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!