Birding in Sault Ste. Marie

Niagara

2012-01-29T10:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Brett Fried, Erika Hentsch and I headed over to the Niagara region for my 4th time in less than 3 months - I can officially say that I have (almost) gotten over the falls - I barely even gave them a second glance!

The day started off nice and calm with a slight drizzle as we left, which cleared up by the time we got to Port Weller. We spent about an hour and a half walking out to the pier and back but were unable to turn up either the King Eider or the Snowy Owls that have been hanging out. We did have some interesting finds though with a wintering Northern Flicker, a few Double-crested Cormorants, an Iceland Gull and a Northern Shrike giving some very strange calls that none of us had ever heard before. I can't find any recordings that sound like it, but my best description is that it sounded like a police whistle.

Our next stop was the Queenston boat ramp where heavy snow nixed any hope we had of finding the Black Vultures - this is quickly becoming an Ontario nemesis for me! We also struck out on Little Gull although we did not spend a whole lot of time sorting through the thousands of Bonaparte's.

We then headed upriver a ways to the Adam Beck lookout where there were at least 11 Iceland Gulls of various age classes in with the numerous Herring and Ring-billed. We didn't turn up any Thayer's despite looking at quite a lot of Herring Gulls.

Our next stop was at the Dufferin Islands, where it was still snowing quite heavily and the raging river was almost completely covering most of the roosting rocks on the Ontario side, so no Purple Sandpipers (again). We then drove on a little ways to the hydro dam where the breakwall was covered in gulls - many Great Black-backeds in with the Herrings but nothing else surprisingly! Since it was still snowing we couldn't even see the other side of the river (or the table rock out in the middle for that matter) to search for rarities, we decided to call it a morning and headed for lunch.

Afterwards we made another stop at the breakwall lookout, where a first-winter Glaucous Gull and an adult Lesser Black-backed had joined the hoardes of gulls on the breakwall, but the Harlequin Ducks were nowhere to be found, and since the visibility was even worse we decided to head upriver to Fort Erie.

Along the way we stopped at a few little parks to scan the ducks, getting most of the regulars including Canvasback, Redhead, both Scaup and Gadwall along with some coots and a Belted Kingfisher.

We arrived at Bowen Park around 12:20 where we decided to wait out the snow, hoping for some crows to fly by or a break in the weather so we could scan the gulls on the far side. Around 1, Stu Mackenzie showed up, probably hoping for the same thing as us, and then headed off to look for crows. After a few minutes he sent us a text saying he'd found the quarry - Fish Crows just up the road! We met him at 333 Bowen Rd. where he had a bead on the birds. After a few minutes we started hearing their 'uh' calls, and one bird even gave a triple 'uh-uh-uh' call, confirming the ID. We spent a little while trying to pick out which birds were actually making the noise, and eventually found 2 birds that were considerably smaller than the rest. Score! Ontario bird 311 for me.

Fish Crow - bottom right - note tiny size, longish tail

Fish Crow takeoff - small size, note p9 (furthest right in this pic) much longer than p5 giving 'triangle' look to wing

We thought this (very obliging) bird was a Fish Crow due to its small size (there was an American Crow sitting beside it shortly before this pic was taken), but were unable to get it to call and after doing some research I am not so sure - any thoughts?

It looks small, long-tailed, has a frilly throat

But...there is definite 'scaling' on the back which is apparently not shown in Fish Crows?

We then headed back down the road to the park where we spent a very cold 2 hours or so scanning the gulls as the weather had (finally) cleared up! Our task was made fairly difficult by the fact that there were 5000+ Bonaparte's in this flock, constantly moving up and down the river. I eventually managed to pick out an adult Little Gull, and then a few minutes later the entire flock took of, swirling down the river. During this little flight I managed to get brief looks at the Black-headed Gull, and although they weren't as good as I would have liked, they were good enough to count this as my first ABA lifer of 2012! After a bit more searching I got a brief glimpse of the Black-legged Kittiwake before it dissolved back into the mass of Bonies. Since we were all frozen by this point we decided to head out.

The drive back was fairly interesting as gusting winds + truck with a cap on it = the truck wanting to go into the ditch! I did manage to get us to the Saltfleet flats in Hamilton for dusk though, where we watched as 10 Northern Harriers and 5 Red-tailed Hawks fought the intense winds and searched for their bedtime meal, and just after the sun set, a Short-eared Owl joined them. A nice way to end the day!

We ended up with ~50 species for the day, not bad considering the weather! Winds apparently gusted up to 104km/h in the Niagara region while we were there, which I could definitely believe!

A checklist a day

2012-01-25T19:42:00.000-05:00

One of my goals this year is to enter a checklist into eBird for every day of the year, meaning that by the end of the year I will have at least 365 checklists for 2012 (but probably far more than this), hopefully from numerous locations! Another goal (although this will be a bit more difficult as the year goes on) is to not enter a single 'X'! So far I have been doing well, but we aren't even a month in yet so we'll see how that holds up.

If you are wondering 'What's eBird?', I urge you to check out ebird.org (link on the sidebar)! It is a great website for entering and viewing data, and the fact that you can keep track of your lists (for free) is an added benefit! Since I am now officially a volunteer for eBird (reviewer for a few Ontario counties), I thought I'd do some advertising here.

I mostly bring this up as I have been encouraging birders in the Sault area to enter their sightings to eBird, and as Mike Burrell pointed out on his blog (link on the sidebar), Algoma has an abnormally high amount of checklists entered. In light of this, I'd just like to thank everyone who's entered checklists, and if you haven't yet, please do! Maybe we can get into the 'red zone' by next year.

Oh yeah, the quiz - please give it a shot! I'll put up the answer at the end of the month. My hint to you is that the best score so far is 2/4 (1/3 for people that don't like gulls).

Here is a picture of the Toronto skyline (from Jan. 7) to add some colour.

Uneventful

2012-01-19T20:27:00.004-05:00

That's probably the best word to describe my birding (or lack thereof) in the past little while! On Sunday, Emily and I went over to Hamilton (Bayfront Park) as a packing break to get her to 200 - a venture in which we succeeded with Ruddy Duck, Black-crowned Night-Heron and Cackling Goose. She's now in England for the next 6 months and has already seen two birds that would be lifers for me...

Anyway, some pics to keep you all interested - nothing too spectacular but always nice to get out in the sunshine!

PS - give the quiz below a shot! I'll give a hint on my next post.

This tame Northern Mockingbird greeted us

Showing off that nice wing pattern

Surprisingly my best cormorant photo...too bad he's missing some primaries!

A photographer stopped to let us know there was a Red-tailed Hawk sitting in a tree just up ahead...when we got there this is what we found - Black-crowned Night-Heron (juv)! I guess it looks hawk-like?

Common Merganser takeoff sequence

A nice male Hooded Merganser that wasn't too friendly

Most of a flock of 168 Ruddy Ducks

Quiz time

2012-01-13T18:28:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a month since I posted the Bird Song Quiz, and since it didn't fare so well, I'll try the more traditional photo quiz this time!

But first, the answer to the last one. First of all, thanks to Alvan for answering! The birds that I can hear in the background are White-throated Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Golden-crowned Kinglet and Magnolia Warbler. They are a little hard to hear over the Goldfinch though - maybe next time I will pick a species that doesn't sing so often!

So now for the quiz - since I am running out of 'good' quiz shots, here are some specks for you to try to ID! I think they should all be identifiable...

More Christmas Break (pics)

2012-01-09T20:37:00.000-05:00

Well, here's the photos, as promised - enjoy!

Red-necked Grebe (deceased) at Gros Cap

Gros Cap - it was pretty windy!

Dead mouse (deer mouse??) - I saw almost as many dead things at Gros Cap as alive.

Hermaphrodite-ish female Mallard - note green in head, dark lore, dark rump, sprays of whitish feathers along flank - on a side note, the bird from my other post turned out to be just a late bloomer - I saw the same male Mallard later in the break and he had filled in quite a few adult feathers!

American Black Duck x Mallard hybrid (green head, whitish feathers on flank, odd coloured rump)

As you can tell, I was quite proficient at finding dead birds that would be rare for the area in winter - this is a Double-crested Cormorant

Herman got right in there to fight for food!

Oh hey there.

A species I have surprisingly few 'good' photos of...Rock Pigeon

This Downy Woodpecker allowed me to approach within 3 feet - camera stops focusing at 4.5!

Cedar Waxwing at Dunbar Forest

A Red-winged Blackbird in January? What global warming? Note the three robins in background.

American Robin checking me out

Female Pine Grosbeak pigging out on berries

Her partner

Emily's shot of the Snowy Owl that she spotted (taken with my camera)

A real American Black Duck...none of that hybrid business

Another shot of Herman, just because...

White-throated Sparrow - another late lingerer

The famous Mountain Bluebird in Puslinch, and her Eastern companion

Looking for bugs - they were quite tame, actually flying closer to me!

Some Wild Turkeys I found while driving the backroads

Christmas Break...

2012-01-08T14:52:00.001-05:00

...is now over as I am headed back to school tomorrow. As you can probably tell from the lack of posts, it was quite busy so I'll sum it up here! Photos to be added soon (once I get them all uploaded and edited...).

I got home on the 16th and did the annual Christmas Bird Count, as mentioned in a previous post. I then managed to get out birding a few times (one trip to WPBO, highlight: Chipping Sparrow) before my grandparents came over on the 23, and the next 4-5 days were mostly spent with the family. On the 26, a female Varied Thrush turned up at a feeder on the outskirts of town, so on the morning of the 27th I went out to see it. I did manage to get some decent views of it skulking around the bottom of a spruce tree, but unfortunately it didn't stick around so I didn't get any pics of it! On the 31 my girlfriend came up to spend a week in the Sault, and we managed to get out birding a fair amount in between exploring the Sault, skiing, and visiting with friends and family. Then on the 6th it was pack up and go, as my brother joined us on the long drive back to Southern Ontario, where we spent the night in Oakville before heading to Toronto for the day on the 7th. As expected, there wasn't much in the way of bird life in the big city but it was a pretty good day nonetheless. Then, just this morning, I finally got out to see the Mountain Bluebird that was reported from south of Guelph while I was up in the Sault. A very nice bird and my first new ON bird of the year!

Rare birds for winter in the Sault that I saw/found (total of 65 species while I was home!!!):

Canada Goose

Mute Swan

Trumpeter Swan

Wood Duck

Gadwall

American Wigeon

Long-tailed Duck

Bufflehead

Red-breasted Merganser

Common Loon

Merlin

Great Horned Owl

Red-bellied Woodpecker

American Robin

Varied Thrush

Lapland Longspur (new for my winter list)

Chipping Sparrow (new for my winter list)

White-throated Sparrow (new for my winter list)

Red-winged Blackbird (new for my winter list)

House Sparrow

As you can tell it's been a good winter for lingering birds!

Other highlights:

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Thayer's Gull (nice adult)

Snowy Owl

Bohemian Waxwing

almost all the winter finches including Hoary Redpoll

2011

2011-12-31T14:30:00.002-05:00

Since it is the last day of the year and I have no further birding plans until tomorrow, I think it is safe to make this post (although I'm still hoping something rare turns up in the next...3 hours)!

January: I got the year off to a good start with a few solid days of birding and photography whilst at home in the Sault, with some highlights of a surprising 47 species being Harlequin Duck, Hoary Redpoll, Golden Eagle, Gray Catbird, White-crowned Sparrow and Red-shouldered Hawk. After that it was back to school where I picked up a few odds and ends around Guelph and Hamilton with a Dunlin being the most surprising bird. My year list at the end of January stood at 71.

February: One of the definite highlights of my year was a reading week trip to California and Arizona with Josh, Brett and Matt - 9 days of hardcore birding around 5000km of southwestern scenery. We managed to rack up a pretty amazing 260 species for the trip! More details can be seen in earlier posts! Another highlight was my girlfriend Emily whom I have not quite converted into a birder...her life list is up to 189 though! 287 on the year list.

March was a pretty uneventful month, just getting through school and trying to find summer jobs pretty much! I did manage to get a few decent pictures of an American Woodcock though which was cool. 292 on the year list.

April: The end of my second year at UoGuelph was nice, and getting back home was even better. The highlight was an owl route done with Ken McIlwrick where we managed 6 species of owls including Boreal. 302 on the year list.

May was a flurry of activity for me, as I was out birding/biking almost every day, and at the same time trying to find a summer job! I had some success in all three ventures, managing over 250km on the bike (just around town), a few rarities (Western Meadowlark, Eared Grebe, Field Sparrow, Golden-winged Warbler, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher) as well as some good local birds (Sedge Wren, Black Tern, Le Conte's Sparrow, Wood Thrush), and scoring a job with Bird Studies Canada which will be summed up in the next few paragraphs. I also did my annual Big Day, coming up just shy of the record with 146 species. Another thing I really got into this spring was yard birding (aka sitting on the deck/roof in a lawn chair with binoculars!). I managed to add a solid 20 species to the yard list this way, cleaning up a few more of the regulars and bringing me up to Kirk's total for (possibly?) highest SSM yard list. At the end of May it was off to Long Point to begin my summer fun of birding, banding and working. 376 on the year list.

June: Once I settled in to work I managed to get out for a few mornings to help with the bird banding at Old Cut, and after a few days of training got to band my first bird: a Black-billed Cuckoo, which many of the long-time banders were very jealous of! Later in the month a Willow Ptarmigan showed up at the Darlington nuclear plant, and a few of us headed over to see it. My first lifer in Ontario for the year! The rest of the month was mostly spent working, which wasn't too bad considering I was outside on the water almost every day! 385 on the year list.

July: My 20th birthday, a Prairie Warbler (new for ON) and a trip to Sudbury to visit family and celebrate various birthdays were the highlights of this month! 388 on the year list.

August: The start of shorebird season, the end of work, a trip to Emily's cottage and getting to spend a week with the Young Ornithologist Workshop participants at Long Point were the highlights of the month. I was somewhat disappointed to be leaving Long Point just as the banding was picking up again but I was happy to be headed home for a little while before school started. While at home I made what was to be my only visit to Whitefish Point during the fall season, picking up a Piping Plover. 391 on the year list.

September was the beginning of my third year at Guelph, and also the beginning of a series of trips to Hamilton to add birds to my Ontario list! Success was had with White-rumped Sandpiper and both Long-tailed and Parasitic Jaegers. 395 on the year list.

October is always a good month for vagrants, and this year was no different, however most of them were in the wrong place (midwest USA instead of Ontario)! I did manage to see a few though, with Purple Gallinule, Northern Gannet and Yellow-headed Blackbird, also added Hudsonian Godwit, Nelson's Sparrow and Pomarine Jaeger to the ON list. I also made it down to Cambridge for a few weekends of banding with Brett Fried, adding quite a number of birds to my banded list and bringing my total number of individual birds handled to over 500. Well on my way to a banding license of my own! 401 on the year list.

November was mostly a quiet month with a few birding trips to Niagara (Razorbill), Long Point (Cattle Egret and held a Northern Goshawk), and Niagara again with the Wildlife Club (Franklin's Gull, Razorbill again). 406 on the year list.

December: exams, Snowy Owl, exams, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Slaty-backed Gull, the long drive home, Christmas with family, Varied Thrush...it's all so recent and yet soon it will be in a different year! 410 on the year list.

So there you have it, my 2011 in a rather large nutshell. I was lucky to manage a sweet birding trip, an awesome summer birding job, and a nice fall interspersed with birding adventures to make the long, gray days go by a little faster. I was also happy to add 17 birds to my ON list and 19 to my lifelist including 4 in Ontario - the most I've gotten in several years. My updated listing totals can be found on my website, along with some more photos (see link on the sidebar)!!!

Happy New Year's everyone!

Back in the Sault

2011-12-19T17:13:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again - exams are over and winter is (supposed to be) setting in. This year, however, things are still pretty green! I arrived home in the Sault on December 16, and on the 17th was leading my route for the annual Christmas Bird Count. My route includes a fair stretch of the St. Mary's River and a few woodlots among the many houses, and is normally one of the most productive routes on the count in terms of diversity. This year was to be no different, and after all was said and done I managed to turn up 39 species - a new single-route record for the Sault! (previous record was 37, on this same route) Some highlights were Common Loon, Red-breasted Merganser, Hooded Merganser, Canada Goose, Mute Swan, Hoary Redpoll, Bohemian and Cedar Waxwings, House Sparrow (yes, that is a highlight up here...), Dark-eyed Junco, American Tree Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, White-winged Crossbill and Snowy Owl! Seems like most of the birds I saw were highlights!

The next day I decided to get out for a few hours to see what else I could turn up. My original intention was to do a clean sweep of the waterfront, but I never made it out of my first stop at Whitefish Island! There were a few highlights here as you've probably guessed, the first of which came when I stopped to photograph a pair of Common Ravens (which I have not managed to get a picture of before apparently...). After a minute of taking pictures, they took off and made a few half-hearted dives toward the ground nearby. Interesting, I thought - maybe there is a Snowy Owl sitting there. I slowly walked over, and stopped when I got to the spot where they had been diving. There was nothing there, or so I thought until something huge and brown exploded out from behind a shrub. Great Horned Owl!!!! #194 for my Whitefish Island list and a great winter bird for the Sault. It landed not too far away, and the two Ravens were immediately harassing it. As I watched, they made a few passes at the owl before the owl got fed up and attacked back! The Ravens eventually left it alone for a while and I watched as it managed to catch some small creature and then settled down for a nap. I managed to show it to a few passers-by as well as my parents before I had to move on. The owl was still there an hour or so later when Kirk went to see it.

