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!