Quick update from Pelee

Long story short, I am having a great time at Pelee! As Brandon mentioned, we had a Townsend's Warbler yesterday, and I got my lifer Henslow's Sparrow the day before that along with many other rarities. I'll put a full list together later but the last two days my species totals have been 126 (on foot), and 127 (151 between the two days). Over 100 species every day since I've been here!

Anyway, to that crazy weird bird that Brandon mentioned I saw.... Basically I saw this bird flying south toward the Tip at about 7pm and thought "oh cool, a Common Nighthawk". I then got it in the bins and was like WTF?!?!?!?! IS THAT?!?!! Kory and Sarah Renaud were standing beside me at the time and also got to see this bird. I noticed that it was fairly large (Common Nighthawk-sized but chunkier), had a reddish underside, dark back, pointed wings, and a less bouncy, more direct flight style than a nighthawk. It also appeared to have a very short tail (or no tail). And no, it wasn't a swallow or a bat - lots of swallows and martins around for comparison and we had good looks at a Hoary Bat later in the evening.

Anyway, I texted Brandon but he did not manage to see the bird - we spent the next hour and a half hoping it would return but had no luck.

After doing some research and consulting with the Sibley Guide, myself and Brandon are convinced this is a Chuck-will's-Widow that is missing a tail. I've attached a composite of all the photos I got, what do you think?????

Painted - aka post #200

Since my last update (way back in March, apparently), I haven’t been out birding very much, but that is changing now! I had way too much school work, then packing up the house and exams and whatnot, but now my time at Guelph is over (just finished 4^th year!) and I have a couple weeks until the start of work, so I am bumming around at Pelee hoping for rarities to show up! This is also my 200th blog post, something I've kinda been saving till I actually had something interesting to share.

On the way down yesterday I made a stop at Erieau, picking up an adult Little Gull, before hitting Hillman Marsh, finding 17 Willets in the rain before I met up with Josh. Soon afterwards we got a text from Jeremy Hatt that he was looking at a Worm-eating Warbler at Kopegaren Woods, so we raced over there and had great views of this southern warbler (see Josh’s blog for pics). We wandered the park for a bit after that but didn’t find much of interest.

This morning things were much better, and we racked up 11 species of warbler (including Blue-winged and Northern Parula) and 11 species of sparrow (including Grasshopper and some late American Trees) among quite a few other migrants (Eastern Kingbird, Gray Catbird, Bobolink, Warbling Vireo, etc). The main highlight of the day however came when we were wandering around at the Tip, wondering what to do next, when we got a call about a Painted Bunting coming to a feeder at Pelee Wings. Needless to say, we rushed up there and after a few minutes of waiting it came right in!

Other than that we didn’t have anything too exciting for the day. We spent most of the afternoon wandering the Northwest Beach and then headed over to Hillman after looking for a reported Laughing Gull with no luck. We ended up with 113 species for the day - can’t wait to see what the next 10 days or so bring!

 This beaver was sleeping on the beach for a bit before 'migrating' south down the West beach

Pine Warbler playing hide-and-go-seek with the sticks

Black-and-white Warbler

Red-breasted Nuthatch

PAINTED BUNTING!!!! new for me for Canada

Grasshopper Sparrow on the NW beach

I was pretty happy with how this Field Sparrow shot turned out!

At about 7pm the bunting was still being seen (in perfect light) so I went back for a few more shots!

What a great start to my Pelee trip!

Flutter-bys of 2012

A much more accurate name, don't you think? I'll do a catch-up post in a bit but I've wanted to make this post for a while now so here it is.

In the spring/summer of 2012 I started to pay more attention to butterflies, thanks mostly to working on Louisiana Waterthrush stuff with Jody Allair who is a rather avid lepidopterist. Who knew there were so many species in Ontario? I think my butterfly list sits around 60ish now but that could be way off...haven't tallied it up and have some un-ID'd ones as well. Anyway, here are some pics from last year, with a bunch of ID requests! Help appreciated and feel free to correct me on anything!

****EDIT: some ID's have been resolved - thanks Kirk!

Northern Broken-Dash??? - near Long Point, July 7

Delaware Skipper - rare 2nd brood (October in Guelph)

Two-spotted Skipper

European Skippers

Tawny-edged Skippers

Dun Skipper

American Copper

American Snout

Appalachian Brown??

Banded Hairstreak

Black Swallowtail

Buckeye

Cabbage White

Clouded Sulphur

Common Sootywing (only pic I got of this species!)

Common Wood-Nymph

Dun Skipper

Eastern Tailed-Blue

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Edward's Hairstreak

European Skipper

Eyed Brown

Giant Swallowtail

Harvester

Hobomok Skipper

Little Yellow

Long Dash

Northern Crescent (?)

Northern Pearly-Eye

Orange Sulphur

Pearl Crescent

 again

Question Mark

Red Admiral

 

Red-spotted Purple

Silver-spotted Skipper

Summer Azure (?) - June 8, Long Point

Tawny Emperor

Variegated Fritillary

 Little Wood-Satyr (Viola's?) - July 7 near Long Point

White Admiral

Wild Indigo Duskywings (new for the LP butterfly count)