One of the Common Ravens

Great Horned Owl, fresh out of the shrub

Ravens harassing the owl

The owl fights back!

Just after catching a meal

Sleepy owl

I continued on my route around the island, managing to find the resident Wood Duck for the winter list, some Black Ducks, Glaucous, Thayer's and Great Black-backed Gulls, White-throated Sparrow, American Robin and both species of Redpoll. On the way back to the car, I spotted one of the resident Red Foxes near the feeders. A family was sitting there feeding the chickadees, and when they moved off a bit the foxes surprisingly came in to the feeder and started eating sunflower seeds that had been scattered on the ground! I managed to get into a pretty good position, lying on the snow near the seed. The foxes eventually warmed up to me and came in quite close, not bothered by the constant clicking of the shutter. After about half an hour, I was getting cold and slowly got up and left - the foxes barely even flinched as I walked away! Definitely a good welcome home.

The Chickadees are quite tame, looking for handouts

Herman

Interesting Mallard...hermaphrodite maybe?

Black Ducks stand out pretty well amongst the Mallards

My first view of the fox

After a minute or two they came right in!

The second fox was quite shy, but after about 15 minutes it came in as well

This was about 7 feet from where I was laying!

Taken at 70mm to show how close I was!

Yummm...sunflower seeds...

In all my years of going to the Locks, this is the first time I've gotten within 50 feet of the foxes - usually I just catch glimpses of them running away, or see them sitting out on the paths!

A 'Gray' day indeed

2011-12-15T22:35:00.000-05:00

Emily had her last exam this morning, and we had made plans to go to Niagara Falls afterwards to find some year-end birds. That plan was complicated somewhat when the weather forecast called for light rain all day, and even more when a Black-throated Gray Warbler decided to show up not 45 minutes away in Hamilton! We decided to do both, and were off at 1045 after her exam ended. By about noon, we were looking at the warbler, and it wasn't even raining...bonus! It was flitting around in the shrubs with a few chickadees and a very late Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. About a minute after we showed up and got to see it, the warbler promptly disappeared...and didn't return in the 45 minutes we waited for it. Oh well, I thought, we saw it - on to the Falls! Along the way the rain went from light drizzle to full-on downpour, but by the time we made it to the control gates all was calm (except for the wind, of course). There were very few gulls up top, and I started to worry about not finding our target. My worries were unfounded, however, when I spotted the bird in question - an adult Slaty-backed Gull sitting on a log way out in the river, with some Herring, Lesser Black-backed, Great Black-backed and Ring-billed Gulls around it for comparison. As I watched, it stretched it's wings several times, revealing the telltale 'string of pearls'. Lifer! We then made our way down the river toward Dufferin Islands where we'd parked, but halfway there the sky opened up and we were both instantly soaked as we ran back to the truck. After a while, it let up a bit and we spent some time looking for Purple Sandpipers on their usual rocks, once again without luck. I am now comfortable calling this my Ontario nemesis as I have tried 20+ times in season with no luck! Maybe I'll have to make the trek up to Presqu'ile one of these days... An adult California Gull sitting in with a flock of Ring-billed was the consolation prize. We then made our way down the river, stopping at the Whirlpool and Adam Beck on our way to Niagara-on-the-Lake for the evening flypast. We managed to miss the Kittiwake and Franklin's Gull but had all the other regulars at the two spots. An amazing sight at Adam Beck was a massive flock of European Starlings - easily over 50 000 individuals - streaming past, undulating as they went and forming a massive ball and then breaking up into a stream again. This went on for about 5 solid minutes as we watched in amazement. If you go to Youtube and type in 'murmuration' you will know what I'm talking about. Niagara-on-the-Lake was pretty quiet, with a few White-winged Scoters keeping us company as we sorted through thousands of Bonaparte's Gulls, managing to pick out a single adult Little in with a flock. A Tufted Titmouse also made a brief stop-in, probably wondering what kind of food we had. Our day ended with 11 species of gulls, 2 new Ontario birds for me, one of which was a lifer to boot! All in all a good way to end the school year!

Winter birding

2011-12-15T08:04:00.001-05:00

Winter is quite unlike any other season, and usually lacking in the numbers and diversity of birdlife, but it can still be fun and interesting! As I mentioned in the other post, Emily and I went out around Guelph on December 2, turning up a few good birds. On December 5, Josh joined us in a chase for an adult Black-legged Kittiwake that was found up at Guelph Lake. We didn't have any luck with that, but did turn up some Golden-crowned Kinglets and Wood Ducks. Then on December 7, an adult male Snowy Owl was reported not 5 minutes away from my house! It proved to be a nice study break as it sat nonchalantly on a telephone pole and barely gave us a second glance. On December 10, I celebrated being done 4 of my 5 exams with an outing around southern Wellington County. Emily and I managed to find a few good birds, such as Lesser Black-backed, Glaucous, Iceland and Bonaparte's Gulls, Mute Swan, Common Raven, Ruffed Grouse and a Rough-legged Hawk. A possible Lark Sparrow was reported late that day, so Josh and I took a short study break on the 11th to go look for it, without luck. We did find a Horned Lark and a probable Turkey Vulture, however. My winter list sits at 59 now, although the only reason I know this is that eBird keeps track for me!

As a side note, my feeders have been fairly active (for me, at least!) over the past little while - max numbers:

Dark-eyed Junco - 10+
Northern Cardinal - 3
Black-capped Chickadee - 5+
American Goldfinch - 2
House Finch - 2
House Sparrow - 2
Red-breasted Nuthatch - 1
Sharp-shinned Hawk - 2 individuals - neither managed to catch anything

Considering I just have a small hopper feeder and some seed spread on the deck, I'd say that's not too shabby!

Snowy Owl, 5 minutes from home!

Northern Cardinal at the feeder - through a dirty window

Bird Song Quiz

2011-12-13T17:05:00.001-05:00

Alvan Buckley recently started posting some bird song quizzes up on his blog (link on the sidebar, go check it out!) so I thought I'd post one up as well. The challenge is to identify all of the birds singing in the background!

I will stick to birds found in Ontario - for now...

Website

2011-12-03T15:57:00.001-05:00

My bird photos website is back up and running for the first time in a long time - go check it out at http://ontariobirds.webs.com! It features 411 of the 433 species currently on my 'ABA photo'd' list - which I just started...

On a side note, Emily and I went birding around Guelph for a couple hours yesterday morning, had some good birds with Pine Grosbeak, Purple Finch, Canvasback and a flock of 150+ Pine Siskins. Let the winter birding begin!

Niagara

2011-11-29T17:33:00.001-05:00

Well this is a little late! On Saturday (the 26th), Brett, Erika, Emily and I joined the Guelph Wildlife Club for a day of Niagara gullwatching. Josh made a pretty good post on his blog (see sidebar - Ontario birds&herps) so I'll just go over the highlights here!

American White Pelican - a late juvenile at Jack Custer's Bird Sanctuary
Razorbill - much better looks than I got back on the 10th!
9 species of gull - 1st-winter Franklin's was the highlight (only my 2nd in Ontario)
Pomarine Jaeger (intermediate juvenile) - came cruising in from way off the lake to harass Bonaparte's Gulls as they flew out to the lake to roost! Gave several nice flyby's and chased the gulls around right out in front of us, managing to make at least one Bonie spit up its supper. I'm pretty sure this is the same bird as in Brandon's video (peregrineprints blog on sidebar) chasing gulls at Adam Beck!

We managed to miss the reported Glaucous and California Gulls and the Kittiwake which would have made 12 gull sp. for the day. The long-staying Black Vultures were also missed unfortunately!

Pelican at Jack Custer's

Pom. Jaeger harassing a Bonie - if you look closely you can see the fish that the Bonie spit up!

Landing to claim its prize

Settling on the Water

Weekend birding

2011-11-14T18:59:00.001-05:00

As Josh mentioned in his post the other day, back on November 10 him and I headed over to the Niagara area to look for a Razorbill that had been reported in New York 2 days previously. After a bit of searching (finding quite a few waterbirds), Josh spotted the Razorbill flying into Ontario waters! We got some good looks at this rarity before it dove to avoid a boat and we were unable to refind it. Lifer! We then spent a fair amount of time searching for a Franklin's Gull and Purple Sandpiper without luck...next time.

Friday night, Emily and I headed down to Long Point to meet up with Keelin and Sarah, my coworkers from the summer, for some owl banding. We managed to arrive just as they were releasing a Saw-whet (they had also caught a Screech-Owl earlier) which was to be the only owl we saw all night unfortunately. The next morning I was up early to help with banding, which was pretty slow due to the winds (managed to band 2 Fox Sparrows though!). Once the others got up, we went for a walk to the Provincial Park, which was cut short when I received a text from Ross saying 'Nogo in the lab, want us to hold it?'. YES! was pretty much my response, and we booked it back to Old Cut just in time to get some looks at this awesome bird (NOGO is Northern Goshawk for anyone not familiar with banding codes!). The pics below pretty much speak for themselves.

Afterward we packed up our stuff due to the lack of birds, and headed out via Big Creek and BSC headquarters. Lots of ducks, swans and coots around along with a Little Gull joining a flock of ~250 Bonaparte's out in the bay. Many hunters also so most ducks were too far out to ID! We then headed off down Lakeshore Rd. on a tip from Ross, where we found 2 Cattle Egrets right where he said they'd be - #307 for my Ontario list! Then it was time to head back to Guelph - an almost pure white Red-tailed Hawk along the 401 was pretty cool to see.

That's all for now, hopefully some of those rarities that are showing up out west will make their way over here! Lucy's Warbler at Whitefish Point, crazy!

Photos

2011-11-09T09:59:00.001-05:00

As promised, here are my better photos from the last little while. There aren't that many as the weather was pretty bad most days I went out! (or I left my camera in the car...)

Me and my first banded Saw-whet Owl! (B&W due to light problems I couldn't fix...)

A nice 'Red' Fox Sparrow

Young Clay-colored Sparrow

Brant at Spencer Smith Park in Burlington

Recently...

2011-11-07T13:10:00.003-05:00

I have been fairly busy with school, but have managed to get out birding most weekends since my last post from Long Point! It's been fairly slow in terms of rarities but good nonetheless.

October 19 Josh and I headed over to Van Wagner's Beach to pick up some birds on the strong NE winds. We had some luck with all 3 species of jaegers giving fairly good views, Pomarine was a new addition to my Ontario list! Another nice bonus for the day was an adult Little Gull in with a flock of Bonaparte's, fairly rare in the Hamilton area as far as I know.

October 22/23 I went down to Cambridge to do some banding with Brett, and had a good time as usual. As soon as we got there Brett said to me, "I have a present for you! Careful when you stick your hand in there." Oh man it's going to be something good! Sure enough, I pulled out a Northern Saw-whet Owl, definitely the highlight of the weekend. Other than that we had a fairly successful weekend with 10 species of sparrows (including Clay-colored) out of around 22 species total banded.

October 28 Emily and I went over to Hamilton, unfortunately in very nice weather, to see what was around. Not a whole lot, it turned out, but we did get some great views of Black Scoters from Gray's Rd and another addition to my Ontario list - Northern Gannet.

Yesterday, Josh Vandermeulen and I met up with Mark Dorriesfield, Reuven Martin and Matt Strimas to head to Hamilton for the Fall Bird Count. Our route included LaSalle marina up the bay to the Skyway and Windermere Basin. There weren't many highlights in our area other than a lot of ducks! After we finished the route we did some extra birding, picking up a Brant at Spencer Smith, a flock of 9 Red-throated Loons close to shore at Van Wagner's and a cooperative Northern Saw-whet Owl at Fifty Point (unfortunately my camera was in the car, so only photos were phone-scoped...next time!). While we sat and quietly watched the Saw-whet, it coughed up a pellet! Cool to see, but we were unable to find the pellet so we could see what it had eaten. On the way back to Guelph after this rather long day we stopped at Mountsberg Conservation Area, where a bit of scoping turned up a massive flock of coots along with several duck species and some late Greater Yellowlegs. Our duck total for the day came to 23 species (out of a possible 24 regulars - missed Blue-winged Teal) - add in 2 geese, 2 swans, 3 grebes and 2 loons and it was a waterbird-filled day! Our total species list was somewhere around 75, not bad for a sunny November day.

Anyway, that's all for now, I'll post some pictures in the next couple days!

Quiz answer - quick post

2011-10-27T15:09:00.001-04:00

I know, I know - no quiz last week, I'm a slacker...I couldn't find anything good to post, maybe tomorrow there will be another quiz?

Thanks to Dwayne Murphy for being the only person to comment on the quiz (on the blog at least)! C'mon people - was it that intimidating?

So, to the answer... The bird is clearly an Empidonax flycatcher, the bane of most birders (due to shape, size, posture, etc). Since it has a yellowish brown underside, we can quickly rule out most of the empids! This leaves Acadian, Yellow-bellied, Pacific-slope, Cordilleran, Buff-breasted and Dusky. The eye-crescent (teardrop-shaped instead of rounded as in an eyering) allows us to eliminate Yellow-bellied and Acadian. Since this bird has orange wingbars (no that is not a trick of the light!), Dusky is eliminated (only yellow in the winter).

That leaves us with Buff-breasted and the two 'Western' flycatchers. Since this bird is not very 'buffy' on the underside, and not in a high-elevation pine forest, it's a Western. This is further split into Pacific-slope (which is the quiz bird!!!) and Cordilleran, but since they are very difficult to tell without a call I would accept either answer.

Congrats to Brett Fried and Josh Vandermeulen for both getting "Western" Flycatcher.

Long Point adventure

2011-10-17T12:24:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, Brett Fried, Myles Falconer and I braved the wild weather and birded the Long Point area, including Turkey Point, BSC HQ and the inner bay, Big Creek marsh, Old Cut and Long Point Provincial Park. Despite the 90+ km/h winds and frequent rain storms (including a little bit of lightning very early on!), we managed to find 74 species including a few rarities. First and foremost was the female Yellow-headed Blackbird that flew by us at Big Creek - new for my Ontario list! Old Cut and the park held the rest of the rarities, including extremely late Eastern Kingbirds, Black-and-white Warblers, Black-throated Blue Warblers and a Cape May Warbler along with 5 other species of warbler. Yellow-rumps made up the majority of the birds we found, easily over 1000 of these guys finding shelter from the wind and feeding. In with them were many of the expected migrants (Winter Wren, Hermit Thrush, both Kinglets, Brown Creeper, several sparrow sp, etc) but no mega-rarities as we were hoping. The inner bay was also loaded with birds keeping out of the wind, most were too far out to ID though. We did find a good flock of Bonaparte's Gulls, some Pied-billed Grebes, a lone juvenile Caspian Tern and quite a few ducks, although apparently less than is usual for this time of year according to Myles and Brett. Anyway, it was a pretty good day despite the weather and lack of mega-birds but there is still plenty of time for something to turn up on these winds!

If you're wondering about the two new additions to my blog (namely the little birds that perch on either side of the logo), they're for a cool competition that Audubon is hosting via Facebook. Unfortunately, living in Canada, I am not eligible for prizes but it is still fun to try to find them all! Go give it a shot if you want, there are currently 15+ species out there to find!

Also, answer the quiz! I've only received one comment so far!

Quiz Answers - and a new quiz!

2011-10-16T17:58:00.002-04:00

Well, last week's quiz didn't get as many comments as I'd hoped, but I'm putting up another one anyway! I'm going to put up a weekly quiz for the next little while to see how it goes, I'll try to get them up on Friday and then the answers will be released with the next quiz (on the next Friday). Good luck!

Congrats to Brandon Holden for getting all 3 right on the last quiz, and to Dwayne Murphy for getting two!

The answers: Orange-crowned Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. The gnatcatcher is in the bottom right quarter of the photo, blurred out!

Banding this weekend...plus a bonus!

2011-10-11T19:14:00.000-04:00

I know I said this would be up yesterday, but things didn't quite go as planned (in a good way!).

Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings I joined Brett Fried (along with his girlfriend Erika on two days) for some bird banding at Springbank Park (also known as RARE). We had a pretty good time and banded 236 birds (141, 80, 15 were the daily totals), most of which were goldfinches but we had about 17 other species to keep things interesting. 12 of them were new for my banding totals, putting me up to 58 species! Definite highlights were Rusty Blackbird, Brown Creeper, Northern Flicker and 7 species of sparrow.

On Monday Brett and I packed up banding early, partly due to the slow day and partly because we wanted to get over to Port Weller, where a Purple Gallinule had been found! After helping to move a shed and picking Erika up we headed out and got to Port Weller in the early afternoon, right when the day was at it's hottest. Once we got to the pond, we didn't have to wait long before somebody spotted the bird, and after a short walk we had it in the scope. Lifer! My first one since June too, quite the Thanksgiving bonus. It was much too far for any kind of decent pic but at least the scope views were good. It was also in juvenile plumage - guess I'll just have to head south at some point to see an adult!

Also - comments on the quiz are published, I won't say whether they're right or wrong but feel free to add your own!!!!

