Summer 2012 in photos

This is going to be a long one! I finally made it through my 3000+ photos from the summer, these are pretty much the highlights (or the ones that tell parts of the story the best anyway!).

At the end of April, I made a trip up to the Carden Alvar with Josh and Barb to look for a Say's Phoebe with no luck, but did add some year birds!

Vesper Sparrow

Short-eared Owl

Upland Sandpiper

On April 28 I headed down to Long Point to start what would end up being 4 months at this amazing place! During that time I was mostly working but also managed to get in a fair amount of birding and banding.

Ovenbird

Leucistic White-throated Sparrow with a white head!

Scarlet Tanager

Black-and-White Warbler

Hooded Warbler

Magnolia Warbler

My first-banded Great Crested Flycatcher!

Common Yellowthroat

White-eyed Vireo

The view from the dyke at Old Cut

My first good looks at Prairie Warbler in Ontario

Eastern Whip-poor-will banded by Avery

I spent quite a bit of time on Hastings Drive, hoping for rare shorebirds/gulls/terns, and in doing so got a few interesting shots of Forster's Terns!

Eastern Kingbird

Clay-colored Sparrow pretending to be a Brown Creeper

Warbling Vireo

In mid-May I made a weekend trip down to Point Pelee where there wasn't much around in terms of rarities but I had a good time nonetheless with Josh, Brett and Barb (and the many other people I met)!

Prothonotary Warbler

We spent a bit of time in the afternoon looking for Five-lined Skinks with a fair bit of luck

Red-tailed Hawk

Bonaparte's Gulls off the Tip

Orchard Orioles were everywhere!

A friendly Black-billed Cuckoo came to check us out

It was quickly followed by this Rose-breasted Grosbeak

My FOY Eastern Screech-Owl, a nice red morph

 I couldn't resist a sunset shot of the windmills on the way back to Long Point

On May 19 we banded 145 birds between 2 people! 

Blackpoll Warbler

Eastern Wood-Pewee

We caught a fair number of Gray-cheeked Thrushes

And a lot of Swainson's Thrushes for nice comparison

Good example of a second-year bird! Rose-breasted Grosbeak

This Yellow-breasted Chat was one of the late-spring highlights

On May 21 Barb, Tyler Hoar and I went for a jaunt around the north shore of Lake Erie, picking up this Snowy Egret in Dunnville, but missing the reported Laughing Gull

One of my daily stops on Hastings Drive yielded these 4 Whimbrel!

Connecticut Warblers are fairly rare in spring at Long Point, this day saw 3 at Old Cut! (1 banded)

Mourning Warbler

Blackburnian Warblers are definitely one of my favourites

A radio-tagged bat that was found roosting during the day - this one is a Silver-haired

My main work this summer involved putting radio transmitters on Bank Swallows and then tracking their daily movements (foraging and roosting) - this is a freshly tagged adult ready for release - you can see the antenna if you look closely!

One of our study sites - note the capture devices in some of the burrows (cardboard tube with a bag on the end) - the swallows eventually crawl out of the burrows and fall into the bags, where we immediately transfer them to a cloth bag before banding, tagging, and releasing unharmed

One of our radio towers, detects the movements of the swallows

Adult Bank Swallow receiving a transmitter

Release! The transmitter and band are both visible in this photo

In late May a few Little Gulls appeared on Hastings, so naturally I decided to wade out to their sandbar for some photos - these 2 appeared to be a male/female pair in courtship (although they are both non-breeding second-year birds) - I'm guessing that the male is on the right in this photo

They are quite easy to pick out in flight!

More courtship behaviour? Any thoughts?

The (presumed) female was quite tame and allowed me to belly-crawl right up to her

Stretttchhhh

Liftoff!

Only to land a few feet away

The (male) immediately came to check out what was going on

They then sat there for a few minutes, allowing for a lot of pics

Eventually they'd had enough, and flew a little ways off at which point I decided to leave them alone!

Weird-looking gull - just a bleached Herring?

I spent a little bit of time doing macro photography (still without a macro lens), and liked how this one turned out (note the grains of sand)

One of the final days of banding for the spring - Northern Flicker

I took my camera out with me a few times to the Bank Swallow colonies, and on this day decided to get some in-burrow shots! This is a female brooding either young or eggs

Baby Bank Swallows!

These ones are slightly older

This is what the eggs look like, these ones were abandoned due to a bank collapse. Most of the burrows are 40-70cm deep, making photos difficult - these photos were all taken in burrows under 30cm!

