P-P-P-Pelee Island #2

Well, haven't posted anything on Ontbirds for the past few days, but I will once we hit May....there hasn't been too much new to really report.

The Yellow-throated Warbler(s) are still surviving in cold and wet weather. Mike and I heard one bird singing today, but will look for it tomorrow when it's a little warmer. Here's a pic of one of the birds from yesterday .

Today there was some new stuff around, including our first Least Flycatcher, Warbling Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Lincoln's and White-crowned Sparrow's. Mike's heading out tomorrow and it looks like the Holden's are going to be coming down for a few days until they get there cottage all figured out.

Typical view during dinner at the cottage....

P-P-Pelee Island #1

Hi Birders,

I arrived on the island last night and today was my first day on the island until May 20ish. There were a few things around, modest numbers of most migrants expected at this time of year. I also had some noteworthy sightings too!

Yellow-throated Warbler – a spanking male singing his heart out about 50m. east of my cottage. Got some nice pics! See my blog -

Louisiana Waterthrush – male (singing too) in the drainage ditch also near my cottage, on South Shore Road, west of Curry Dyke Road.

Some other interesting sightings included singles of Nashville Warbler, Northern Waterthrush, Green Heron and Gray Catbird

A Worm-eating Warbler was present in the netting lanes at Fish Point from April 22-23.

Birders should note that currently the ferry (both!!!!) are inoperable, and will likely be so until May 12^th. Flights are running several times daily from Windsor, out of Great Lakes Navigation at a cost of $15 roundtrip.

Good Birding!

Ken Burrell

Ken's guide to better birding, part 1

This is the inaugural post from my blog regarding a topic which has really been eating at me over the past few months, well years I guess - shitty Ontbirds posts. Now I don't mean to be rude, but the quality of some of the posts on Ontbirds has in my mind been deteriorating.

Take this past week as an example....we had a certain individual report about his usual jaunt over to the nude beach on the Toronto Islands, some 'random' reporting her car was broken into in the ghetto of Toronto (go figure), and some shitacular sightings of common birds from the Cambridge and Scarborough areas. I had suggested we use stricter guidelines for Ontbirds a while ago, but a certain person from TO was very against this, which kyboshed it.

But anyways, we'll see if something good is reported on Ontbirds over the next 24 hours. There should be a mega somewhere in the province.

Cheers.

Gettin' ready for pelee....island

Yup, its getting to that time of year, when the push of neotropical migrants is starting to build, and over the next 6ish weeks we'll see the main push of spring migrants. I'm heading down to the island to 'set-up' my microphone for field work next Friday. For those that don't know, besides looking at 'reverse migrant's', I'm also going to be looking at nocturnal migrants with the 21C microphone, built by Old Bird Inc. this year, so it should be pretty neat.

There's some cool software that I'll be using to analyze the recordings - one is specifically designed to ID Dickcissel's! I've had 8 Dickcissel's since 2010, while doing reverse migration monitoring, so its likely they show up more frequently over night.

I'm hoping for a 'real' CMF this year....I haven't had any since the Western Wood-Pewee in 2010, so hopefully I'll get something along the lines of one of these....

Anyways, one of these guys would surely make my day.

Birding in the rain

Well I had ideas of grandeur today....I was going to head down to Rondeau (more specifically the Ridgetown Lagoons) and then work my way east along Lake Erie, to finish at Townsend. About 20 minutes out of Ridgetown it started to rain, and hard. This pretty much sums the day up, with the rain not letting up until 3:30! But oh well, can't control the weather, so I continued birding.

Ridgetown Lagoons were pretty good, but alas no Greater White-fronted Geese. Lots of ducks though, and some good variety. Had 5 Wood Ducks and 20 N. Shoveler's (these really seemed to have moved in, since Friday).

After that, I checked out Shrewsbury and Bate's Marsh. The usual diving ducks were on the bay, but it was hard birding with the steady rain. I did have a singing Carolina Wren and an interesting American Wigeon (see below).

A whitish American Wigeon - Bate's Marsh - March 12, 2012

I've seen American Wigeon's with almost pure white faces only a few times (I think 5 times). Has anyone else seen this? I saw another Wigeon with the same patterning later in the day, at Townsend.

After Rondeau, I motored north and east, along Hwy. 3, stopping in Port Stanley, then Port Bruce and Port Burwell. Not too much to really mention, the usual suspects for this time of year.

Onto Long Point, I spent from 1-4pm here, covering essentially ALL of the spots, while I waited for the rain to stop....Some of the interesting birds I saw here included:
Sandhill Crane - ~30 - some in the fields north of Long Point, 1 @ the Hahn Marsh, and 2 @ Big Creek
Great-horned Owl - 1 bird along Hasting's Drive

Great-horned Owl - world's BEST pic of this species - March 12, 2012

 Duck numbers continue to impress, literally thousands all throughout the lagoons.
Little Gull's - 8+ at Turkey Point, off the beach

I also toured Concession A. This is one of my favourite spots at Long Point (Hasting's Drive is really nice too), and found a nice and early Painted Turtle crossing the road!

Finishing up at Long Point, I headed on over to Townsend. About this time the rain more or less stopped, and thankfully I turned something good up! Walking along the dykes, I came across a nice drake Eurasian Wigeon in the SW cell, associating with some normal Wigeons, as well as another 'whitey' Am. Wigeon (check out another Eurasian Wigeon here). Great to see one of these guys!

Finishing up my walk, I had a E. Meadowlark and a nice Savannah Sparrow! Townsend was my last stop, and a nice way to end my day!

Long Point = NO Smew

It's been a while, but I'm still kicking....today the class I TA was cancelled, and with no work scheduled, I decided I'd try my luck down at Long Point and maybe, just maybe see that male Smew found last evening by Ron Ridout.

I got down to LP late in the morning, and birded until late afternoon. There were several birders down there (Josh, and Guelph gang along with Barb Charlton). Spectacular numbers of ducks are in Inner Bay, which was really great to see.

Highlights for me were a drake Blue-winged Teal at BSC's pond and at least half a dozen Little Gull's feeding off the causeway.

Bald Eagle - 1 of the 5 for the day - March 9, 2012

 

 

 

Canvasback's - 4 of the estimated 4,500 present on Inner Bay - March 9, 2012

Earlier in the week I was down at Lake St. Clair for work, and saw some nice spring like stuff. Most noteworthy wasn't a bird!! But a very lethargic Leopard Frog.

New bird for Waterloo Region

Sooo....its been awhile, I know. I've sorta fallen off the blog thing, kinda, its not for the lack of birding, its just a busy time of year, with school heating up, and work not slowing down = busy times.

But anyways, Mike and I finished our latest project of writing/updating the checklist of birds for Waterloo Region. Just as we finished, what do you know happens....a new bird is found for the region - Boreal Owl!!

Peeter Musta found this young female dead along Fischer Hallman Road in Kitchener. Pretty bizarre 'sighting' considering there hasn't been any reports of Boreal Owl in southern, let alone all of Ontario! Anyways this is more or less the 300 species for the region! Not too shabby considering the region's land locked without too many good birders.

Anyways here's some shots I took of the bird (its in my parents freezers awaiting the ROM).

Here's a shot of my lifer Boreal back in December 2008 on Amherst Island.

Ps. Is it just me or does it seem like a few people maybe doing big years? If you don't believe me look at eBird -

http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/top100?locInfo.regionCode=CA-ON&year=2012&locInfo.regionType=subnational1