopped by the Canadian Tire in town only to have a Northern Hawk Owl perched along the Trans-Canada in front of the gas station (talk about efficiency)!

This NHOW really started to make me wonder how many are up there, since I had driven by this spot several times and this was the first time seeing it!

I ended up checking some more agricultural areas to the south of town and came across another(!) Northern Hawk Owl (#4 for the trip)! With the 4th Hawk Owl in the bag and sunlight fading fast, I called it and headed back into Cochrane for the night.

Monday I was up nice and early, eager to get back to Kitchener-Waterloo and to see Lill. I had another(!) Northern Hawk Owl just north of Englerhart, making it a 5 Northern Hawk Owl tour. I stopped in Earlton to look for the colony of Eurasian Collared-Dove's (no dice) and left after about 45 minutes.

All in all a nice little tour; luckily the weather (generally) cooperated, as did the birds!

Peterborough Adventure

This past weekend Lill and I visited with Mike and his family, just outside of Peterborough. While we weren't planning any major birding we were able to snag an hour or two on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Saturday Mike and I went to grab some groceries in town and stopped at Little Lake to check the gulls out. We were in luck, as a decent sized flock of gulls was present, with both Iceland (Kumlien's and Thayer's) and Glaucous present. Check our eBird checklist, here.

From here we checked out Millenium Park and almost immediately found the female Barrow's Goldeneye that has been present for about 10 days.

Later in the afternoon on Saturday, Lill, Erica and I did some skiing at the Kawartha Nordic Ski trails. It's a great spot and I'd highly recommend it. We didn't have too much since we were busy skiing, but did come across 3 Red Crossbills in the white pines. On the way home we came across a Barred Owl sitting on hydro lines besides the road!

Sunday morning saw Mike and I get up before the others and make a quick trip up to Bark Lake for the long-staying Varied Thrush. We pulled into the parking lot and after about 10 minutes had it coming in to feed.

Some thoughts on the OBRC (while serving on it)

I'm currently serving on the first year of a 3 year term on the OBRC; this is my 3rd term since 2011! I've always enjoyed serving on the Committee. I view it as a privilege and honour and don't take it for granted being nominated and serving.

One of the reason's I like serving on the Committee is you get a back stage pass to see what's happening behind the scene's in Ontario's rare bird community (so to speak). Having traveled here and there throughout Canada and the US, I can say that Ontario is 100% in the top 3-5 of states and provinces in terms of how active our birding population is and how good it is. Ontario is likely the top state/province that is land-locked (not counting Ontario as coastal, largely b/c I don't think there is a single hard-core birder who lives in the Hudson Bay Lowlands!).

Since the late 1990's, when I started birding I've seen some pretty huge changes in Ontario in our bird-life: I've literally seen some of the last wild Northern Bobwhite in Ontario, as well as some of the first breeding Kirtland's Warblers in Ontario, to name a few.

This gal was on her way to her breeding grounds in Ontario???

One of the best examples in changes to the status of a species which was a MEGA back in the day is Fish Crow.

I saw my first Fish Crow at Point Pelee in May 2008. At that time there were only 7 previous records in the province. Fast forward to today and they breed at several locations throughout the GTHA-Niagara corridor and are even assigned a sub-national rank of S2 by the MNRF!

Fish Crow on their breeding grounds....Port Dalhousie.

Over the last few years I've helped Mike in preparing packages as his duties as Secretary on the OBRC. Packages are essentially the files for all the records supporting a rare bird record. This requires a fair bit of information to be incorporated, such as finders, people submitting record details, dates, locations, not to mention filing photos and the reports, etc. Generally each record takes about 30-60 min. to prepare. The last few years have seen close to 200 records reviewed by the OBRC -- up to 200 hours of volunteer time by the Secretary, just in preparing records for the Committee to vote on.

Mike served as Secretary for 5 years and has now been replaced by the able hands of Dan Riley. With this being Dan's first year, I've been helping him out a little bit and have helped him with preparing a few packages, essentially the same as what I had done for Mike. The Secretary has a huge amount of work, that is not matched by anyone else on the Committee (or even close for that matter).

