Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Niagara

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

1 comment:

dwaynejava said...

David, great re-cap on the weekend. I'm sitting in Windsor dying to get out there (Niagara), but I just don't have a spare day ... The Pomerine and Razorbill would be lifers.