Myles and I found a few Dickcissels over the summer, and managed to catch and band one male

I made a few weekend trips up to Guelph over the summer to add stuff to my Wellington list and do laundry - this Indigo Bunting was fairly cooperative (although he's only a second-year bird so not as nice-looking as the adults!)

Myles and Carolyn doing some exciting radio-tracking point surveys

We banded some Northern Mockingbird chicks one day

I caught this baby Killdeer and banded it - isn't it cute?

Mid-June turned up a Lesser Black-backed Gull on Hastings - not quite the Laughing I was hoping for

More Bank Swallows! This is how we do nest monitoring

While trying for some flight shots, I managed to photograph one of our transmitter birds! 

This turned out to be my best one - manual focus!

We put some transmitters on juvenile Bank Swallows later in the season

Note the rusty edging to the feathers which tells them apart from adults quite easily when fresh

One of the many Dickcissels that were around this summer

In mid-July I went up to the Sault for my mom's birthday and managed to get some birding in - ended up with 130 species one day and 140 total for the weekend!

Sandhill Crane

This herd of captive-bred Buffalo provided a good photo-op

Early August marked the beginning of banding season with a morning in Cambridge with Brett, where this Northern Waterthrush was my first banded bird since the spring!

Osprey

Some flies on the deck in Guelph provided me with another macro opportunity

August 14 was my last day of work, and I spent the morning of August 15 at Old Cut getting lessons on fall aging/sexing!

Nice comparison of Least (left) and Yellow-bellied (right) Flycatchers - front

And back

That afternoon I headed out to the Tip to begin my (awesome) 2 weeks of banding and birding adventures (and being cut off from civilization, internet, tv, etc)

A few young Eastern Wood-Pewees hung out by the block building every day

Young and old Bonaparte's Gulls hung out at the Tip

It was nice to see sunrise and sunset every day, this one was kind of weird though! If you look carefully you can see a sunspot in the yellow area! (not a speck of dust, this is in all my pics!)

Old male Blackburnian Warbler - looking a little different from the spring one above!

Warbling Vireo

The lighthouse at the Tip was one of my favourite subjects in the 4 days I was there, I even sacrificed a few hours of sleep to get some nocturnal photos

August 17 was a great day, with this young female Prairie Warbler that I extracted being a definite highlight!

Adult male Cape May Warbler - I think fall warblers are just as nice as spring ones!

Least Sandpiper getting sandblasted

One of the other highlights from the 17th was this 2nd-cycle California Gull that I found in the morning while doing a lakewatch - James and I went back in the afternoon for better photos and had considerable luck! This is the 7th record for Long Point and the first one in August

Red-breasted Nuthatches are irrupting into Southern Ontario this year!

I saw Great Egrets pretty much every day!

The sunrise on my last morning at the Tip was pretty incredible!

Juvie Chipping Sparrows are kind of strange-looking

On August 19 I was transferred to Breakwater to run the station for 9 days, after getting nets set up in the afternoon this Orchard Oriole was the first bird banded for the fall at Breakwater! (and a banding tick for me)

Tennessee Warbler

My first-banded Bay-breasted Warbler

The view from the deck at Breakwater

Breakwater from the beach

Nice male Blue-winged Warbler

We befriended this baby Deer Mouse(?) and named him Stu

Our first Blackpoll Warbler of the fall - also quite different-looking compared to spring

Up close and personal with an Ovenbird

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks have a painful bite - this one was a wimp though

Red-eyed Vireos are also surprisingly good biters!

Wilson's Warblers are nice and calm though

One day we had many warblers flying overhead, I managed to get only one decent shot though! This is a Cape May Warbler

I saw 3 Olive-sided Flycatchers during my time at Breakwater - only this one posed for photos though

This young Bald Eagle came to see me off!

On August 28 I headed back to Old Cut, and on the 29th I was in charge of running the place! We had a good morning for banding, with decent diversity and lots of warblers! Afterwards I hurriedly packed up and hopped in the truck, dropped a lot of my stuff off (including the truck) in Guelph, and carpooled with my mom up to the Sault via Sudbury and a detour to Presqu'ile to see the Thick-billed Kingbird!

My best shot with the 300mm - not quite as good as the cell phone/scope combo posted before!

I've been out birding every day I've been home, but that will have to wait for another post - I am headed back to Guelph tomorrow to start school on Thursday so it may have to wait till the weekend! We'll see...

400!

My apologies for the lack of a post on here! I did have one in the works but then was busy with work, birding and other things... I also have not had internet since August 15 but more on that later!