Emily and Brett with a mound of birds on Saturday

Rusty Blackbird!!!! (female, Brett banded a nice male in the next net run)

Field Sparrow

Northern Flicker "intergrade" Red x Yellow-shafted

"Western" Palm Warbler

Lincoln's Sparrow - the softest bird I've ever held

Chickadees are feisty little buggers

Distant Purple Gallinule in Port Weller!!!!

In search of Nelson's

2011-10-08T18:20:00.003-04:00

Well, I hadn't been out in a while so I decided that since I don't have too much work to do, I'd go birding this weekend. My girlfriend and I joined Brett, Erika and Julian at RARE this morning for some banding, which I will go into more detail on tomorrow, as I plan on going again in the morning! Afterward, we all piled into Brett's car and headed over to Hamilton, mainly to look for the Nelson's Sparrows that have been reported recently. We managed to get to the spot just as another group was preparing to head out into the marsh, and it turned out to be Anthony Miller and Tom Thomas leading the group, two friends of mine. So, we joined up with them and headed off into the willows. After a bit of a hike we got to the more marshy spot where the Nelson's like to hang out, and after some searching we eventually got a look at one.

Typical look at a Nelson's Sparrow...

It was a lifer for most people in the group (I'd seen them previously in MB and NC), but it was still special as it was my 300th bird for Ontario! Yes, I know some people see 300 in Ontario in one year but I don't put in that kind of effort... After getting the Nelson's we continued on to check the mudflats, and sure enough the previously reported Hudsonian Godwits were there, poking away in the shallows. Unfortunately they were too far out for any kind of decent pic, but good scope views were had. Hudwit was also new for my Ontario list, making today my first two-bird day since December last year, and was also the 40th bird I've added to my list since getting to university a little over 2 years ago! It also happened to be my 250th bird for Ontario this year. Milestones all around today apparently.

Also, have a try at the quiz posted yesterday! It isn't a trick, I promise! I've only had one comment so far, I'll publish that and any others I receive on October 10th and post the quiz answers sometime after that.

Quiz 7

2011-10-07T11:03:00.000-04:00

My last quiz on here was posted in May 2009, and with the recent eBird fall quiz and Brandon Holden's quiz (Peregrine Prints on the sidebar), I've decided to post one of my own! These were all taken in Ontario this spring. If you can find the bird in the last one it shouldn't be too difficult!

Thanks

2011-10-05T21:58:00.002-04:00

Well, in the last 2 days my total pageviews counter passed 10,000 hits and my unique visitors list topped 5,000 - so thanks for all your views and comments!

Macro

2011-10-03T10:03:00.000-04:00

In the last 2 years I've gotten more into macro photography - not just of bugs really but anything small (bugs just happen to be the easiest thing to find most days!). Unfortunately, I don't have a macro lens! So, I've had to make due with what I've got. (note: some of you may have seen these before on Facebook!). The first eight are from this summer, the last 4 are from last year.

Fruit flies in my kitchen

Thumbnail-sized mushroom in the yard

Bee

White-faced Meadowhawk

Crane Fly

Cool spider

Green weevil of some sort

Fly sp.

'Red Rocket' flower

Water drops

Ok, so the water drops aren't really 'macro' when compared with the other photos, but it's still cool. It also wasn't taken with the same technique as I'm about to explain!

So, how did I get these without a macro lens you ask? Simple, really. I borrowed my mom's old manual-focus 50mm f/1.8 that she bought back in the 80's (which you can get for around $80 now), opened it all the way up and held it up backwards to either my 70-300 (last 3 macros) or my 18-55 (first 8) hooked up to my D2Xs, which I also hand-held. If this sounds like a lot of hand-holding, it is! Making sure the lenses line up perfectly while manually focusing on something smaller than your pinky fingernail with a depth-of-field of about 1mm isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world, but when it works out, you can get some great results! My 18-55 at 55mm backwards to the 50mm provided about a 45x zoom, as measured using the fruit fly. If you use a larger lens (like the 70-300), you will get a higher magnification, but a very tiny depth of field! (and fewer good results). This also works with any sort of magnifying device - if you even have a magnifying glass, your minimum focusing distance will be reduced enough to get some cool shots with a 300mm!

Summer

2011-09-25T13:49:00.005-04:00

Well, since I never did post an update on how my summer went/what I did, here goes.

I finished up my second year at Guelph in late April and headed back to the Sault where I managed to get out birding 22 of the 29 days I was home...pretty impressive! I spent a lot of time biking the new Hub Trail (a 24-km circuit around the city) which happens to connect up with almost all the good birding locations in town. I also managed to spend a bit of time hawkwatching from my roof, hoping for more rarities (no luck on that but did add 20 species to the yard list!). My annual Big Day was done on May 21, and I actually managed to stay awake the whole day despite only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before. I ended up with a total of 146 species for the day, just 2 short of my record.

I also managed to get a few good birds whilst at home - I found a Field Sparrow and a Western Meadowlark and went to see Eared Grebe and a nice male Golden-winged Warbler, all of which were new for my Algoma list. Of course, not all my time at home was spent birding but I definitely made up for a fairly birdless semester!

At the end of May I packed my bags once again and headed south to start my job as a Research Technician for Bird Studies Canada, working on the Species at Risk project - mainly on Bank Swallows. I lived at the Old Cut station of Long Point Bird Observatory with other staff and volunteers, and it turned out to be a great time! I met a lot of cool people and even got to band some birds after a bit of training.

In early June a Willow Ptarmigan turned up over at the Darlington Nuclear Plant, and with Brett driving a few of us went up to see it (along with 150 other birders who'd also made the trip!). It was a pretty cool bird, fairly tame and almost in full summer plumage, and a lifer for me! The only thing was we had to be bussed out to the site, escorted by armed guards as the nuclear plant is a highly protected area. This turned out to be the first one in the area since 1897, and the first in Southern Ontario for 40-50 years!

Willow Ptarmigan in Darlington

The rest of my summer was spent working, mostly in the field but with some days spent in the office. We did a lot of boat trips to survey for swallow colonies along Lake Erie, boating from Point Pelee all the way up to Rock Point on various days when the weather was nice. We also did a few canoe trips, canoeing the Grand River from Cambridge - Paris and 17km of Big Otter Creek along with some in Lake Erie itself. On days where there wasn't much to do we helped out on other SAR projects, mostly with Hooded Warblers but also on Acadian Flycatchers, Least Bitterns, Chimney Swifts and Louisiana Waterthrushes. I spent most of my weekends in Guelph, but also went up to Sudbury to celebrate various birthdays including my own (20th!) and up to my girlfriend's cottage near Algonquin Park for the August long weekend. I also added my 297th Ontario bird in July, a singing male Prairie Warbler near Flamborough on a Monday morning before work!

Once banding started up again in late August I spent most mornings at the station before work, and decided to stay on my last weekend to band. Some highlights of the 45 species I banded were Eastern Whip-poor-will, American Woodcock, Black-billed Cuckoo (first banded bird for me!) and Belted Kingfisher along with 13 species of warblers (and some Bank Swallows, of course!).

Since I have far too many photos to post on here, check out my Facebook album at http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.344243349985.50786.509764985&l=be0024124e&type=1!

Sanderlings...

2011-09-19T16:17:00.003-04:00

...definitely make good photo subjects when you're bored! They are usually quite tame (especially the juveniles) and if you sit still they can approach to within arm's reach. This was the case when I headed over to Whitefish Point back on August 31 with my mom during my short week at home before school started. I was hoping for a decent birding/photography day and to see my old friend Scott Schuette who is once again the waterbird counter - see his blog at wpbo.org! (link in the sidebar as well). It turned out that he was on his day off and so wasn't around, but it was a pretty good day nonetheless. In terms of waterbirds the day was pretty crappy, with only a few loons, grebes and mergansers in that department. Early in the morning there was a flock of ~90 shorebirds on the point, including Piping Plover, Baird's Sandpiper and Ruddy Turnstone along with a few more common species. Since the lighting was terrible and there wasn't anything else around, we decided to walk around the woods where we had a decent diversity of songbirds including about 30 Blackpoll Warblers!

Once the light got a bit better we headed back out to the tip but it turned out a Merlin had come and scared off all the shorebirds (except for the Sanderlings). Since there wasn't a whole lot else to do, I took the opportunity to get a few shots of these cool little birds. They're down at the end!

As the point wasn't too rocking, we left and spent a while looking (unsuccessfully, as usual) for Spruce Grouse. Since we still had quite a bit of time we explored the area just south of the Tahquamenon Rivermouth, which turned out to be a good idea other than the swarms of mosquitos which were still present. We stumbled into a nice little mixed flock which had about 10 species of warblers along with Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Winter Wren, Golden-crowned Kinglets and a few Red-eyed Vireos. We also managed to find Lone Pine Rd, usually a good shorebird spot but the water was much too high so there was nothing there. Our warbler tally for the day ended up at 16 species, not too shabby for a short morning of birding!

Sanderlings, WPBO - note most of these are uncropped!

and the ones that are have minimal cropping

I was so disappointed that the wingtip got cut off in this one...I think it still works though

One last closeup (not cropped!)

Some stuff

2011-09-18T19:58:00.001-04:00

Well, I'm determined to get more posts on here than last year, even if they are somewhat spread out! I'll start with the most recent and work my way backward through the summer.

I got back to Guelph to start my third year on September 4th, and managed to get over to Hamilton 3 times in the following week before classes and work started piling up. This turned out to be a good decision on my part as I added 3 new birds to my Ontario list, being White-rumped Sandpiper, Parasitic Jaeger and Long-tailed Jaeger (in that order). I was hoping to score a phalarope as well to make one of the jaegers my 300th Ontario bird but that was not to be and I'm currently sitting at 299.

In addition to these I also managed to see a fair number and variety of shorebirds and catch up with Josh and Brett (from the California trip that was my last post!) whom I hadn't seen for a while. Among the 16 species, covering pretty much all the regulars, were Stilt Sandpiper, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Wilson's Phalarope and the aforementioned White-rumped.

I've also managed to close in on some goals I've set recently that should be easy to achieve - being 250 species for the year in Ontario (currently at 248) and 400 for the year in the ABA (currently at 395). Still some easy ones to go!

I'll leave you for now with some (distant) shots. More to come in the near future.

Least and White-rumped Sandpipers with a Semipalmated Plover

Parasitic Jaegers, Van Wagner's Beach (Hamilton)

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Ten

2011-06-19T17:35:00.005-04:00

Our last morning in California, we decided to get up early (what a surprise!) and drive across the city to Huntington Park where some Spotted Doves had been seen recently. The traffic was pretty bad and the neighbourhoods sketchy but we eventually made it to the park, where we found about 15 Spotted Doves within a 2-minute walk from the van! Well, that was easy.

Spotted Dove

We then got out of there and headed to the airport after a quick breakfast to dump the rental car and catch our flights. It was a pretty amazing trip, not just for the birds either! Great times were had despite the lack of sleep and food at times, and the amount of time we spent sitting in the van. We ended up putting 5000km on the rental van, something that the rental company probably wasn't too happy with! Considering we only had eight full days down there that's quite a bit of driving but it was well worth it as we ended up with 260 species! Pretty good for a short trip in February eh? 210 of these were in California and 135 in Arizona.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the report even if it was a little late and spread out! I'll post some stuff about what I've been up to since early May next weekend - don't have a lot of internet access at work.

Here's the trip list, lifers for me (15) are in bold:

Greater White-fronted Goose
Snow Goose
Ross's Goose
Brant
Canada Goose
Tundra Swan
Gadwall
American Wigeon
Mallard
Blue-winged Teal
Cinnamon Teal
Northern Shoveler
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Canvasback
Redhead
Ring-necked Duck
Greater Scaup
Lesser Scaup
Surf Scoter
Bufflehead
Common Goldeneye
Common Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
Ruddy Duck
Scaled Quail
California Quail
Gambel's Quail
Red-throated Loon
Pacific Loon
Common Loon
Least Grebe
Pied-billed Grebe
Red-necked Grebe
Eared Grebe
Western Grebe
Clark's Grebe
American White Pelican
Brown Pelican
Brandt's Cormorant
Double-crested Cormorant
Pelagic Cormorant
American Bittern
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Cattle Egret
White-faced Ibis
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
White-tailed Kite
Bald Eagle
Northern Harrier
Sharp-shinned Hawk
Cooper's Hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Ferruginous Hawk
American Kestrel
Merlin
Peregrine Falcon
Prairie Falcon
Clapper Rail
Sora
Common Moorhen
American Coot
Sandhill Crane
Black-bellied Plover
Pacific Golden-Plover
Snowy Plover
Killdeer
Black Oystercatcher
Black-necked Stilt
American Avocet
Spotted Sandpiper
Wandering Tattler
Greater Yellowlegs
Willet
Lesser Yellowlegs
Whimbrel
Long-billed Curlew
Marbled Godwit
Ruddy Turnstone
Black Turnstone
Surfbird
Sanderling
Western Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Dunlin
Stilt Sandpiper
Short-billed Dowitcher
Long-billed Dowitcher
Wilson's Snipe
Bonaparte's Gull
Heermann's Gull
Mew Gull
Ring-billed Gull
California Gull
Herring Gull
Thayer's Gull
Yellow-footed Gull
Western Gull
Glaucous-winged Gull
Caspian Tern
Forster's Tern
Royal Tern
Black Skimmer
Pomarine Jaeger
Parasitic Jaeger
Common Murre
Pigeon Guillemot
Xantus's Murrelet
Ancient Murrelet
Cassin's Auklet
Rhinoceros Auklet
Rock Pigeon
Band-tailed Pigeon
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Spotted Dove
White-winged Dove
Mourning Dove
Inca Dove
Common Ground-Dove

Greater Roadrunner
Barn Owl
Western Screech-Owl
Whiskered Screech-Owl
Burrowing Owl
Short-eared Owl
Common Poorwill
White-throated Swift
Anna's Hummingbird
Costa's Hummingbird
Rufous Hummingbird
Allen's Hummingbird
Belted Kingfisher
Acorn Woodpecker
Gila Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Red-naped Sapsucker
Red-breasted Sapsucker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Nuttall's Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Arizona Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Gray Flycatcher

Hammond’s Flycatcher
Pacific-slope Flycatcher
Black Phoebe
Say's Phoebe
Vermilion Flycatcher
Ash-throated Flycatcher
Cassin's Kingbird
Thick-billed Kingbird
Loggerhead Shrike
Plumbeous Vireo
Cassin's Vireo
Hutton's Vireo
Steller's Jay
Island Scrub-Jay
Western Scrub-Jay
Mexican Jay
Yellow-billed Magpie
American Crow
Chihuahuan Raven
Common Raven
Horned Lark
Tree Swallow
Violet-green Swallow
Northern Rough-winged Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Barn Swallow
Mountain Chickadee
Mexican Chickadee
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Bridled Titmouse
Oak Titmouse
Juniper Titmouse
Verdin
Bushtit
White-breasted Nuthatch
Pygmy Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
Cactus Wren
Rock Wren
Canyon Wren
Bewick's Wren
House Wren
Winter Wren
Pacific Wren
Marsh Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
Black-tailed Gnatcatcher
Western Bluebird
Mountain Bluebird
Hermit Thrush
American Robin
Wrentit
Northern Mockingbird
Bendire's Thrasher
Curve-billed Thrasher
California Thrasher
Crissal Thrasher
Le Conte's Thrasher
European Starling
American Pipit
Cedar Waxwing
Phainopepla
Orange-crowned Warbler
Yellow Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Gray Warbler
Pine Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Hepatic Tanager
Green-tailed Towhee
Spotted Towhee
Canyon Towhee
California Towhee
Abert's Towhee
Rufous-crowned Sparrow
Chipping Sparrow
Brewer's Sparrow
Black-chinned Sparrow
Vesper Sparrow
Lark Sparrow
Black-throated Sparrow
Sage Sparrow
Lark Bunting
Savannah Sparrow
Grasshopper Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Lincoln's Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Golden-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Yellow-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
Pyrrhuloxia
Lazuli Bunting
Red-winged Blackbird
Eastern Meadowlark
Western Meadowlark
Yellow-headed Blackbird
Brewer's Blackbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
Purple Finch
House Finch
Red Crossbill
Pine Siskin
Lesser Goldfinch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow

Number of Species: 260

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Nine

2011-06-19T17:22:00.000-04:00

We again arrived at the Ventura Harbour early after making sure the boat trip was a go and spent a little time wandering around before we had to board. Our wanderings along the beach found us Heermann's Gull, Western and Clark's Grebes, Pacific Loon, Brown Pelican, Black Turnstone, Surfbird, Sanderling, Black Oystercatcher, Osprey, Brandt's Cormorant, American Pipit and Anna's Hummingbird. The shorebirds were especially exciting as Surfbird was a lifer for me!

Surfbird

Surfbird and Black Turnstone

We then climbed onto the boat and cruised out of the harbour into open ocean. In the harbour itself we added Red-necked and Eared Grebe, and on the way out had Willet, Whimbrel and Red-throated Loon.

