California/Arizona, Feb 2011 - Day Five

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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?

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

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!