Yesterday, I left Long Point after 4 months of living there. My mom came down for a night to watch banding and pick me up for some exploring of Norfolk county before heading to Guelph for the night and then driving back to the Sault the next day. That plan got scrapped when I heard that the Thick-billed Kingbird up in Presqu'ile was still around! I convinced my mom (thanks mom!) to take a 3-hour detour to Brighton, from which we drove to Sudbury, getting there just after midnight. I am now in the Sault for a few days before heading back to school and hoping to do a fair bit of birding while I'm here!

Anyway, back to that Kingbird... After a few hours of driving and some frantic unpacking and repacking in Guelph (where I left the majority of my stuff), we were on site where Stu Mackenzie and Ron Ridout were waiting for me with the bird in a scope! Couldn't get much easier than that! To echo what everyone else is saying, what an amazing bird (and record!). It was made that much better by the fact that it was my 400th bird for Canada!

Here's a pic I digiscoped using my mom's phone and Doug McRae's scope (thanks Doug!):

Now if only I had equipment like that...

My legs hurt...

There is a post on the way (might take a few days) detailing what I've been up to these last two months, but I thought I'd do this one first!

A Dickcissel showed up just outside Port Rowan back on June 10, and since then I've been thinking about biking up there to get it on my Bigby list. I've already seen it a number of times, since I drive by there pretty much every day for work, but this was especially tempting since I was sitting at 197 for the Bigby list this year, just shy of my goal of 200. Well, today I finally had a free morning, and made a bit of a plan last night to go to the Dickcissel and beyond! It turned out to be even better than I thought, too.

I had my alarm set for 6am, but ended up waking up just after 5...probably because that's when I started work the day before. This turned out to be a plus as I was back before it got too hot out. Anyway, my first stop was at the Dickcissel spot where I had it singing as I biked up. Also around were 15 Sandhill Cranes, a few Bobolinks, Eastern Meadowlark, Vesper Sparrow and a calling Upland Sandpiper (a pretty good bird for Norfolk, but it had been previously reported).

This was originally going to be my only stop for the morning, but in my late-night planning I thought - why not do Backus as well? I do have the whole morning, after all... So, off I went through Port Rowan, headed for the E 1/4 Line to avoid the highway. On the way, I thought I heard a Golden-winged Warbler singing, so I stopped for a minute to listen. It turned out to be a Clay-colored Sparrow, 4 of them actually, which appears to be the furthest south they are breeding in Ontario this year! (according to eBird) I'm not sure if anyone knew about this colony previously, I'll find out on Monday. It was about at this point that I decided to turn my bike adventure into a mini Big Day and try to pick up as many breeding species as possible without killing my legs.

So, I headed up to St. William's Forest via the Barrett-Sanderson tract, picking up Orchard Oriole, Grasshopper Sparrow, American Kestrel, Hermit Thrush, Pine Warbler and Blue-headed Vireo on the way. I also managed to hear a Ring-necked Pheasant along this stretch of road which was new for my Norfolk list and #200 for the Bigby this year!

Then it was over to Backus, where I biked the access road from Hwy 24 down to 3rd Concession, adding Cerulean Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, Yellow-throated Vireo, Black-billed Cuckoo, Acadian Flycatcher, Red-breasted Nuthatch and Wild Turkey to the day along with about 10 other warbler species and most of the regular birds that breed in the woods. Since I had cleaned up quite nicely on forest birds and my legs were beginning to go, I decided to head back towards Port Rowan, where a quick stop at the sewage lagoon added a few Spotted Sandpipers but no other shorebirds.

BSC headquarters were a bit more productive, however, with a flock of 52 Wood Ducks hanging out in the pond along with a Green Heron and a Least Bittern, and from the overlook I added Mute Swan, Lesser Scaup, Marsh Wren, Pied-billed Grebe and Bald Eagle. There had been a fairly large flock of diving ducks here earlier in the month but I think with all the boat traffic today they likely spooked further out into the bay.

Next up was the Big Creek marsh where I picked up American Coot, Common Gallinule, Black Tern, Swamp Sparrow, American Bittern and Cliff Swallow. Then it was a short bike down to Hastings Drive where there have been a fairly large number of gulls roosting during the day for the past month. It did not disappoint today, and the gull flock was probably the biggest I've seen yet this spring! In amongst the 500+ flock consisting mainly of Ring-billed, Bonaparte's and Herring were a Great Black-backed, a Lesser Black-backed and a Little Gull, along with 14 Caspian, ~35 Forster's and 6 Common Terns. I still have hope that this spot will turn up a weird gull/tern by the end of the summer!