Crane in the harbour

Western Grebe close to the boat

As we headed across the water on our 30km voyage we kept an eye out for alcids, shearwaters and whatever else we could spot. We had a bit of luck with Rhinoceros and Cassin's Auklets, Common Murre and Xantus' and Ancient Murrelets. On the island itself we decided to walk down the road and see how many of the endemic subspecies we could find while looking for the Island Scrub-Jay, our main reason for visiting the island. Along the way we enjoyed the amazing scenery! We ended up seeing all the endemic subspecies except Horned Lark - these are Loggerhead Shrike, Pacific-Slope Flycatcher, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Allen's Hummingbird, Orange-crowned Warbler and Bewick's Wren. We also saw a good number of Island Scrub-Jays which proved to be much larger than their mainland counterparts and also much more wary of people! Some other birds we found on the island were Spotted Towhee, Anna's Hummingbird, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Golden-crowned Sparrow, Hutton's Vireo, Bushtit, California Towhee, Say's Phoebe, Bald Eagle, Black Oystercatcher and Spotted Sandpiper. The best bird (for California anyway) was a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, which is apparently quite rare out there (although very common out here!) We then had an hour or two to kill before our boat back so did some tidepooling and looking for herps, finding a few salamanders and lizards under logs along with many interesting things in the tidepools! The most interesting for me was the California Purple Urchin which we were studying in my developmental biology class.

Orange-crowned Warbler

Island Scrub-Jay

The amazing scenery on Santa Cruz Island

The catamaran that took us out to the island

Jerusalem Cricket found while herping

Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, California Purple Urchin

Flower amongst the rocks

Then it was back onto the boat for the ride back to the mainland, which had its own highlights! In addition to the alcids we'd seen on the trip across, we found a breeding-plumaged Pigeon Guillemot, an extremely early migrant. We also came across a huge pod of Common Dolphins that numbered at least 5000 individuals! Quite a few of them came to play in the wake of the boat and we spent a good amount of time in the midst of them. Definitely one of the trip highlights!

Leaving the island

Common Dolphin

Pigeon Guillemot

Cassin's Auklet

Closer to shore we stopped by an oil drum that had some California Sea Lions lounging on it, and a Common Loon was spotted out amongst the Pacifics.

At the harbour we added Snowy Egret, Belted Kingfisher, Pied-billed Grebe, Ruddy Turnstone, Black-bellied Plover and Wandering Tattler to the day list as the sun was setting across the ocean.

Scoping the shorebirds

Then it was back to Los Angeles where we stayed near the airport.

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Eight

2011-06-19T16:08:00.000-04:00

We arrived in Ventura around 4am after a very long drive (for Josh and Matt at least, I slept most of the way!) only to discover that the Santa Cruz trip had been cancelled due to weather! Luckily we had planned to do a day in the mountains the next day, so we just switched it up and booked a trip out for the next day. We headed up to Happy Canyon, a place my friend had told me about before the trip. It turned out to be a great place to spend the morning with a range of habitats varying from low farmland to oak forests to mountain scrub right up to Ponderosa pine forest! On the drive up in the predawn twilight I had a Common Poorwill fly right over the road - unfortunately none of the other guys saw it and I was the only one who had seen one before. As we headed up into the canyon we got Mountain and Western Bluebirds, Red-tailed Hawk, Cedar Waxwing, Say's Phoebe, Brewer's Blackbird, California Quail, Acorn Woodpecker, California Towhee, Bewick's Wren, Western Scrub-Jay and many of our main target - Yellow-billed Magpie. They turned out to be fairly common in the lower part of the canyon and we had very good looks on the way up and again on the way back down!

Yellow-billed Magpie in the mist

As we got further up the canyon the bird life shifted slightly and we found Fox and Golden-crowned Sparrows, Wrentit, Cassin's Vireo, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, California Thrasher, Lesser Goldfinch and a large flock of Western Meadowlarks. Even further up the canyon we got into snow and the beginnings of the Ponderosa forest, and then to a road closed sign! I guess an inch of snow is enough to close a road in California... We decided to walk up the road a bit more into the forest and got Band-tailed Pigeon, Steller's Jay, Mountain Chickadee and Downy Woodpecker.

Misty mountains in Happy Canyon

The awesome Happy Canyon Road

Snow in the Ponderosas

Checking out Steller's Jays

By this point it was getting a bit late in the morning so we had to head back down the canyon, picking up Oak Titmouse, Hermit Thrush and Savannah Sparrow. Our next stop was Lompoc on the coast to look for Chestnut-backed Chickadees at their southernmost breeding spot. A quick check of the estuary got us Red-shouldered Hawk, Bald Eagle, Sanderling, Black-bellied and Snowy Plovers, Least and Western Sandpipers, Western and Clark's Grebes, Great and Snowy Egrets, Pacific Loon, Surf Scoter, Mew and Glaucous-winged Gulls and many other species of ducks and gulls. Over and in the marsh were Tree and Rough-winged Swallows, Common Yellowthroat and Marsh Wrens. We then noticed the willows where the chickadees apparently hang out, so we headed over there. While combing through the willows we found Short-eared Owl, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Anna's and Allen's Hummingbirds, Bushtit, Pacific Wren and American Goldfinch, and at least one Chestnut-backed Chickadee!

Flowers in Lompoc

Having found our target, we grabbed some lunch and headed back into the mountains, toward Mount Piños. On the way we added Lark Sparrow, Loggerhead Shrike and American Pipit. As we headed up into the high mountains it got steadily colder, and near the top it was -10ºC with close to two feet of snow on the ground! We spent a bit of time here playing in the snow as there didn't seem to be any birds around other than a Golden-crowned Kinglet. Then it was time to head down the mountain before a snowstorm moved in and we went back to Ventura for supper and to get a hotel, our first sleep in a bed (and shower) in several days!

Tobogganing atop Mount Piños

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Seven

2011-06-19T14:31:00.000-04:00

We started our longest day of the trip (and also the least bird-filled) shortly before sunrise up in Cave Creek Canyon, which we promptly left to head to the desert where the sun would warm the birds up faster! We got to the NM/AZ border a little after sunrise and in the beautiful morning light found Scaled Quail, 'Lillian's' Meadowlark, Vesper Sparrow, Lark Bunting and Ferruginous Hawk on the New Mexico side of the road, and Loggerhead Shrike, Horned Lark, Western Meadowlark, American Kestrel and Prairie Falcon in addition to the previous birds on the Arizona side. Our main target here near Willow Tank was the longspurs that had been seen on and off for the past month or so.

Lark Bunting

Western Meadowlark

Unfortunately they didn't show up for us and I couldn't convince a Scaled Quail to run across the road into Arizona so we headed up to Dave Jasper's feeders, where we picked up Cactus Wren, Green-tailed and Canyon Towhees, Curve-billed Thrasher, Pyrrhuloxia, Pine Siskin, Lincoln's Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Gambel's Quail and Western Scrub-Jay. By this point in the morning it was starting to warm up so we decided we'd better head up to the mountains again. A quick drive down the road to Paradise scored us good looks at a Black-chinned Sparrow along with Rock Wren and Golden-crowned Kinglet. In Portal we made a quick stop at a feeder station which had Chipping Sparrow and Acorn Woodpecker. On our way up to the canyon a Northern Mockingbird flew across the road, and in the canyon itself we got Mexican Jay, Canyon Wren, Red-naped Sapsucker, Bridled Titmouse, Hermit Thrush, Spotted Towhee, Arizona Woodpecker and four subspecies of Dark-eyed Junco.

The entrance to Cave Creek Canyon

Composite of a cool plant near Paradise

Looking for bugs

We took a little break from birding to hike up to a cave which on my previous visit housed a Mountain Lion. It wasn't in residence this time so we got to explore the cave a bit, which was pretty awesome! I also made an attempt to climb to the top of the mountain but it was pretty difficult with camera gear and binoculars.

The cave!

Looking for cougars

Inside the cave - photo credit Josh Vandermeulen

Then it was back down to the canyon where we headed up to Barfoot Park at the very top. Along the way we had Yellow-eyed Junco, Brown Creeper, Juniper Titmouse, Hairy Woodpecker, and a flock of Mexican Chickadees! Once we got up to Barfoot it was a bit of a hike to the lookout, but well worth the view. Despite the wind at the top, some Pygmy Nuthatches kept us company, and a couple Steller's Jays were seen on the way back down.

Hiking up to the lookout

Cactus at the top

Group shot! L-R Josh, Matt, Brett and myself

Panorama at the top

We then piled back in the van and headed on our way back to California! A quick stop at the Shannon-Broadway Desert in Tucson gave us a last shot at some desert birds, and I finally picked up a Costa's Hummingbird (after everyone else had seen at least two on the trip...). We also got Phainopepla, Anna's Hummingbird, Verdin and Gila Woodpecker. We then headed to Red Rock again for another shot at the rarities, which we promptly missed despite a thorough search which included spotlighting fields for Mountain Plovers! We did get Lark Sparrow, Abert's Towhee, and most of the birds we'd had on our last visit though. After supper back in Tucson we headed off on an overnight drive through patches of torrential rain to Ventura, California in the hopes of getting on the Santa Cruz Island trip the next day.

Sunset in Red Rock

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Six

2011-06-19T13:52:00.001-04:00

Just before sunrise we awoke to the sounds of Mexican Jays moving around the canyon and within a few minutes we were up and ready to go. We made our way down to the Santa Rita Lodge, about midway up the canyon where there is a nice feeder station. We decided just to wait there while the birds woke up and warmed up (it was hovering around freezing at this point). In attendance at the feeders and surrounding trees were Bridled Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Pine Siskin, three subspecies of Dark-eyed Junco, Acorn Woodpecker, Hermit Thrush, Chipping Sparrow and a bright male Hepatic Tanager that made a quick pitstop.

Acorn Woodpecker

Mexican Jay

Hepatic Tanager

We then decided to head down to the mouth of the canyon where it would be warmer in the early sunlight. There we stumbled across a mixed flock of sparrows containing White-crowned, Vesper, Sage, Brewer’s, Savannah, Song, and Lark Sparrows, Canyon and Green-tailed Towhees and a few Lark Buntings for a solid ten sparrow species in about fifteen minutes! Also around were Verdin, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher, Cactus Wren, Ladder-backed Woodpecker and Pyrrhuloxia.

Brewer's Sparrows

Our next stop was at Peña Blanca Lake to look for the Least Grebes that were spending the winter there. In this venture we had some luck, eventually finding all six of them! Some other birds around the lake were Black Vulture, three species of swallows, Pied-billed Grebe, Bewick’s Wren, Lincoln’s and Rufous-crowned Sparrows, Winter and Rock Wrens, Sora, Gray Flycatcher, Orange-crowned Warbler and six species of ducks including Greater Scaup and a flock of “Mexican” Mallards.

On I-19 to Pena Blanca - notice the sign is metric!

Black Vulture

Least Grebe in bad light

After this rather quick stop we drove over to the Patagonia area via Nogales. Our first stop was at Patagonia Lake State Park where we had another shot at some Rufous-backed Robins, which of course we failed to find. We also missed the trogon that was wintering there. What we did find was White-throated Swift, Western Grebe, House Wren, Vermilion Flycatcher, Hammond’s and Gray Flycatchers, Plumbeous Vireo, Northern Cardinal, Great Blue Heron, Marsh Wren, Canvasback and some Double-crested Cormorants. Despite looking pretty thoroughly we couldn’t turn up a Neotropic Cormorant, which I had the last time I was there.

Bridled Titmouse by the lake

One of the many belligerent cows at Patagonia Lake

Then it was off to the Paton’s famous feeders where we found Inca and White-winged Dove, Lazuli Bunting, Rufous and Anna’s Hummingbirds, Red-breasted Sapsucker and Gambel’s Quail in addition to the regular feeder birds.

Anna's Hummingbird

Lazuli Bunting hiding behind the feeder pole

After watching the feeders and the skies for a while we made our way to the San Rafael Grasslands, just east of Patagonia. This area, while not the best for birding, was pretty awesome and definitely worth a visit. The highlight here by far was a herd of Pronghorns that allowed for good scope views. The few birds that we found while failing to find a Baird’s Sparrow were Northern Harrier, Grasshopper Sparrow, ‘Lillian’s’ Meadowlark, American Pipit, “Prairie” Merlin and a White-tailed Kite.

Our first look at the Grasslands

Pronghorns!

Enjoying the open space

Random agave(?) plant

360º of grasslands

One last look at the Pronghorn

Afterwards we headed back to Patagonia for supper at the Wagon Wheel which had pretty good food, and then it was off on the long drive to Portal in the dark, where we camped up in Cave Creek Canyon under the millions of stars that we could see in the dry desert air. Unfortunately my camera decided it didn't want to take any pictures at this point in the day so my efforts at star shots were wasted!

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Five

2011-06-19T13:37:00.001-04:00

Sorry it's been so long since I started recounting this trip! I've been pretty busy at my new job, which warrants its own post sometime soon. Anyway, back to the trip!

The day once again started bright and early as we headed to our next spot, the famous Salome-Baseline intersection just west of Buckeye, AZ where up to 5 species of thrashers can be seen in a morning. We got there just after sunrise and quickly found a singing Crissal Thrasher, which posed for great looks and close pictures in the morning sun. Also in the area were Western Meadowlark, Gambel’s Quail, Anna’s Hummingbird, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher and Loggerhead Shrike. We spent another hour or so wandering around the scrub trying to turn up another thrasher without much luck – at this point I decided to go wander off by myself, which turned out to be a bad decision! When I met back up with the other guys they told me they’d had Bendire’s and Le Conte’s Thrashers and a Costa’s Hummingbird, all of which would be lifers for me. After some searching I got to see the thrashers but missed the hummingbird. A few new birds for the day during the search were Abert’s Towhee, Brewer’s, Sage and Black-throated Sparrows, Ash-throated Flycatcher and Greater Roadrunner.

Sunrise over Buckeye

Searching the scrub

Black-tailed Gnatcatcher

Crissal Thrasher

Crissal Thrasher with development

Then it was time to head off to Red Rock and the Santa Cruz flats via Phoenix for all-you-can eat pancakes. Our main targets here were the Ruddy Ground-doves and Rufous-backed Robins that were overwintering, along with Mountain Plovers and Crested Caracaras – we missed all of them which was rather unfortunate – some other people had seen all of them that day too! Some birds we did see included Prairie Falcon, Say’s Phoebe, Rock Wren, Orange-crowned Warbler, Chihuahuan Raven, Gila Woodpecker and a huge flock of blackbirds with thousands of Yellow-headed, Brewer’s and Red-winged Blackbirds and a few Brown-headed Cowbirds.

Looking for rarities near Red Rock

Our next stop was Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson, a nice little oasis in the desert that was full of ducks. Species here included Black Phoebe, “Mexican” Mallard, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Cinnamon Teal, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Bufflehead, Lesser Goldfinch, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and seven other species of ducks.

Black Phoebe

Northern Shoveler

In the last hour or so of light we headed for Madera Canyon to see what we could pick up before dark. Not much as it turned out, but we had a very nice sunset to photograph. Bridled Titmouse, Mexican Jay, Red-naped Sapsucker and Phainopepla were all we saw up the canyon. After supper it was back into the canyon where we camped out for the night after finding a nice Whiskered Screech-Owl up at the top that didn’t seem to mind us standing almost right next to it. Several more birds called around our campsite as we fell asleep.

The entrance to Madera Canyon

Maderan Sunset

Whiskered Screech-Owl

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Four

2011-05-11T13:17:00.000-04:00

Our third day in California once again started bright and early as we grabbed a quick breakfast, packed all our belongings into the van, and headed off to the famous Salton Sea for what turned out to be a great day of birding. At the north end of the sea, our first stop was at Bombay Beach, a little sketchy town right beside the water. A friendly dog came out to greet us, and we named it Jimmy, our trip mascot. In and along the sea, we found Black-necked Stilts, American White Pelicans, Eared and Western Grebes, and a nice adult Thayer's Gull amongst the hordes of California Gulls.

American White Pelican

Black-necked Stilts

Josh with Jimmy

Moon over the Sea

After that quick stop, we worked our way down the 'coast' to the Wister wildlife management area, where we were greeted by Verdin, Black-tailed Gnatcatcher and Gambel's Quail among others. We continued on down a fairly muddy road and followed a side road over to the shore of the sea. The number of birds here was pretty incredible! Thousands of ducks, coots, gulls and shorebirds were out wandering around in the shallow water and there was a large flock of Audubon's Warblers working the bushes nearby. Included in the flock were Cinnamon and Green-winged Teal, American Wigeon, Lesser Scaup, Northern Pintail, Northern Shoveler, Gadwall, Marbled Godwit, American Avocet, Black-necked Stilt, Western Sandpiper, both Yellowlegs, Willet, Caspian Tern, American Coot, Snowy, Great and Cattle Egrets in nearby fields. Also out with the huge numbers of waterbirds were 3 Lesser Flamingos which was pretty cool. Another highlight at this stop was a Peregrine Falcon hunting the fields nearby. After thoroughly scanning through everything, we moved on into the agricultural fields nearby where we managed to find 2 Burrowing Owls right beside the road which posed for a few pictures at the mouth of their burrow. We also had a Ferruginous Hawk perched on a power pole.

Burrowing Owls

Snowy Egret

After that we headed to the Sonny Bono NWR and walked around the trails, picking up Common Ground-Dove, Greater Roadrunner, Abert's Towhee, many more Gambel's Quail, Verdin, and a Barn Owl which was roosting in a palm tree outside the visitor centre. On the road in we also had a flock of Snow Geese out in a field which was joined by quite a few Ross's Geese, White-faced Ibis and Long-billed Curlews.