One of the things that I've been noticing over the last 5-10 years is that the number of rarities being reviewed by the OBRC has been steadily increasing, specifically in regards to the southern review list. Taking a larger look and going back to 1982, when the OBRC was formed, one can see that the number of records and information reviewed has increased by several factors (e.g., in 1982 there were something like 92 records reviewed, most of these records were of a single paper copy vs. today we get close to 200 records, most of which have several records, as well as dozens of eBird records to catalogue, along with numerous photos).

Guidelines set out by the OBRC in the early 1980s state that species "should be on the review list if they average 20 or less records over a 5 year period". Typically these are pretty rare species; species like Blue Grosbeak, Henslow's Sparrow's, and Little Blue Heron would make the cut.

Henslow's Sparrow on its breeding ground...

Don't get me wrong -- I would be ecstatic if I found one of these species, BUT I think there needs to be a change in the OBRCs mandate and policies regarding rare birds that we keep track of. Specifically, with the advent of cell phones, eBird, OntBirds, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and now Discord, there has been a monumental increase in the number of rare birds that we are finding out about (and therefore documenting).

I think we need to restructure some key points in the OBRC going forward to ensure it is relevant today and in the next 20-30 years. I think we need to look at species, like Blue Grosbeak, Little Blue Heron, and Henslow's Sparrow, where we have close to, or more than 100 accepted records of these species and ask ourselves: "what are we going to learn by reviewing another Blue Grosbeak record?".

With eBird, and our team of regional reviewers in Ontario, there really isn't the same need to review every rarity as in 1982. I think revising the threshold for reviewing species in southern Ontario is warranted (and has been for some time). I think we should drastically revise the review list, making the criteria much lower, such as:
- species that are observed on average more than 10 times in a 5 year period would NOT require documentation
- where a species has a defined pattern of vagrancy in the province and there are more than 35 previously accepted records, that species would NOT be reviewed going forward.

Revising the review list would enable the OBRC to review the really rare species in the province. Think Swainson's Warbler. Rock Wren. Burrowing Owl. Feel me?

May 9th: in addition to catching this SWWA, we also caught GWWA and a SUTA!

You know how you know you've got a great wife? When she points out a weird bird on a boulder beach and its ROCK WREN!!

Ahhh, the BUOW Mikey and I found on PI. Dayum.

Species removed from the southern review list would still be reviewed by our stellar group of provincial eBird reviewers and would be documented via eBird and OntBirds.

This would essentially remove the following species: Mississippi Kite, Henslow's, Blue Grosbeak, Neotropic Corm, Western Grebe, Arctic Tern, Scissor-tail, YC Night-Heron, and a few more.

What do you think? Do you care?? Too much change? Too little change?

New year birding

While January is not necessarily the best month for birding, in terms of displacing large numbers of birds in addition to exciting species, the start to 2020 has been pretty good for anyone interested in doing a big year, with several continuing rarities.

I started the year at the cottage, just outside of Tobermory with Lill and her family. We had been at the cottage for a few days and were driving home on the 1st, with a few stops along the way.

First up was Lion's Head to look for the somewhat continuing Harlequin Duck, which unfortunately was a no-show on the 1st, as well as the previous 2 days I had checked. However, things were about to pick-up; on our way out of Lion's Head, heading towards Ferndale, I spotted a large bird at the top of some trees. Pulling over revealed it to be the gray Gyrfalcon found just before Christmas!!

I had in fact been searching for this bird, and managed to luck into it this time, after looking for close to 5 hours over the previous 2 mornings -- I guess that's why they call it three times a charm.

Needless to say I was pretty pumped. This was also a lifer for Lill, so that was pretty neat too.

Heading south from here, we drove through the flats and came across a lone male Common Grackle, seeming out of place.

From here we made a bee-line for the Owen Sound harbour, where we hoped to luck into the annually returning (2 years?) male Barrow's Goldeneye.

Sure enough, after getting to Kelso Beach Park, in Owen Sound, I managed to pick out the Goldeneye, as well as some other decent first of the year birds in the harbour, including Canvasback and Redhead.

All in all a good start to the year -- let's hope the rest of the year will continue to bring more goodies like on the 1st!