Pelee photos pt. 12

A nice male Piping Plover spent a couple hours at the Tip one afternoon - he then returned the next morning before heading off to wherever he's breeding now.

Pelee photos pt. 11

It appears I've missed two days... no excuses other than slacking. Continuing with the rarity theme, here's a distant shot of a Loggerhead Shrike that spent the better part of a day on the East Beach, and even ate a Fox Snake while we watched. 

Pelee photos pt. 10

Probably my best find at Pelee, and it wasn't even a bird...

Yep, it's a butterfly - a White M Hairstreak, apparently only the second record of one overwintering in Canada (the first was found a day or two prior by Blake Mann over in Rondeau) - and other than the invasion last summer, there aren't many records in general! Unfortunately it disappeared moments before other butterfliers could see it (other than Barb who was with me at the time), and it wasn't refound as far as I know.

Pelee photos pt. 9

My first-for-Ontario Laughing Gull, a bird I searched unsuccessfully for at Long Point for 2 summers, missed last year as a chase, and missed finding by leaving the Tip at Pelee about 20 minutes early. At least I got to see it!

At first it was pretty far down the tip, but after most of the crowd had left, it came in a bit closer and even called a few times!

Pelee photos pt. 8

I decided to split off from the group one afternoon to look for a year bird or two that everyone else had, and shortly after I had a close encounter with a Red Bat (flew by my face about 2 inches away), I got a text that there were some Black-necked Stilts at Hillman. I sprinted most of the 1.5km back to my car and raced over there, just in time for Barb to refind them in a different spot!

Since the pics with my 300mm turned out like this...

And the best I could do digiscoping at 70mm was this...

I asked Jeremy Bensette if I could borrow one of his pics to illustrate these beauties, and he kindly agreed! So here is Jeremy's pic:

Much better, thanks Jeremy! (they flew in closer after I'd left...)

Pelee photos pt. 7

The star of the show, my lifer Swallow-tailed Kite! Thanks to Mike and Erica Burrell for finding and tracking it for 30km down the lakeshore, from Port Alma all the way into the park! After it flew into the park and people were (impatiently) waiting for it to fly over the visitor centre, I (sort of jokingly) said "It'll be here in 3 minutes...", at which point Barb announced to the whole crowd (of about 80 people) my prediction of 3 minutes... Luckily for me, about 2 minutes and 59 seconds later it popped up over the trees to the delight of everyone present! At first there were gasps, then dead silence (save for the rapid-fire clicking of camera shutters), and when it was gone, a round of applause and cheers went up and celebrations were had. What a bird!

Pelee photos pt. 6

One of the upsides of the east winds of doom at Pelee was that the birds hung out in the nice evening sun on the west side of the tip. This Blue-headed Vireo was especially tame, and I think it may have provided Mr. Holden over at PeregrinePrints with a photo lifer????

Pelee photos pt. 5

A flock of 4 Willets made the Tip their home for a day, much to the delight of many birders and photographers (myself included).

Pelee photos pt. 4

A nice male Golden-winged Warbler that was quite fond of sitting just behind a stick while at close range, but out in the open further away...

Pelee photos pt. 3

An incredibly tame White-eyed Vireo which gave some good photo-ops despite spending most of its time in thick brush, at times down to less than 2 feet! It hung out in the same general location for the whole afternoon, which was nice as I left and came back later when the light was better.

Pelee photos pt. 2

My lifer Henslow's Sparrow.

First thing in the morning it sat up nicely for us, a little distant though - even sang once or twice!

It was still being seen later in the day so we went back and had it crawling around at our feet for about an hour, at times it was too close for my 4.5-foot close focus!!! Here is a shot of it's mouse-like behaviour.

And one that shows how secretive they are.

Pelee photos pt. 1

I've discovered going through a small number of photos and choosing one I like to edit is a pretty manageable way to sift through the masses from Pelee, so that's what I'll be doing (hopefully daily) for the next while!

I've been working on photographing the butterflies I encounter, trying to get pics of all the species I see! Seems to be a slightly easier task than with birds, although they can be quite challenging sometimes. Here's my first Spring Azure shot that I like.

Pelee Stats

Since my last post I have been kept pretty busy between dawn-to-dusk birding at Pelee, a quick trip home to recharge and repack my stuff, and now work. That's my excuse for the lack of postings anyway. Now that I am fairly settled in here I will try to go through the 5500+ photos I took at Pelee (plus a few since!) and post a few on here, hopefully daily for the next little while!

Before I get into the boring stats of my Pelee trip, an update: I'm now in Deep River until the end of June, working at the Petawawa Research Forest for the Canadian Institute of Forestry and the Canadian Forest Service, doing point counts for birds in the early morning (4am wakeup times suck), and tree plots in the late morning/early afternoon. Combined with a 20-min commute each way and a lunch break, I get home in the mid-afternoon sometime, just in time to do emails, cook dinner and go to bed! Oh, and the bugs are pretty horrendous here, hopefully they die off sometime soon... If I end up having any days off (which I may or may not), I plan on doing a bit of birding in Eastern Ontario, and maybe chasing that Lapwing that's been hanging out north of Montreal (if it sticks...).

Now, on to some Pelee stats (pics to come when I get some edited).

Days: 18 (afternoon of April 28 - morning of May 16)

Nights I slept in my car: 6 (thanks Barb and Brandon for putting me up!)

Total species seen: 227 (223 in Pelee plus 4 additional on Walpole Island)

Total number of local rarities: 31 (individuals, not counting the 28 Willets)

Total OBRC write-ups I have to do in the near future: 11 (1 more if that Chickadee turns out to be a Carolina) - for the first while I was averaging an OBRC bird a day!

Total new Ontario birds: 10 (Painted Bunting, Henslow's Sparrow, Chuck-will's-Widow (2), Townsend's Warbler, Swallow-tailed Kite, Black-necked Stilt, Laughing Gull, Northern Bobwhite, Eurasian Collared-Dove, Pacific Loon) - pretty much the same as the OBRC list except Laughing Gull and Bobwhite aren't OBRC birds and I also had Kirtland's Warbler and Piping Plover which weren't new Ontario birds but are on the review list!

That's all for now, stay tuned for some pics...I'll leave you with a couple I took at Gros Cap the first night I was back home.

Quick update from Pelee

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

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

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

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

Painted - aka post #200

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black-and-white Warbler

Red-breasted Nuthatch

PAINTED BUNTING!!!! new for me for Canada

Grasshopper Sparrow on the NW beach

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

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

What a great start to my Pelee trip!