2 Snow and 2 Ross's Geese allowing for good comparison!

Barn Owl

We then worked our way south to Brawley which supposedly has wintering passerines in their neighbourhoods and cemeteries. We didn't find much of anything here however, other than a White-winged Dove. Our next stop was at the Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge where we worked through the many flocks of shorebirds and waterfowl, finding Redhead, Stilt Sandpiper, Wilson's Snipe and 'Yuma' Clapper Rails in addition to most of the birds we'd had earlier in the day. In the fields nearby we had our only Sandhill Cranes for the trip, along with more Snow and Canada Geese. In the distance along the shore of the Sea we could see many gulls and shorebirds, so we decided to make the long walk out there to try for one of our targets, Yellow-footed Gull. We ended up walking quite a ways up the shoreline in the baking sun, finding Snowy Plover, Dunlin and Black-bellied Plover in addition to the shorebirds, ducks, pelicans, coots, grebes and such that we'd already seen. We sorted through the flocks of gulls but it was all for naught as we didn't find a Yellow-footed. After what seemed like hours we were all dying of heat and thirst so we decided to give up and headed back to the van. Imagine our surprise when we discovered it was only 16ºC (61F)!!! Guess the Canadian winter was getting to us.

The barren wasteland around the Sea

We then worked our way west along the bottom of the Sea, stopping in at a few points to search for gulls without luck. After a while we decided it was getting a bit late so we high-tailed it up to our last stop in Salton City. This proved to be our lucky day as within a few minutes of arriving at the shoreline we'd picked up both of our targets - Pacific Golden-Plover and 2 Yellow-footed Gulls! We also added Bonaparte's Gull here with a small flock of them.

Pacific Golden-Plover

We ended up making the entire loop around the Salton Sea, following the sun so we always had nice lighting! At the end of the day we headed off to Buckeye, AZ where we camped in a trailer park under the millions of stars.

Palm Tree and stars in Buckeye

Our total for today was 103, not including the flamingos! Third day in a row of 100+!

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Three

2011-05-10T18:58:00.000-04:00

Pier just north of Tijuana Slough, San Diego

Our second day in California (third day of the trip) started off bright and early with a Peregrine Falcon flying over our hotel as we checked out. We headed down to the famous Tijuana Slough shortly after sunrise to see what was around. As it turned out there was quite a bit! The visitor centre was closed but the area was well worth the visit with many shorebirds including Black-necked Stilt, Long-billed Curlew, Marbled Godwit, Least and Western Sandpipers, both Dowitchers, American Avocet, Whimbrel and Dunlin. In the marsh, waterfowl included Snow Goose, American Wigeon, Northern Shoveler, Northern Pintail, Lesser Scaup and Ruddy Ducks and there were Great and Snowy Egrets along with many 'Light-footed' Clapper Rails. Offshore there was a lot of activity with Western and Clark's Grebes, Pacific Loons, Heermann's Gulls, Brandt's Cormorant, Forster's, Caspian and Royal Terns and a Parasitic Jaeger. For land birds, we had American Kestrel, Northern Harrier, Anna's Hummingbird, Western Meadowlark, and 'Belding's' Savannah Sparrow along with a possible "Large-billed" Savannah Sparrow.

Western Gull

Tijuana Slough

Palm Trees in the Sunrise

Marbled Godwit

Anna's Hummingbird

From there we headed down to Borderfields State Park (I think that's what it's called anyway), stopping at a butterfly garden on the way which didn't seem to have many butterflies but definitely had a lot of birds! Here we added Pacific, Bewick's and House Wrens, Hutton's Vireo, Nuttall's Woodpecker, Western Scrub-Jay, Violet-Green Swallow, Orange-crowned, Yellow and both Myrtle and Audubon's Warblers, Pine Warbler (super-rare in SoCal apparently!) and Cassin's Kingbird. At the state park, we came across a road closed sign pretty much on the Mexico border so opted to walk up the road.

There wasn't actually a flood

We climbed up the hill in the background of the above photo, mainly to see what we could see but also to try and find some specialty birds. We had some luck with close views of a Wrentit along with California Thrasher and a White-tailed Kite flying over the fields. We also had an encounter with a friendly Border Patrol agent who checked our passports and commented on all our gear then bade us good day.

The view from the hilltop

From there it was off to Chula Vista to try for a Thick-billed Kingbird which had been hanging out for the past little while, but hadn't been reported for about a week. Turns out it was still around and we got good views of it within a few minutes of arriving!

Thick-billed Kingbird

After lunch at a Mexican restaurant which had delicious food, we headed up to La Jolla, just north of San Diego where the nice weather and the holiday meant that the streets were packed. We checked out the sea cliffs quickly and had a Ruddy Turnstone in with a few Black Turnstones, and offshore there were Brant, Pelagic Cormorants, and more of the same birds we'd had earlier in the day.

All three SoCal cormorants in one pic - can you spot them all?

Then it was a cruise around the neighbourhoods to look for parrots, a venture in which we had no success and very few birds around for our efforts. We decided to cut our losses and head up to San Dieguito River Park, where a road closure gave us a bit of trouble. We ended up getting to the park eventually after a bit of a detour, and in fading light explored the park. Our main target here was California Gnatcatcher, after missing them everywhere else during the day. We ended up missing them here too which was disappointing as we wouldn't be in their habitat again during the trip. The stop was well worth it though, as we added species like White-throated Swift, Gray Flycatcher, Western Bluebird, Great-tailed Grackle, more Cassin's Kingbirds, Lark Sparrow (nearby), Say's Phoebe and got good close looks at Clark's Grebes out on the lake.

Part of the park

Western Scrub-Jay

As the sun was setting, we headed off over the mountains to stay at a friend of the family's house in Desert Hot Springs, who graciously provided us with beds and a good meal (as well as leftovers for the next day). Thanks again!

Our day's total was 105 species, with Wrentit being my only lifer of the day. More to come soon!

California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day One/Two

2011-05-05T13:32:00.012-04:00

Well, this was promised to be out a while ago so it's a little late, and I left my notebook in Guelph so might be a bit sketchy on details, but here goes:

Day 1, 2: Feb 19-20, 2011

Matt Strimas, Brett Fried and I hopped in a car with Josh Vandermeulen in the afternoon and headed for Detroit to catch out flights for what would be a pretty interesting 9 days. On the way we looked at all the cool Western birds we'd be seeing in the books, etc, while seeing Tundra Swans and Red-tailed Hawks and the like on the way. We ended up being a bit early for our flights so decided to wander around the Detroit airport a bit after going through security. One of the trip highlights actually came during the security screening when one of the x-ray operators asked if I was going on a mission! I explained that no, we weren't spies...just birders.

Cool tunnel in the Detroit airport

Anyway, the flight was fairly uneventful, and we arrived in Los Angeles a few hours later, collected the rental car, got some food, and found Josh standing by the side of the road at the airport after we'd gotten lost (he was on a different flight)! We ended up getting to the hostel at around 2 a.m., and had to leave at 3 a.m. to pick up John Garrett in Pasadena. So, we did what any sensible people would do, and used the time to get our gear ready and sorted instead of

sleeping! Then at 3 it was off to get John and head out on our (sort-of) Big Day. It turned out that we needn't have been so early, as it had snowed quite a bit overnight and the mountains were closed, cancelling our attempts at montane species (which we missed for the whole trip). Wait, what? Aren't we in southern California?! Why is there snow? Yep, we started the trip at a colder temperature and with more snow than we had left behind in Ontario. Great.

Snow in the mountains!

Red-naped Sapsucker

We spent part of the morning cruising around the snowy mountains of LA county, picking up birds such as California Quail, Red-naped Sapsucker, Anna's Hummingbird, Nuttall's Woodpecker, Oak Titmouse, California Towhee, Western Bluebird, and a few other western specialties, most of which were lifers for Brett, Josh, and Matt who hadn't really been out west before! Then it was down into the desert and farmlands, picking up Verdin, Black-throated and Sage Sparrows, Red Crossbill, Ferruginous Hawk, Loggerhead Shrike and Burrowing Owl. We stopped at a dried up riverbed that supposedly had Le Conte's Thrashers breeding in it - so, we wandered down it. Along the way down the wash, we had Rock Wren, Sage Sparrow and many White-crowned Sparrows. After a while, everyone was pretty much ready to head back to the car as we had other places to go, but I wanted to see this bird so I kept going. Perseverance ended up paying off, with a pair of them another hundred yards down the wash! We all ended up with good views before we had to work our way back to the car and move on.

Joshua Trees in the desert

Our next stop was at Apollo Park, with its cool entrance road song (if you go here, drive in the left-most lane and you'll know what I mean!). The main story here was the waterfowl, but we also had ridiculously good looks at Brewer's Blackbirds, California Gulls and some Violet-green Swallows. Snow, Ross's, Greater-white Fronted and Canada Geese were all seen at point-blank range, as well as Ruddy Ducks, Eared Grebes and several other duck species that we usually see way out on a lake or pond out east.

Ross's Goose

Brewer's Blackbird

Then it was two quick stops at Lake Palmdale and Malibu Creek SP, where we got California Thrasher, Bushtit, Canyon Wren, Spotted Towhee and Western Scrub-Jay. After that we headed to the coast, where some seawatching at Point Dume scored us Pacific Loon, Brown Pelican, Brandt's and Pelagic Cormorants, Western and Clark's Grebes, Snowy Egret, Heermann's Gull and Royal Tern. A little further down the coast, we stopped in at Malibu Lagoon, getting awesome looks at Snowy Plovers as well as Black-bellied Plover, Whimbrel, Sanderling, Willet and Least Sandpiper. Lots of ducks included Green-winged Teal and some Gadwall. Among the hordes of California Gulls we picked out Heermann's, Mew, Western, Glaucous-winged and Ring-billed. Our only Black Skimmers for the trip were seen here as well, and a bit of landbirding in the shrubs around the lagoons got us Allen's Hummingbird, Marsh Wren, Black Phoebe and a small flock of Bushtits. Then it was off into the depths of LA, where in fading light we realized that we didn't have any time to try for some other stuff, and brought John back to Pasadena, stopping in for some obliging Western Screech-Owls on the way. After dinner at a Lebanese restaurant somewhere in Pasadena, we headed off down the coast to our sketchy hotel in San Diego. It was a very long first day with a lot of driving around, but well worth it as we managed to see 131 species - half our total for the trip! I also got 4 lifers (Pacific Loon, Allen's Hummingbird, Le Conte's and California Thrashers).

Snowy Plover

Stay tuned for Day 3 and more adventures!

Hawks, Owls and Lights

2011-04-30T17:15:00.003-04:00

That pretty much sums up the last few days in the Sault! First, some highlights... Red-bellied Woodpecker, Hoary Redpoll, Boreal Chickadee, Bohemian Waxwing and an early Orange-crowned Warbler, all on the bigby list! Hoary Redpoll is an extremely late bird. Warblers haven't quite shown up yet - there have only been 4 species reported so far which isn't all that surprising given it isn't May.

Now, on to the hawks. Did some hawkwatching from my deck and roof yesterday and today, with quite a bit of success! Totals were:

Broad-winged Hawk - 240

Sharp-shinned Hawk - 8

Turkey Vulture - 6

Red-tailed Hawk - 3

Bald Eagle - 3

Merlin - 2

Singles of Osprey, Northern Harrier, American Kestrel, Northern Goshawk, and Peregrine Falcon. The majority of these were today, ahead of a storm that's moving into the area now. Peregrine and Goshawk were both new for the yard list! Some other yard birds I got while hawkwatching were: Double-crested Cormorant, Bohemian Waxwing, Cliff Swallow and Northern Rough-winged Swallow.

Ken and I did one of his owl routes last night, with some success: 6 Barred, 2 Long-eared, 1 Northern Saw-whet, 1 Short-eared and 1 Boreal Owl were on the route, and part way through we were treated to a display of the Aurora Borealis (northern lights)!!! They were pretty faint with not much colour, but still cool to see. We also had decent numbers of ducks and some Brewer's Blackbirds on the drive out, along with 24 Greater Yellowlegs.

I still have a blog?

2011-04-28T09:32:00.002-04:00

It would seem so, yes. I suppose I have a lot to catch up on, so look out for some posts in the near future (with pics! how exciting).

I'll put the less interesting stuff in this post...

March, after my return from a great trip (to be detailed later) was spent catching up on work and trying not to fail midterms that I'd missed a few classes for (due to said trip). Most new birds for me were seen through my window or on my way to/from school. A few highlights of this were Red-bellied Woodpecker, Common Raven (rare in Guelph) and a Cooper's Hawk that regularly hung out in the tree outside my window. A few trips in late March to find owls were unsuccessful, but we did find quite a few displaying woodcocks, including one in the field near my house. March 20 I took a short trip to Hamilton to try to find a Mountain Bluebird that was hanging out at a winery - no luck with this but did get some decent shots of a Horned Grebe coming into alternate plumage. April was exam time, so didn't really get out much... Made a trip up to Guelph Lake on April 20 after my last exam but was pretty windy and cold! April 22 I left Guelph and headed to Sudbury for Easter, had a good weekend visiting family. Now I'm back in the Sault and the birds are arriving! We've had system after system after system in the past few days, with a LOT of rain, but no rarities so far. Guess I'll have to keep looking.

Quick Post

2011-02-15T22:13:00.004-05:00

What have I been up to recently, you may ask, that has caused me to become lax in my postings? School, pretty much. I went birding/photographing, rather unsuccessfully, in Hamilton back in mid-January - haven't been out since then which is kind of unfortunate. School's been piling on ever since the semester started (speaking of which, I have 2 assignments tomorrow, 2 midterms Thursday, and a formal lab writeup due Friday - hooray...).

On another note, I've been getting in a few hours here and there working on my website, which will hopefully be fully up and running by the end of March (depending on my school schedule). I know, I know, I said it'd be up in January...oh well. I've also decided to try to take some more interesting shots this year and experiment with my camera when I have some free time, here are a few of the results:

Frozen Waterfalls at Hiawatha

Ice build-up at Gros Cap

More to be posted on my Facebook page (David Bell Photography) in the future.

On yet another, more interesting, note - I'm heading to Southern California and Arizona on Saturday for 9 bird-filled days of (hopefully) sun and warmth. You can expect a post sometime after my return in March, which will surely be filled with some great photos and a recap of the trip.

Winter Break

2010-12-22T09:34:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm officially done first semester, and have been for a few days - here's my summary for the past couple weeks.

November 21 I went over to Hamilton to look for jaegers and gannets with no luck. Even LaSalle park was devoid of interesting birds to photograph. I did however have an interesting experience when a Mink ran by, almost touching my leg! He continued on his way along the shore without even giving me a second glance, and I got a couple shots.

November 27 I decided to check out Guelph lake after reading some reports of Ross's Gulls in the central US - no luck there but did have 350+ Common Mergansers and some American Coots.

November 28 I joined the wildlife club's trip to Niagara Falls, where we got 9 species of Gulls including California, as well as a day-roosting red-morph Eastern Screech-Owl, a Northern Mockingbird and a Tufted Titmouse.

December 3 I decided to procrastinate on the studying (my first exam was the 6th) by joining Josh Vandermeulen for a bit of a twitch - Guelph-Long Point-Port Stanley-Woodstock-Guelph was our route, and we had a few interesting birds with Spotted Towhee, Snow Goose, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Northern Shrike and many thousands of ducks, geese, and swans at Long Point.

Then it was into exams, and I didn't get out of the house much! The only birding I did was watching the juncos, cardinals, and crows out my window...

December 17 I made the long drive home, to get here in time for the Christmas Bird Count on the 18th. I did the same route as last year with Chris Street, Anthony Miller and two locals: Cindy and Wendy. We ended up with 34 species for the day including Sharp-tailed Grouse, Northern Cardinal, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Tundra Swan, Red-breasted Merganser, and 11 Hooded Mergansers. Keep in mind this is in the middle of town when you read the first bird in that list!

Now I'm officially in relaxation mode, working on all the things that school gets in the way of! I should have my website updated by the second week in January - lots of new photos from the past 6 months or so!

Mink at LaSalle Park

Horned Grebe at Niagara

A Little Gull with some Bonaparte's, Niagara

Red-morph Screech-Owl, Whirlpool

A Northern Mockingbird at Adam Beck

A Post? What?

2010-11-18T16:31:00.004-05:00

Well, I've realized that I've been slacking off in the blog department, and not for any particular reason other than a lack of general activity. September 4 my mom and I moved me into the new house in Guelph, a few days before school started. Since then it's been lots of work and lots of fun but very, very few birding outings unfortunately. I plan to change that eventually - may make a trip to Hamilton or Niagara Falls next weekend if something turns up. Anyway, here's my highlights of the past while.

August 29 (has it really been that long?) I headed over to WPBO for what I thought would be my last visit of the year. It was fairly uneventful - highlight was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo (always a good find at the point).

September 4 as I mentioned I moved down to Guelph to get ready for the school year.