My last stop was at Old Cut, back where I had started and had actually picked up a fair number of birds before I'd even left on my adventure - highlights from here before & after include Carolina Wren, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Red-breasted Nuthatch and a few of the regulars that I hadn't managed to see elsewhere in the morning.

My final distance biked ended up being 46 km, which may or may not sound like a lot but when you consider I'm on a mountain bike and this is probably the longest ride I've ever done I think it's pretty good! I was out from about 6am-10am and managed to pick up 119 species in that time (10 new for the Bigby and including 14 warbler sp.), not a bad total for late June by any means! This pushed me well past my goal of 200, and seeing as there are a few 'easy' species left for me to get, I think I can probably do 210 this year! I didn't bring my camera though, as I didn't really want the extra weight and I never really spent much time in one spot anyway, so there are no pics to add to today's post, but I do have about 2000 pics to go through from the past 2 months, the highlights of which will be posted up here sometime in the near future when I have a few spare minutes!

Also, as the title says, my legs are pretty sore now!

Western Grebe, etc

I was sitting at home on the computer yesterday morning, fairly bored and checking the weather - crap, basically summed it up - so I decided to go birding. Here are some pics to tell the story:

First stop was Mountsberg CA, where there were a few ducks, some warblers, and a lot of cold swallows pushed down by the rain and snow

Nearby were some Northern Flickers displaying to one another, which was pretty cool

I spent about 15 minutes trying to get flight shots of swallows in less-than-perfect light, pretty much to no avail

I did manage to get a new 'photographed' species though - Cliff Swallow

The swallows really didn't feel like moving when it started raining/snowing

I then got a text from Barb saying there was a Western Grebe down at Van Wagner's Beach in Hamilton, so I immediately went back to the truck and headed over there! When I got there, it was waiting in the scope for me - this is what happens when you put a 70mm lens up to a scope...

And to compare, this was taken with my cellphone (and its crappy 1.3MP camera), through the same scope at the same magnification (60x)

And some heavy crops of the bird with my 300mm lens from about 100 feet or so away

Which do you think turned out the best?

This Iceland gull provided some added entertainment, edited a bit to exaggerate the feeling of stormy weather

There were quite a few Caspian Terns floating around as well, along with a couple Common and a single Forster's

 Since I had some time, I went over to LaSalle marina to see if the King Eider was still around, and I found this interesting male Black Duck x Mallard hybrid with no green in the head...backcross maybe?

The King Eider was indeed there, although he didn't want to come anywhere close enough for good pics. I did hear him call a few times though which was pretty cool!

It'll be interesting to see if he sticks around all summer - I predict hundreds of photos of a stunning male King Eider next winter if he does

Hermaphrodite Mallard, more pronounced than the one I found in the Sault back in the winter

Afterward I headed to a few other spots around Wellington County, found a lot more swallows and spotted this Red-tailed Hawk right beside the road - he didn't stick around for more photos though

Anyway, it was a pretty good day with 84 species in a couple hours (in the rain and snow, no less), and I added 6 new ones for Wellington - now only 35 from my goal of 200!

This morning I biked over to the Arb to try to add some things to the Bigby list, found a Black-throated Green Warbler and some House Wrens but not a whole lot else - was nice to get outside in the sunshine for a bit though!

April Song Quiz

Thanks to everyone who answered the photo quiz this month! Everyone got it right with a calurus or "Western" Red-tailed Hawk (dark morph) and a Common Ground-Dove - both of these were taken at Whitefish Point in Michigan.

Here's the April song quiz - format stolen from Alvan (blog link on sidebar!). Good luck!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

Pelee

I got up yesterday at 2:30am after about 3 hour's sleep to the sound of my alarm. Sounds pretty brutal, I know, but it was well worth it! I met Brett and Barb at 3:30 down in Kitchener, and we headed off towards Essex county and Point Pelee National Park. We got into Wheatley around 6am, and made a quick stop at Muddy Creek where a Great Egret was almost glowing in the dark. Then it was off to the park for about 6.5 hours of wandering the park in search of birds. In this venture we had a fair bit of success, managing 9 species of warblers including an early Blue-winged, good numbers of early-arriving migrants, and even a rarity to top things off! As we were walking down the road to the Tip, Barb checked her phone, only to receive a message that said a Bell's Vireo had been found less than a minute ago, about 100m from where we were standing! We rushed over there, but unfortunately it had disappeared. After quite the search effort, we decided to move on and went to the Tip itself, which was looking pretty pitiful on this windy day. We did manage to find a pair of Red-headed Woodpeckers and a small flock of warblers and gnatcatchers roving the tip though. We then made our way back toward the tip loop, and had just made it when Barb got a phone call saying the Bell's had been refound, again less than 100m from where we were! After a bit of a search, everyone had seen it - except for me that is... I spent another few minutes searching the last place it was seen, and just when I was really starting to worry I wouldn't see it, it popped up on a branch about 20 feet from me, gave me a look, then dove into a bush. It eventually came out for a few pics before disappearing again. Success! It was then back to wandering the trails, where we picked up a couple White-eyed Vireos and a Blackburnian Warbler before we decided it was lunchtime. Since the park was pretty quiet (76 species in the 6.5 hours), we headed off to Hillman Marsh, where there were good numbers of ducks and Dunlin, along with a huge flock of Forster's Terns and a single Least Sandpiper to keep us occupied.

