A look at 2015

I thought rather than plagarise photo's and give a review of 2014, that I'd give a brief overview of what I'm roughly expecting to do in 2015...

January
So far, I've been able to do a fair bit of birding, which has been great: 77 species so far. Highlights include: the long-staying Eurasian Collared-Dove in Leamington, Eastern Towhee at Rondeau, Long-eared Owl near Holiday Beach, and a flock of Myrtle's and a single Ruby-crowned Kinglet at PPNP.

The rest of January looks pretty good; I'll be checking Hamilton likely this coming Friday, and am leading bird trips to the Linwood area and Amherst Island.

February
Usually one of the slowest months, but Lillian and I are heading off for a week to Cayo Santa Maria, Cuba. I haven't been south really anywhere, so I'm hoping to get a decent number (20-30?) of lifers while there. Needless to say I'm pretty excited!

March
Nothing planned other than expected trips to Long Point and Lake Erie for spring waterfowl.

I'll be looking for one of these...

April
One of my favourite months of birding. I'm running a nocturnal owl survey route for BSC up near Lillian's cottage in Tobermory. I'm hoping to do this pretty early, and could get a number of owls (NSOW, BARO, GHOW, ESOW?, GGOW?, LEOW? SEOW?). In a perfect world I'd check Pelee Island sometime before all hell breaks loose (last year I had a great trip).

May
Not much is happening here...pretty boring month...minus I'm renting a cottage with Barbed Wire from the 2-17. Should be pretty damn awesome. Last year was pretty sweet (Lazuli Bunting, Neotropic Cormorant, Blue Grosbeak, etc.). Mother's Day will be the exception as Mike and I aim to make it 3/3 for winning the Bird Race. I'll also be up on the Bruce on the 24th, helping out with Huron Fringe. Hopefully I'll get my long overdue Little Blue Heron...!

What am I????

June
This the month I really start to lose sleep; bird work really gets going, and we have projects pretty much all through southern Ontario and potentially a huge project up north to Kirkland Lake.

July/August
Mike, my Dad, and I will be doing 3 breeding bird survey routes, up north, near Cochrane, Detour Lake and Matachewan. This will be the 3rd year we've done them, and have had pretty much all the boreal specialties (CONW, SPGR, BBWO, BOCH, WWCR, GRYE, SOSA, etc), plus weird ones, like Vesper Sparrow, E. Whip-poor Will, and Brown Thrasher.

Looking forward to checking the lagoons in southern Ontario, as well as our Boys fly-in fishing trip to northern Ontario, half way between Wawa and Hearst.

September/October/November
I really want to get Swainson's Hawk this year...I've tried several times, so hopefully this will be the year. No trips planned as of yet....but I should have about 2 weeks banked that I can use...Netitishi anyone???

I'll be down at the OFO AGM at Pelee over the first weekend in October. Something good should turn up.

December
Christmas bird counts....I've got my 3 local ones: Cambridge, Kitchener, and Linwood.