October 21 I boarded a bus heading home - wait what? Yep, that's right - I made the 13-hours-by-bus journey home on a Thursday night and skipped all my classes on Friday. Why, you may ask? Well lets just say the results of my journey were visiting with my grandparents, friends, and family (and cat!) whom I had not seen since the summer (I didn't go home at Thanksgiving), Common Ground-Dove and Sabine's Gull on the SSM list, and a truck. Pretty successful trip eh? Then all too quickly it was a 7 and a bit hour drive back to Guelph so I could make my Monday classes.

Now it's mid-November - the first snow is falling, midterms and labs are over, assignments are almost done, and exams are almost here. A month from today I'll be completing my eighth Christmas Bird Count in SSM in ten years (missed 2006 and 2007).

Sabine's Gull

Common Ground-Dove

Wow

2010-08-26T12:16:00.002-04:00

Well, I've just realized two things. 1 - it's been 2 and a half months since my last post, and 2 - pretty much all of my posts this year (the few that there have been!) have been recaps. So, I've decided this one is to be no different, as I catch you up on my activities and outings of the past while.

June 11 I left to complete the second part of my work down in southern Ontario, with a few days on Manitoulin Island with friends as a precursor. The work went fairly smoothly with little rain to interrupt the censusing, but I only added two new birds to my work total being Green Heron and Black-crowned Night-Heron, both in Rondeau on June 18. I finished up the field work on June 23 and came back to the Sault via Guelph.

After that, I attempted to get a job for the rest of the summer without any luck. Turns out I wasn't the only one, as many of my friends were left jobless for the summer in this economy.

July 25 was my 19th birthday, I spent the weekend on Manitoulin Island with friends, hiking the Cup and Saucer and going to a camp party before coming home on my actual birthday for supper and a bonfire.

After that, I spent the better part of a week with my brother at my grandparents' house in Sudbury, helping out with odd jobs in the house and yard and creating a website for my grandpa's new book on history and tourism in northeastern Ontario - check it out at neontario.webs.com.

My next birding outing (since work) came on August 6 when a female Painted Bunting was reported from the east end of the Sault - naturally I sped over there, but searched without luck. I then went down to Bellevue in the hopes that it had just moved to another green space, and although I found quite a few warblers, it was not to be.

That same day, I hopped in the truck along with my brother and 2 friends, as well as most of my furniture and belongings that I would need for the year, and headed to Guelph. We made it there in good time, arriving at 2am just as my friends were getting back from the bars. The next day was spent moving in and hanging out. Then, on Sunday, the other reason for our visit was finally there. We got up fairly early, and 5 of us piled into the truck and headed to Canada's Wonderland. We weren't there for the rides, but for possibly the best concert of the year - Summer Rush 2010. For $50+tax, we got to see big names such as Hedley, B.o.B., Jay Sean, Basshunter, LMFAO, Faber Drive, Stereos, Mia Martina, Blake McGrath, Craig Smart, JLS, WOW, and Girlicious performing their more popular songs as well as DJ 4Korners, DJ Danny D, and DJ Mallon. Overall it was a great 8 hours of music (as well as a not-so-great 3 hours of waiting in line), although my ears suffered a little bit.

August 15, the warbler migration was well underway and I had 11 species in half an hour at Bellevue mid-day, including Ovenbird, Mourning, and Wilson's.

August 17 I got all four of my wisdom teeth out, and got lucky in that I had no swelling and the T3's took care of any pain.

I was out of commission for a couple days, but managed to get out on August 20 when Kirk called to let me know he'd found some Buff-breasted Sandpipers on a sod farm out east of town that we'd been thinking should turn something up. For some reason (probably chemicals), there have never been shorebirds on it before, until this year. Between August 20 and 21 there were 7 Buff-breasted Sandpipers, 8 American Golden-Plovers, 5 Baird's Sandpipers, 10 Least Sandpipers, 5 Semipalmated Sandpipers, and 30-50 Killdeer, most of which I ended up seeing. Baird's and Buff-breasted were both new for my Ontario list (#'s 289 and 290).

August 22 I headed to WPBO with my mom, hoping for some shorebirds to take pics of. It ended up being a really slow day overall, with 43 species and not many shorebirds or ducks (or anything for that matter). I did however manage to get some decent shots which I will post up here.

And lastly, yesterday I headed back to WPBO hoping that the SW winds followed by a huge front with lots of rain and then NW winds would push something in or drop some shorebirds. Some success was had, with many early ducks, decent shorebird numbers (although low diversity), and a lot of passerine movement bringing the day to 83 species. The highlight of the day though came in the form of a dark-morph adult Parasitic Jaeger (I had only seen juveniles of this morph before).

All in all, it has been a fairly decent summer, and for me there are only a few days left of it as I am leaving on Tuesday for Sudbury, and then heading to Guelph next weekend for school! I'm looking forward to another great year although my courses would make most people cringe (stats, linear algebra, advanced calc, electromagnetics, and mechanics first semester!).

For anyone who's wondering, my year list is up to 283 - my goal is to break 300!

Southern Adventure Part 1

2010-06-10T15:16:00.017-04:00

Well, this'll be a long one, so here goes:

May 21 I packed up the truck and headed out, stopping in Sudbury to do some yard work with my grandpa and then have supper and a night at my grandparents' house.

May 22 I headed out in the morning for Guelph, and made a stop at Carden Alvar near Orillia for some birding. Had an interesting hour there, adding three new birds to my Ontario list (Grasshopper Sparrow, Upland Sandpiper, Loggerhead Shrike), and a few new birds to the year list such as Golden-winged Warbler and Sedge Wren. Then it was time to move on so I could make it to Guelph for supper.

May 23 I hung out in Guelph with my friends before departing to spend the night in Watford. It was a fairly uneventful drive, but I had some Common Nighthawks along the highway which was nice.

May 24 I did my first two plots, and managed to lose my cell phone in the dark on the first one. Luckily, it was right where I thought it would be, and I went back after finishing up the plot to get it. After that excitement I headed down to Rondeau via Erieau to check into my campsite and figure out the park layout.

May 25-27 I did my Rondeau plots, birded, went to the Blenheim sewage lagoons, and hung out on the beach, all the while failing to find internet anywhere. It was a fairly enjoyable few days, with good birds such as Acadian and Willow Flycatchers, Yellow-throated Vireo, Tufted Titmouse, Red-headed Woodpecker, Kentucky and Prothonotary Warblers, Yellow-breasted Chat and Whimbrel, and I also met many nice people, a special thanks to Bob and Sandra for feeding me dinner one night!

May 28-31 I did quite a few plots in Skunk's Misery, an area of Carolinian forest near Newbury. Turns out it was my misery as well, with many swamps and mosquitos combined with raspberry thickets. A few good birds were to be had though, including Cerulean, Blue-winged and Hooded Warblers, and Acadian Flycatcher. The upside was that the Strathroy public library is only a half-hour drive away, so I could have air-conditioning and internet every day. May 30 I drove up to Guelph as the Strathroy library was closed and I was in need of a shower and a visit with friends.

June 1-2 I did plots around Port Stanley, checked out the beach, and hung out at the St. Thomas library before heading back to Guelph for two nights with friends and then it was back home to try to catch up on sleep and food.

My trip list is below, followed by some pics from the two weeks. I'm currently back in the south for round 2 of plots, so I'll make another (shorter) post upon my return!

Bold = year bird, * = Ontario bird, ** = Canada bird, *** = lifer

Canada Goose - many
Mute Swan - 2
Wood Duck - 100+ (incl. 50 at the bruce mines lagoons on the way down)
Gadwall - 10+
American Wigeon - 1
American Black Duck - 2
Mallard - many
Blue-winged Teal - 15+
Northern Shoveler - 3
Green-winged Teal - 10+
Ring-necked Duck - 2
Lesser Scaup - 3
Common Goldeneye - 2
Hooded Merganser - 1
Common Merganser - 10+
Red-breasted Merganser - 20+
Ruddy Duck - 9
Wild Turkey - 100+
Common Loon - 20+
Pied-billed Grebe - 10+
Double-crested Cormorant - 500+
American Bittern - 10+
Great Blue Heron - 100+
Great Egret - 2
Turkey Vulture - 300+
Osprey - 15+
Bald Eagle - 10+
Northern Harrier - 4
Sharp-shinned Hawk - 1
Cooper's Hawk - 5+
Broad-winged Hawk - 10+
Red-tailed Hawk - 100+
American Kestrel - 50+
Merlin - 10+
Virginia Rail - 2
American Coot - 10+
Sandhill Crane - 5+
Black-bellied Plover - 300+
Killdeer - 100+
Spotted Sandpiper - 30+
Lesser Yellowlegs - 1
Whimbrel - 10
Ruddy Turnstone* - 15+
Semipalmated Sandpiper - 10+
Least Sandpiper - 3
Dunlin - 3
Wilson's Snipe - 5+
American Woodcock - 10+
Wilson's Phalarope* - 1 very pale male unfortunately
Bonaparte's Gull - 20+
Ring-billed Gull - many
Herring Gull - many
Lesser Black-backed Gull - 1
Great Black-backed Gull - 30+
Caspian Tern - 10+
Black Tern - 5+
Common Tern - 5+
Forster's Tern - 5+
Rock Pigeon - many
Mourning Dove - many
Yellow-billed Cuckoo - 5+
Black-billed Cuckoo - 2
Eastern Screech-Owl - 3
Common Nighthawk - 15+
Whip-poor-will - 2
Chimney Swift - 100+
Ruby-throated Hummingbird - 20+
Belted Kingfisher - 20+
Red-headed Woodpecker** - 4
Red-bellied Woodpecker - 50+
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - 10+
Downy Woodpecker - 100+
Hairy Woodpecker - 60+
Northern Flicker - 100+
Pileated Woodpecker - 3
Eastern Wood-Pewee - 60+
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher - 20+
Acadian Flycatcher** - 5+
Alder Flycatcher - 30+
Willow Flycatcher* - 50+
Least Flycatcher - 15+
Eastern Phoebe - 20+
Great Crested Flycatcher - 100+
Eastern Kingbird - 100+
Loggerhead Shrike* - 1
Yellow-throated Vireo - 6
Warbling Vireo - 40+
Philadelphia Vireo - 2
Red-eyed Vireo - 250+
Blue Jay - 500+
American Crow - many
Common Raven - many, some down in the south too
Horned Lark - 50+
Purple Martin - 150+
Tree Swallow - 500+
Northern Rough-winged Swallow - 100+
Bank Swallow - 500+
Cliff Swallow - 100+
Barn Swallow - 250+
Black-capped Chickadee - many
Tufted Titmouse - 10+
Red-breasted Nuthatch - 10+
White-breasted Nuthatch - 50+
Brown Creeper - 2
Carolina Wren - 1
House Wren - 50+
Sedge Wren - 2
Marsh Wren - 10+
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - 50+
Eastern Bluebird - 30+
Veery - 100+
Gray-cheeked Thrush - 1
Swainson's Thrush - 30+
Hermit Thrush - 2
Wood Thrush - 100+
American Robin - many
Gray Catbird - 150+
Brown Thrasher - 50+
European Starling - many
American Pipit - 1
Cedar Waxwing - 250+
Blue-winged Warbler - 1
Golden-winged Warbler - 1
Tennessee Warbler - 10+
Nashville Warbler - 20+
Northern Parula - 5+
Yellow Warbler - 1000+
Chestnut-sided Warbler - 100+
Magnolia Warbler - 50+
Cape May Warbler - 5+
Black-throated Blue Warbler - 10+
Yellow-rumped Warbler - 30+
Black-throated Green Warbler - 50+
Blackburnian Warbler - 20+
Pine Warbler - 10+
Blackpoll Warbler - 20+
Cerulean Warbler** - 6
Black-and-white Warbler - 100+
American Redstart - 500+
Prothonotary Warbler** - 2
Ovenbird - 200+
Northern Waterthrush - 2
Kentucky Warbler*** - 1
Mourning Warbler - 30+
Common Yellowthroat - 300+
Hooded Warbler - 5+
Wilson's Warbler - 2
Canada Warbler - 5+
Yellow-breasted Chat - 1
Scarlet Tanager - 100+
Eastern Towhee - 50+
Chipping Sparrow - 500+
Clay-colored Sparrow - 50+
Field Sparrow - 100+
Vesper Sparrow - 10+
Savannah Sparrow - 500+
Grasshopper Sparrow* - 10+
Song Sparrow - 500+
Swamp Sparrow - 100+
White-throated Sparrow - 10+
Northern Cardinal - 250+
Rose-breasted Grosbeak - 100+
Indigo Bunting - 250+
Bobolink - 100+
Red-winged Blackbird - many
Eastern Meadowlark - 50+
Brewer's Blackbird - 10+
Common Grackle - many
Brown-headed Cowbird - 500+
Orchard Oriole - 5+
Baltimore Oriole - 250+
Purple Finch - 2
House Finch - 100+
Pine Siskin - 10+
American Goldfinch - 1000+
House Sparrow - 1000+

Number of Species: 176

Blue-winged Teal at Carden Alvar

An Eastern Kingbird that perched right beside the road

Tree Swallow

The Bobolinks never came very close

Purple Martins in Erieau

Eastern Wood-Pewee at Rondeau

A Mourning Warbler that came right in at the Visitor Centre

Northern Cardinal in my campsite

A baby Grackle in the campsite across from mine

Mourning Dove on the campground road

Baltimore Oriole picking bugs in the campground

A chipmunk hoping for food

House Wren on South Point trail

A Red-headed Woodpecker family on South Point trail

Killdeer at South Point

Spotted Sandpiper

Driftwood at South Point

Northern Shoveler at the Blenheim Lagoons

Part of a flight that included 300+ Black-bellied Plovers and some Ruddy Turnstones at the Blenheim Lagoons - these were the only ones that stopped in

I made a small puddle in a dusty parking lot at Rondeau and these were the results:

Yellow Warbler

Orchard Oriole

Barn Swallows gathering nesting material

Yellow Warblers

I didn't have a wide-angle lens with me, so this is a composite of my campsite (92MP original resolution!)

A raccoon with an injured paw in Rondeau

The Yellow-throated Vireo nest I found near my campsite - turns out it's the first confirmed nesting record for Rondeau!

Yellow-throated Vireos

Willow Flycatcher in Rondeau

Afternoon at the Blenheim Lagoons - this is in the back of the truck with the vents open!

Ebony Jewelwing in Strathroy

If you've seen the movie "300", you'll understand

A mural in Port Stanley

Semipalmated Sandpipers, Dunlin, and an unID'd shorebird in Port Stanley

The Dunlin was still there the next day

Caspian Tern

Some of the many Bank Swallows on the beach

Lesser Black-backed Gull, 2nd summer

An interesting shot I got out of the truck window at 90km/h without looking!

Field Sparrow near Port Rowan (was looking for a Lark Sparrow without luck)

Pileated Woodpecker

Vesper Sparrow

May Pictures

2010-06-08T15:57:00.010-04:00

Ok, so here are my pics from just after Pelee until just before I headed south, hope you enjoy! I decided my southern adventure is worthy of its own post.

Tree Swallows at Guelph Lake

'Herman' the tame Wood Duck at the Locks

Lincoln's Sparrow at WPBO

Turkey Vulture at WPBO

Sharp-shinned Hawk at WPBO

Spruce Grouse on Vermillion Rd.

Turkey Vulture at Vermillion

Willets on the TahquamenonLong-billed Dowitcher in Bruce Mines

Bald Eagle pair at Pumpkin point

American White Pelicans with the International Bridge

Mallard babies at the Locks

American Coot at the Locks

Solitary Sandpiper at the Locks

Great Egret at the Locks

My first-ever shot of an American Crow - and yes I have pics of Fish and Northwestern already which makes this very sad...

Canadian Common Tern at Bellevue

Canada Goose babies at Bellevue

Green-winged Teal at Bellevue

Black Bear near Bruce Mines on my Big Day

Common Terns at Pumpkin Point

Broad-winged Hawk at the Locks

Herman and his mate

Recently...

2010-06-08T15:32:00.003-04:00

Alright, so I decided it's been far too long since my last post, and I have quite a bit to catch up on so here goes.

May 15 I led my now annual Sault Naturalists outing to the Locks for a pretty good morning of birding. We managed almost 70 species in the few hours, compared to around 50 in the past 2 years. The highlights were my first American Coot for the Locks, and a Clay-colored Sparrow along with 15 species of warblers and a few other year birds. Gray Catbird finally showed up, only 3 weeks later than usual. Afterwards I went down to Bellevue and found a pair of Forster's Terns.

May 18 I did my 10th annual Big Day, ended up with 139 species (9 less than last year) due mostly to a lack of migration. My alarm clock managed to break, so I ended up starting at 4am instead of the planned 2. Out the door and the first bird of the day was a Robin in full song. I got in some owling despite the late start, managing to get Barred and Saw-whet Owl, along with several Whip-poor-wills. Then I ran my usual route around town, ending up with over 100 species by noon, almost all on breeding territory. Out east of town I filled in some spots, but missed out on a few ducks, shorebirds and hawks that I was counting on. Then it was back for a quick look around the waterfront and then home, and for the first time I made it past 10pm, probably because it wasn't raining and I'd had a bit of a sleep-in. So, I decided to sit out on the back deck until my day was up, adding Long-tailed Duck to the list as the last bird of the day. Some other highlights of the day were Forster's Tern, Eastern Towhee, Northern Goshawk and House Finch, along with 20 species of warblers and quite a few year birds.

May 21 I started the journey south, to start work doing Forest Bird Monitoring plots for the CFS, stopping in Sudbury and Guelph before doing my first plot on the 24th. This job took me from Watford - Rondeau area - Newbury area - Port Stanley, and everywhere in between. Lots of cool birds, and lots of pictures, I'll put up a more detailed post in a bit.

June 6th I did my Kirtland's Warbler survey in Chippewa County, after getting home on the 4th from Southern Ontario. Evan Timusk, another birder in the area, came with me and we had a pretty good day despite a lot of rain at the start, managing to get killer views of a Kirtland's at around 4 feet away! Unfortunately no pics due to rain. Also got Olive-sided Flycatcher, Connecticut Warbler, Red Crossbill, Piping Plover, LeConte's Sparrow, and several other good birds. Kirtland's was #275 for my SSM area list!

Now I am just working on photos, blog, my website, and visiting with friends before I have to head back to southern Ontario for the second part of my job on the 11th. My next post will contain a more detailed summary of my southern excursion along with pics from late April until now.

More Migration!

2010-05-11T13:43:00.003-04:00

Well, if you're a birder, you have to love the month of May. All the birds coming back through on their way north, as well as a few rarities here and there make it the most birdy month of the year. Since I have most of the month off, I've been out birding as much as possible! Since my last post, I have added 23 birds to the year list, and should add many more before I head off to work. Some highlights:

May 5 I went to WPBO and birded the whole day with Jason Bojczyk. On the way over, I found 9 Willets at the Tahquamenon Rivermouth, which we went back for later in the day so Jason could get them as a lifer! The point was fairly productive, with my year Red-throated Loon, White-winged Scoter, Lincoln's Sparrow and a few others. A little after noon we decided to head out and bird some other areas. At the WPBO staff house we got the Lark Sparrow that had been hanging out since the previous day, and we found a nice male Spruce Grouse on Vermillion Rd. that allowed close approach. Out at Vermillion Beach, Jason spotted a Northern Mockingbird that wasn't very cooperative. We also found quite a few shorebirds, mostly Yellowlegs but with one Least Sandpiper. After that and the rivermouth, it was pretty late in the day so I had to head home. I finished the day with 90 species - fairly good for this early in the season!

After that, I biked around town once or twice, once to chase a Summer Tanager and once just to see what was around. Didn't end up seeing the Tanager, and didn't find anything else of interest really - the arrival of Common Terns was the highlight.

May 8 I went down to the locks in the middle of a snowstorm, and had 6 species of warbler along with several other birds that I think should be added to the winter list (there was snow on the ground!). Not as many shorebirds as I'd hoped for, but did have the first Spotted Sandpipers for the area this year. After that, I headed to Bellevue and met up with Ken, where there were 9 Lesser Yellowlegs and a Solitary Sandpiper on one of the mudflats, not much else of note. After that, we went on the Sault Naturalists hike to the Desbarats bat cave, and birded out east of town after. Highlights of the trip were an extremely early Great Crested Flycatcher, some lingering Tundra Swans that I added to the yearlist, 20 species of waterfowl including a Ruddy Duck that Ken found, and a Long-billed Dowitcher that I found at the Bruce Mines lagoons. It was pretty skittish, but allowed good scope views and was heard calling. There are only two records from the Sault area that I know of, both at WPBO, however this species should be close to annual - who knows.

Yesterday I got an email about some Pelicans down on the river, so naturally I hopped on the bike and spent a couple hours birding the Locks. The local Wood Duck was still there, along with 8 species of warblers and the two American White Pelicans that Bob found.

So, my year list currently stands at 210 species, and my bigby list is somewhere around 80-85. Lots of work yet to do... Pictures to come soon.

Migration

2010-05-02T15:23:00.003-04:00

Migration is well under way here in the Sault, and so far about 10 of the 25 regular warblers have been reported, although not in any sort of numbers yet. White-throated Sparrows had a major push the other day, with around 600 birds down at the Locks. Other passerines are slowly moving in, and the south winds the last few days have helped quite a bit. I'll hopefully be out birding quite a bit in the next two and a half weeks before I head off to Southern Ontario to do bird censusing plots.

With the warm weather and strong south winds yesterday there was a massive movement of Hawks across the U.P., and I got an email from Skye Haas partway through the day that said he'd had a Swainson's Hawk fly over his house, along with a ton of Broad-wings and other hawks. I decided it'd be a good idea to do some hawkwatching of my own, so I went and sat out on the back deck with my binocs. I looked up to the sky, and....HOLY *$#& AN ANHINGA!!!!!! was my only thought as I raced to grab my camera. My brother's only comment was "Rare bird?" Rare bird indeed. It didn't stick around for any pics, but I'd had a good look through the binoculars as it went by about 500 feet overhead. I immediately called around and sent a few emails, along with making a sketch of the bird with field marks. Ken and Kirk went down to scan the waterfront for it on the slim chance that it may have turned around. Kirk eventually gave up and spent a while photographing Herman, an extremely tame Wood Duck that has taken a Mallard as its mate and set up shop at the Locks. He then went to look for the Harlequin Duck that's been hanging around, and amazingly had the Anhinga fly back across the river into the States! This would represent the second Michigan record if accepted. As for the Canadian side, I'm not sure, but Ontario is the only province with Anhinga on its list, so this may have been only the third or fourth record for Canada! I will post an update if I find anything out regarding the record status. Oh, and I submitted the record, as did Kirk, for anyone who was wondering.

Ken, Bob and I spent the morning this morning scanning up and down the river without any luck to see if the Anhinga stuck around. There are so many wetlands in this area that if it did stick around, it'd be pretty hard to find.

Other than that, I added a couple year birds with Black-and-White Warbler and Brewer's Blackbird out at the airport. My two-day hawkwatching tally stands at 39 Broad-wings, 4 Sharp-shinneds, and a Merlin. And an Anhinga. Which was new for the Sault checklist. In my backyard. Woot.

It's always nice finding rare birds!

Point Pelee

2010-05-02T14:50:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, my dad took me down to Pelee for the April 24/25 weekend. Despite crappy weather (rain, wind, cold) both days, we managed to find 100 species in the day and a half that we were there, with 77 on April 24 and 85 on April 25 (the half day). 53 of these were year birds for me, showing you how much I've been out this spring. The definite highlight was my lifer Louisiana Waterthrush that provided decent looks at the Tip before disappearing. We also had a Northern Waterthrush along with Black-throated Green, Nashville, Palm, and Myrtle Warblers. Other highlights were some southern birds that we don't get very often up here such as Eastern Towhee, Field Sparrow, Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Purple Martin, Forster's Tern and Ruddy Duck. Some shorebirds were nice to see, with 28 Pectoral Sandpipers and 24 Dunlin at Hillman Marsh along with a few Yellowlegs and Spotted Sandpipers. Other than that, there wasn't much going on (although things have picked up a lot in the last week there!). On the drive back to the Sault, I added 5 more year birds, being Broad-winged, Red-shouldered, and Sharp-shinned Hawk, Osprey, and Pine Siskin.

Red-winged Blackbird at the Marsh Boardwalk

Forster's Tern at Hillman

Pectoral Sandpipers at Hillman

Common Tern at the Tip

Bonaparte's Gulls at the Tip

Field Sparrow at the Tip

Hermit Thrush

Downy Woodpecker

Chipping Sparrow at the Tip

Some Stuff

2010-05-02T14:40:00.002-04:00

Alright, so it's been too long since my last real post, and I have some things to tell you.

First of all, I successfully finished first-year physics, with a fairly decent average no less! It was a fun year, but I'm definitely looking forward to getting out of residence and living in a house next year. Secondly, I bought a Nikon D2Xs off Kirk, and got the 70-300VR lens to go with it, and have already gotten some great results. Still have a lot of experimenting to do though. Thirdly, my dad took me down to Point Pelee for April 24/25 as we had the weekend to kill between my last exam and his meetings on Monday in Guelph. Fourthly (is that a word?), I am back in the Sault, catching up with friends, playing with my new camera, and getting a whole year's worth of birding done, all while trying to catch up on sleep.

Couple more posts to go, stay tuned.

Shameless Plug

2010-04-30T10:14:00.002-04:00

I have some other things to post soon, but thought I would take a moment to promote myself!

First, I will be offering guide services in the Sault area, and have posted the info on my site http://ontariobirds.webs.com/guiding.htm. If you have any other questions, please email me using the link on that page!

Second, for those of you who haven't yet, check out David Bell Photography on Facebook (and become a fan!). I will be posting new stuff there regularly over the summer, so keep tabs!

Thirdly, anything on there is for sale! I will try to update my other website to include the pictures and some pricing info, but if you're interested in anything in the meantime, just let me know and we can work something out.

Colorado trip pics

2010-03-27T17:35:00.012-04:00

Well, here they are, my long overdue photos from Colorado. I have a few more I still have to edit, so will probably post them sometime in the future.

Day 1:

Denver Airport pano - notice anything odd?

Western Screech-Owl

Day 2:

Colorado National Monument

Horsethief Canyon
Delicate Arch and areaEntrance to Double-O Arch Trail

Landscape Arch

Me and Jacob posing in a small Arch

The trail to Double-O arch - note the 100+ foot drop on the right side (can't see in fog)

Double-O in the mist

Day 3:

Jerry Creek Reservoir

Rosy-Finches!

167 of them in this shot

Juniper Titmouse

Prairie Falcon

Powderhorn Ski Area

Powderhorn View

Day 4:

My bad Chukar shot

Confluence Park

American Coots

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Northern Pygmy-Owl that Jacob spotted

Black Canyon Highway

Day 5:

Our CBC canyon

Cougar Track with my hand for size comparison

Canyon Wren foraging

Lewis's Woodpecker at Jason's house

The Harris's Sparrow with a Spotted Towhee

Day 6:

Loveland Pano - on the road up

Self-explanatory

Loveland pano from just above 12000 feet

Ptarmigan habitat

Day 7:

Cooperative American Dipper on the mesa

Steller's Jay that didn't want poptarts

Mountain Chickadee that was very interested in poptarts

Gray Jay

He came in for poptarts too

View from the Mesa (~10 000 feet elev.)

Mountain Bluebird

Colorado Trip

2010-03-21T13:10:00.004-04:00

Another thing that's long overdue is my Colorado/Utah trip report from the start of the year, so here goes:

Day 1 (Dec. 30, 2009)
I spent most of the day on planes, getting up at some ridiculous hour in the morning to make my 6 am flight out of Chippewa County International, and after getting held up at the border and then again on the plane (forgot to put my gels in a baggie...), made my way to Grand Junction, CO, via Detroit, MI, Kansas City, MO, and Denver, CO. Lots of planes, and very few birds in airports - the highlight was 4 Northern Harriers drifting around the Denver airstrip. After a short delay in Grand Junction (my luggage didn't make the plane in Denver), my new friend Jacob Cooper and I hopped in a van and headed to his house via the mall. Along the way, I scored exactly one year bird - Eurasian Collared-Dove, a species that would prove to be very common, and I think it was seen every day of the trip. After the first of many amazing dinners, we headed out with the spotlight and tapes in hand to try to find a Western Screech-Owl. After a few minutes of taping, we managed to disturb a pair of roosting Bald Eagles and set the coyotes off, but had no owls. Then, we heard one somewhere nearby, which quickly turned into 4 owls - 2 territorial pairs that starting hooting at each other. We had great views as they sat in the trees right above us. After a few minutes of watching them we decided to leave them alone, and headed home for the night. My first-ever seen Screech in the bag, lifer #1 of the trip!

Day 2 (Dec. 31, 2009)
We decided to have a fairly easy day, as anything we saw now wouldn't count for our 2010 yearlists. So, we headed off to Colorado National Monument, to see if we could find any rosy-finches flying around the cliffs. We got quite a few birds along the way, including Black-billed Magpie, Townsend's Solitaire, Western Bluebird, House Finch, and Western Scrub-Jay, among the more common species. We failed to find any rosy-finches at the monument, although we did just check out the entrance road as there was a little too much snow to bring the van any further. Our next stop was Horsethief Canyon, to look for Juniper Titmice. There weren't many birds in the canyon except for a couple juncos, but on the way back down we managed to find a single Titmouse, another bird I'd only heard before (AZ in 2007). With lifer #2 under the belt, we drove around some backroads near the canyon and managed to pick up Hermit Thrush (a good winter bird for here), Mountain Bluebird, Ring-necked Duck, and a ton of sparrows, mostly Song and White-crowned. Then it was back to Jacob's house for lunch, and to get our stuff together to head over to Utah. Along the way, a flock of Pinyon Jays (lifer #3!) flew across the highway, unfortunately we couldn't stop for better looks. Along the freeway to Utah, we had a Ferruginous Hawk (my last year bird of 2009, #250) perched on a sign beside the road, and many flocks of Horned Larks. On the Utah side, we saw a few Golden Eagles, one of which was perched on a sign pretty much on the highway! Then we were in Arches National Park, with only a few hours to go till sunset. The arches were amazing, and we managed to see both Delicate Arch and Double-O Arch, along with almost all the ones along the trails to these. It's too bad it was an extremely cloudy and foggy day, so we couldn't see much more than 100 feet in front of us. The fog made for some interesting shots however, when the sun was a barely visible disk low in the sky. We made it back to the car just as it started to get dark, and headed back to Jacob's for the night. A Merlin near Delicate arch was the only bird of interest in the park, and an Oregon Junco beside the van was my last bird for 2009.

Day 3 (Jan. 1, 2010)
Happy New Year's!! This was also the content of a few texts I got at random times during the night from friends back home, unfortunately I was using my cell phone as an alarm clock as I'd forgotten my actual one at home, so I was awake for midnight (and also 1:30 am), despite our 5 a.m.-ish wake up call the next morning to kick off our 2010 year lists. We certainly managed just that, although not with the birds we'd hoped for. We had it planned out so we would head down to Connected Lakes and get a Western Screech-Owl as bird #1 for 2010. An American Robin thought differently however, and took the #1 spot, quickly followed by a White-crowned Sparrow - damn. The screech-owl ended up in the #4 spot, after we heard a Great Horned Owl hooting off in the distance. Targets achieved, we headed off to Mesa to help with the Christmas Bird Count. First however, was a trip up the Grand Mesa to score a Boreal Owl as bird #5 for 2010, one individual near 7 am and at around 9000 feet in elevation. Back in town, new year birds added up quickly as we waited at the CBC meeting spot - Red-tailed Hawk, Common Raven, Black-billed Magpie, American Dipper, Mallard, European Starling, and Common Goldeneye were all seen before the CBC even began! We ended up on the Jerry Creek part of the circle, and somehow managed to find almost all the highlights of the CBC. Our first stop was the reservoir itself, which was mostly frozen and only had a few ducks on it - mallards, green-winged teal, common goldeneye. Some juncos (oregon and pink-sided subsp.) and a Western Scrub-Jay were pretty much the only other birds around. This was made up for by the great scenery and the first sunshine of the trip (yep, it took 3 days for the sun to make an appearance). On the way back down, me and Jacob took our time, using the switchback road instead of the steep grade on the side of the reservoir (which we had taken on the way up). Off in the distance, I heard some cheeps and chirps, and looked up to see a giant flock of small birds headed my way. When they got a little closer, I yelled at Jacob, and he came over the crest to see me surrounded by a flock of around 200 Rosy-Finches, with all 3 species (and the Hepburn's subsp. of Gray-crowned) present. Needless to say, we were pretty excited, and we yelled at the guy who was driving us (whose name I have forgotten and who had already made his way back down to the car, and had to run all the way back up) to come see. We had great scope views as the flock fed on some bare patches on the hillside, eventually leaving after 15 mins or so, never to be seen again. Lifers #4 and 5 for the trip! (I had seen Gray-crowned in 2005 in Ontario, one of the few records for our province). After that excitement, we cruised around the area, adding Ring-necked Duck, Lesser Scaup, Gadwall, Redhead, American Coot, Barrow's Goldeneye, ten Juniper Titmice, some Golden Eagles, White-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee, and Northern Flicker to the day list. We then headed back to the reservoir to see if we could find the finches again - with no luck - however a Prairie Falcon that allowed fairly close approach made up for the lack of rosy-finches. After a failed attempt at finding Canyon Wrens, our part of the count was over, so Jacob and I cruised around for a bit before we met up with the rest of the teams for a late lunch, managing to find a Rough-legged Hawk that another group had missed. At the tally, it was discovered that the rosy-finches, prairie falcon, and rough-legged hawk were the best birds of the day, as was the boreal owl (which ended up being just outside the circle, I think). But, the day was not over, so Jacob and I decided to try to find some of the birds seen in the other areas of the count that we didn't have for 2010. We managed to get a Virginia Rail to respond, although it never came out into the open - another highlight of the count day, and found Mountain Chickadee and Wild Turkey that we had somehow missed on our section. Then, in the last bit of daylight, we headed up to Powderhorn Ski Resort to try for the famous pygmy-owl that is fairly reliable there. After a few minutes of waiting, we had success! A single Northern Pygmy-Owl perched in a tree across the road, then flew over the road and out of sight down the hillside. A great end to the day, with lifer #6 of the trip.

Day 4 (Jan. 2, 2010)
We got a bit of a sleep-in today and had a late start, as today was just a travel day to prepare for the Jan. 3 Hotchkiss CBC. Our first stop on the way was Escalante Canyon, to try for Chukar. Not a mile in, we had a group of 5 wander across the road right in front of us, and then they ran up the hillside, successfully evading having a decent picture taken of themselves. We also ran up the hillside after them, but by the time we made it to the top they were already a hundred yards away and we were completely out of breath - I'm blaming it on the elevation (~5200ft at this point). Lifer #7 for the trip, and my only one of the day. On our way to Delta, we also manged to see a few Golden Eagles and a Harlan's Hawk. In Delta, we stopped at Confluence Park, where we added Rough-legged Hawk, Mountain Bluebird, American Coot, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Sandhill Crane, Cackling Goose, American Pipit, and many species of duck to the day list. At a trailer park across the road, we added American Wigeon, Canvasback, Red-winged Blackbird and Great Blue Heron to the yearlist. Then it was off to Gunnison to try to find some sage-grouse. Along the way, we drove through Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (north rim), and Jacob's sharp eyes picked out another Northern Pygmy-Owl sitting at the top of a tree. That was the higlight of our trip to Gunnison though, as we failed to find any sage-grouse. On the way back to Hotchkiss, we spotted 2 Northern Saw-whet Owls as they flew across the road, and managed to spotlight them to confirm - our fifth owl species of the year! Just outside town, we pulled over to see if we could see the milky way as the skies had cleared up, but there was too much light pollution, although we could still see an incredible number of stars.

Day 5 (Jan. 3, 2010)
Another early morning, as we attempted to find some owls for the Hotchkiss CBC, with some success - only one species being Great Horned Owl, but we did have up to 10 individuals! Then it was back to the house we stayed at for a bit of breakfast and feeder-watching before we had to go meet for the CBC. At the feeders, we had 4 subsp. of Junco - Slate-colored, Oregon, Pink-sided, and Gray-headed, along with Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers. At the CBC meeting spot, we had flocks of robins and blackbirds flying over, along with a few crows and ravens. Then it was off to our spot, a private ranch at the bottom of a canyon whose name I can't remember. After a slow start, the birds started picking up as we headed further down the canyon - Black-billed Magpie, Cooper's Hawk, Golden Eagle, Canyon Wren, Townsend's Solitaire, Spotted Towhee, Brown Creeper, Rock Wren, Wild Turkey, and big flocks of juncos. We also found some fresh cougar tracks, which led to a fenceline and out of the canyon, so we unfortunately didn't get to see it. Once we had exhausted the canyon, we headed back up to open ground and managed to find Western Meadowlark, Western Bluebird, and Rough-legged Hawk before heading back into town. At what I think was called the fairgrounds, we wandered around, adding Green-winged Teal, Yellow-rumped Warbler (both Myrtle and Audubon's), and Cedar Waxwing. Then the count was over, and we headed to Paonia to visit Jason Beason's house, the guy we did the CBC with. At his house we managed to find the Harris's Sparrow that was overwintering, along with a few Lewis's Woodpeckers. With those found, we decided to head back to Delta to boost our day list, managing to find all the ducks and geese we had seen previously there and adding Bufflehead and Bushtit to the year list. Then it was back to Grand Junction, where a post-sunset wander found us Gambel's Quail almost in Jacob's backyard. Today was our highest single-day species count, with 56.

Day 6 (Jan. 4, 2010)
After a late start, we headed to Denver via Loveland Pass for our longest driving day of the trip (~900km). It's a good thing Colorado speed limits are fairly high, otherwise we wouldn't have made the trip in one day and still had time to bird. On the way to Loveland, we added two new birds to the trip list - Common and Hooded Mergansers. Some other highlights were American Dipper, Rough-legged Hawk, and Bald Eagle. At the top of the pass (elevation 11, 990 ft), we only had one goal bird, and that was ptarmigan. After a short hike up a small hill by the parking lot to get over 12, 000 feet, I took a couple panoramas and then it was a long hike up to around 12, 500 feet to look for the ptarmigan. Despite the wind and fairly cold temps (windchill ~-25C), we managed to get one ptarmigan to respond to a tape (lifer #8), although we never ended up finding it despite it being (seemingly) right under us. After about a half hour of wandering around, we gave up as we were both getting cold and I was starting to feel the effects of too much walking at high altitudes. We then headed off to the lowlands of Red Rocks Park (elev. 6300 feet) to meet Holly Garrod and find a Golden-crowned Sparrow. After a bit of a wait, the sparrow finally showed up - lifer #9 of the trip, and my last one before heading home. Some other birds at the feeder were Western Scrub-Jay, House Finch, and 4 subsp. of Dark-eyed Junco. We then headed to Chatfield State Park, where we failed to find the Green-tailed Towhee that had been reported there. We did however add American Tree Sparrow to the trip list. Then it was a long drive back to Jacob's house, most of it in the dark.

Day 7 (Jan. 5, 2010)
We decided to head up and over the Grand Mesa (elev. 10, 800 feet) to find some high-elevation species for the list. Along the way to the Mesa we found only the common species that we'd seen many times during the trip. A stop at some feeders near the top of the Mesa got us both Mountain and Black-capped Chickadees, along with Gray and Steller's Jays. We also had a close encounter with an American Dipper that allowed us to within 6 feet as it swam around eating fish eggs. We tried to lure the Steller's Jay in for pictures with some Pop Tarts that we were snacking on, but only succeeded in getting the chickadees and Gray Jays to come in. Further up the Mesa, we failed in our attempts to find crossbills and finches, but did have a few Clark's Nutcrackers flying around. Then it was down the other side, where we had Golden Eagle, Western Scrub-Jay, House Finch, Cooper's Hawk, and Yellow-rumped Warbler. In Delta, we found Lewis's Woodpecker, Western and Mountain Bluebirds, and the same ducks and geese as before. Our reasoning for coming to Delta so much was that there were reports of Snow, Ross's, and Greater White-fronted Geese from the lake, although they never made an appearance for us. Then it was back to Jacob's, where a quick stop at the monument got us Cassin's Finch for the yearlist. An after-supper journey to the Utah border scored us a Long-eared Owl, our sixth owl species for the trip.

Day 8 (Jan. 6, 2010)
My last day in Colorado, we spent the morning doing a quick run around Grand Junction to pick up some last year birds before my flight home. We had some success, getting Great-tailed Grackle and Ferruginous Hawk as my last new birds for 2010 from Colorado. Then it was off to the airport for another long day of plane rides - Grand Junction, CO - Dallas, TX - Detroit, MI - Sault Ste. Marie, MI was the route I took, and I got home shortly after midnight. Overall, it was a fun trip and a nice getaway from Ontario/Michigan birding, my first since July 2008. A big thanks goes to the Cooper family for putting up with me for a week and making sure my trip was enjoyable, and to the many birders I met who gave us advice on where to find some species or for letting us stay at their house.

The trip list is below, lifers in bold, heard-onlys denoted with a (h) - all but 3 species (Hermit Thrush, Pinyon Jay, and Merlin) were seen in 2010 and all but the Merlin were in Colorado.

Canada Goose

Cackling Goose

Gadwall

American Wigeon

Mallard

Northern Pintail

Green-winged Teal

Canvasback

Redhead

Ring-necked Duck

Lesser Scaup

Bufflehead

Common Goldeneye

Barrow's Goldeneye

Hooded Merganser

Common Merganser

Chukar

White-tailed Ptarmigan (h)

Wild Turkey

Gambel's Quail

Great Blue Heron

Bald Eagle

Northern Harrier

Cooper's Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

Ferruginous Hawk

Rough-legged Hawk

Golden Eagle

American Kestrel

Merlin

Prairie Falcon

Virginia Rail (h)

American Coot

Sandhill Crane

Rock Pigeon

Eurasian Collared-Dove

Mourning Dove

Western Screech-Owl

Great Horned Owl (h)

Northern Pygmy-Owl

Long-eared Owl (h)

Boreal Owl (h)

Northern Saw-whet Owl

Lewis’s Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Hairy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Gray Jay

Steller's Jay

Western Scrub-Jay

Pinyon Jay

Clark's Nutcracker

Black-billed Magpie

American Crow

Common Raven

Horned Lark

Black-capped Chickadee

Mountain Chickadee

Juniper Titmouse

Bushtit

White-breasted Nuthatch

Brown Creeper

Rock Wren

Canyon Wren

American Dipper

Western Bluebird

Mountain Bluebird

Townsend's Solitaire

Hermit Thrush

American Robin

European Starling

American Pipit

Cedar Waxwing

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Spotted Towhee

American Tree Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Harris's Sparrow

White-crowned Sparrow

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Red-winged Blackbird

Western Meadowlark

Great-tailed Grackle

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch

Black Rosy-Finch

Brown-capped Rosy-Finch

Cassin's Finch (h)

House Finch

American Goldfinch

House Sparrow

Number of Species: 91

Spring

2010-03-21T13:00:00.002-04:00

Ok, so it's been far too long since my last post, and since I have a day with (almost) no work to do, I thought I'd make a few. The new semester has been fairly busy here at Guelph, although midterms are almost over and we only have 3 weeks to go until exams! A few more labs, assignments, and tests and first year will be over. That being said, I haven't had much (or any) birding time over the last little while, not that there was much for me to see, but now that spring is here the new migrants are arriving daily! My Screech-Owl luck seems to be continuing, my friends and I went for a late-night walk through the Arb (not actually looking for owls), and on the way out there was a little Eastern Screech-Owl perched in a tree near the edge of the forest. I'd heard this species before in Ontario and Texas but never actually gotten to see one. Other than that, most of the birds I've seen have been out my dorm window - grackles, robins, ring-billed gulls, red-winged blackbirds, and red-tailed hawks have all been migrating through along with plenty of canada geese. Can't wait for the warblers to get here! Should be sometime soon with all the warm weather we've been getting - all the snow is gone already, and temps have been closing in on 20C over the past 2 weeks. That's more like late April weather back home...

On another note, I created a fan page on Facebook - search David Bell Photography if you're interested - it contains a bunch of my better shots over the last few years that I've just gotten around to editing. I still have a lot of photos to go through, so if you do join you can expect updates sometime in the near future!

2009

2010-01-07T17:44:00.003-05:00

As with Jacob, my last bird of 2009 was an 'Oregon' Dark-eyed Junco, as I was standing right beside him when it flew past. My first bird, however, was somewhat less exciting than his: a European Starling in my backyard. At least 2010 got off to a bit better of a start!

2009 was a year of not much travel - I was in Ontario or Michigan for the entire year except the last two days when I flew out to Colorado to go birding with Jacob Cooper. More on that later. The plus side of not going anywhere was that I added quite a few species to both my Michigan and Ontario lists, as well as boosting my SSM list considerably. I only got 3 lifers all year, all in the last 2 months surprisingly!

January - Went birding over in Michigan quite a bit, ended the month with 49 species, the highlights of which were Northern Hawk-Owl, Greater Scaup, Red-necked Grebe, Golden Eagle (yard bird!), and Rusty Blackbird, all new for my winter list. Also went skiing a lot!

February - Only added a few new ones, ended the month with 55 species, but most of the new ones were highlights! Horned Grebe, Gray Jay, Great Gray Owl, and Black-backed Woodpecker (at my school).

March - The first spring migrants arrive, in the form of Ring-billed Gulls on the 7th. After that, got Peregrine Falcon, Boreal Owl, House Finch, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and several of the common early migrants for a month's end 69 species.

April - Along with the last ski day of the season, April held at least two surprises - in the form of American Avocet and Ross's Goose! I also got Spruce Grouse for my SSM list, along with many migrant species, ending the month with 123 species for the year. Almost halfway to my total! Another highlight for me in April was getting my full driver's license - hello freedom! (almost)

May - Almost always the best birding month of the year, my first year bird in May was a Northern Rough-winged Swallow. A few of May's rarities were Piping Plover, American White Pelican, Green Heron, Northern Mockingbird, Forster's Tern, another Boreal Owl, Algoma's first-ever Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (found by me!), Yellow-headed Blackbird, and finally adding Olive-sided Flycatcher to my SSM list. I also broke the Algoma Big Day record yet again by finding 148 species in a single calendar day! That's a record that will take a while to beat. The month ended with 210 species, my highest-ever total for SSM by that point in the year.

June - The start of a fairly cold and wet summer, my highschool prom and graduation, another summer of work, and a failed attempt at finding Kirtland's Warbler in SSM - maybe 2010 will be different. The good side of the Kirtland's surveys was Field Sparrow, Common Nighthawk (not so common in SSM), Connecticut Warbler, and Great Egret. I got a day off later in June and found Black Tern (best breeding year for them in SSM ever that I know of) and Yellow-billed Cuckoo as well. 219 species for the year.

July - no birds to add to the year but I did turn 18 and can now legally vote (and drink in 3 provinces!).

August - a lot of work, preparation for university, and only two birding outings, the highlight for the month being Pectoral Sandpiper. 223 species for the year.

September - a month of change for me, as I moved into residence at the University of Guelph. New rules, new school, new lifestyle, and new friends - a great learning experience and the start of an amazing first semester! Also some new birds (you didn't think I'd leave those out did you?). On move-in day, I skipped out and went birding in Hamilton with Chris Street and my mom, getting Carolina Wren and Trumpeter Swan for the year, and adding Field Sparrow to my Ontario list. One warm September day walking to the Bullring for lunch found me a Blue-winged Warbler at 8 feet - an amazing experience, and one I'm sorry I didn't have my camera for. Also one of the later Ontario dates for this bird. Later in September I went around southern Ontario, again with Chris Street and Tom Thompson, getting Long-billed Dowitcher, Stilt Sandpiper, Pectoral Sandpiper, and Common Moorhen for my ON list. Ended with 229 species.

October - midterms, parties, and homework was pretty much it for this month - had a fun time but no new birds. Also went to Sudbury for Thanksgiving, my first time seeing my family in over a month.

November - My first lifer for the year came on November 12, in the form of 'the ghost' - a Barn Owl, a highly endangered bird in Ontario that I managed to find while out with Josh Vandermeulen looking for saw-whets. Two days later I was in Brampton with Chris Street looking at Canada's (and Ontario's) second-ever Phainopepla - a juvenile male that wandered up from somewhere in the southwestern USA. He was there for over a month before disappearing during a storm in December. My brother also came down for a visit, and had to sit around with my friends for a few hours while I chased this mega-rarity. Later in November I made two trips to Niagara - once with John Ralston and once with the Guelph wildlife club. I also got my second lifer for 2009 in the form of two Brant at Spencer Smith Park in Burlington. Ten species of gulls including California and Tufted Titmouse for Ontario were the other highlights of these adventures. Ended with 240 species.

December - Final exams, and then home for the first time in three and a half months! I was only home for a short time and then it was off to Sudbury for christmas, and a short time after that December 30 came around, and I was boarding a plane headed for Detroit. I stopped in Kansas City, MO, and Denver, CO, before arriving at my final destination of Grand Junction, CO to go birding with Jacob Cooper. My first night there I got two year birds - Eurasian Collared-Dove and Western Screech-Owl. The owl was especially good because it was my first-ever seen Screech! I'd heard all three ABA species but never seen one before that point. The next day we birded around his place and Colorado National Monument, picking up my last lifer for the year - Pinyon Jay, as well as getting another heard-only off my back - Juniper Titmouse. We then headed off to Arches National Park, which despite the cloudy conditions was amazing. A Ferruginous Hawk sitting on a signpost just outside the Utah state line was my last new year bird, #250, a great milestone bird. I ended the year at 555 for the ABA - quite a good total for someone my age!

Then it was off to bed in anticipation of a new year, (new decade), new adventures, new birds, and hopefully many new experiences! Happy new year's 2010 everyone!

Almost a new year!

2009-12-29T10:14:00.003-05:00

Since my last update I haven't been out birding all that much, although I did get over to Niagara twice this fall - once with John Ralston from the Sault on November 22 and once with the Guelph Wildlife Club the weekend after. My gull totals for the two weekends were 9 and 10 species respectively, most of which were year birds and which included my first California Gull in Ontario (seen both weekends). I also got my lifer Brant at Spencer Smith Park in Burlington and my first Tufted Titmouse (3 of them) for Ontario on the 22nd.

I then spent quite a bit of time studying for exams (and procrastinating the studying with many distractions), and did fairly well on them, more than passing every class I was in this semester.

I got home (to the Sault) late on Dec. 18th, and got up at 7am the next morning to lead a Christmas Bird Count route for the Sault CBC. We ended up with 24 species for the day, not bad considering most of the feeder birds weren't around, and duck numbers on the river were slightly lower than average. The highlight of the day was a Brown Thrasher that has been coming to a feeder since late November, and which is one of the few ever found on the count. That bird brings my SSM winter list up to 89, along with the Belted Kingfisher I got 2 days later.

Then it was off to Sudbury for Christmas with my grandparents, which was very enjoyable, playing pool, other games, winter walking, and many great meals.

Now I am back home for a few days, visiting friends and whatnot, and am off to Colorado tomorrow to go birding with Jacob Cooper! (See his blog on the sidebar) I'm hoping for Ptarmigan, grouse, and Rosy-finches galore, along with a few other lifers that are possible. I'll post pics from all the aforementioned events upon my return.