Since there were no other mega-rarities being seen and Essex was fairly quiet (alright, it was pretty good for late April, but you can only look at April migrants for so long!), we decided to try our luck at Rondeau, where a Yellow-throated Warbler was being seen. We stopped in at the Visitor centre to see exactly where it was hanging out, and spent a little while watching the feeders where a tame Raccoon was trying its luck with the peanut feeder (with a fair bit of success). We then spent about an hour walking the road and waiting by the feeders where it had been seen in the last few days, with no luck, not even a chip note for our efforts. We did however see a fairly early Rose-breasted Grosbeak and a flock of Rusty Blackbirds as a consolation prize. Just as we were walking back down the road to the car, I noticed a tiny bird flying off in the distance, and as it landed on a distant tree it gave a chip note. Interesting... I got my bins on it and immediately saw a black-and-white striped bird with a yellow throat. Got it! The other three came rushing back and we spent a good 20 minutes or so with the little guy, who was constantly talking to himself and even caught a few bugs, including a Red Admiral, while we watched. Since it was getting late we decided to head out, and I got back to Guelph just before 9pm. A very long but awesome day - only my third-ever visit to Pelee, and it continues to impress!

Bell's Vireo and Yellow-throated Warbler were both new Ontario (and Canada) birds for me, and I managed to add a solid 20 birds to the year list (out of 104 total species for the day!).

As I'm sure you've all noticed, my photography has been lacking from posts since about mid-February...I've been really bad about taking the camera out, but I plan on changing that now that school's out and the birds are arriving!

Pied-billed Grebes from last weekend south of Guelph

A Blue-gray Gnatcatcher shot from Pelee that didn't turn out, but I thought this was kind of interesting

The bird of the day - Bell's Vireo! Probably the 15th record for Ontario and the first ever in April

My best shot yet of a Blue-headed Vireo

Part of the huge (~225) flock of Forster's Terns at Hillman Marsh, along with a Bonaparte's Gull (top right)

A White-breasted Nuthatch looks on as the raccoon tries to figure out the pole

Success!

This Red-bellied Woodpecker probably wasn't too happy about the raccoon stealing all the peanuts

A highly cropped photo of the Yellow-throated Warbler at Rondeau

Roofin' It

Studying for exams has taken up most of my time in the past week or so (since my last post), but I have managed to take a few study breaks to get some birding in! The majority of them involved me sitting up on my roof, but yesterday Reuven and I got out for a few hours to cruise around southern Wellington County in the rain to see what we could find. Quite a bit, it turned out - the highlights of 63 species being White-winged Scoter (rare migrant in the county) and Red-headed Woodpecker. I also got my first warbler for the year - as usual, a Yellow-rumped. Another two weeks and most of the warblers will be back!

Back to the roof-sitting. I put in 2 good mornings up there, with 41 and 43 species respectively. I also managed to add a solid 15 species to the yard list (coincidentally I've added the same number to my Wellington list in the past week as well!), with some highlights being Lapland Longspur, Northern Goshawk (my 12th raptor for the yard), and a FISH CROW back on April 8! This brings the yard list up to 87 - getting quite close to my goal of 100 already - perhaps I should've set it higher? Another cool thing today was seeing hundreds of Red Admiral butterflies winging past - looks like these south winds created quite the invasion of this species in the last 2 days.

Record shot of my first Broad-winged Hawk of the year, taken from the roof (April 14)

Another thing I've been doing while not studying is attempting to learn my flight calls - tested it out a bit in the last 2 nights with all these south winds, managed to pick out Hermit Thrush and 5 sparrow species including a Field! For anyone who's interested in such things, this is an extremely good site (for Ontario anyway): http://pjdeye.blogspot.ca/. Just follow the links on the sidebar for songs and calls!

Now, back to studying...

Wind map

Haven't had much going on lately as final exams/projects are looming! I have had a few new ones for the yard though, namely Northern Mockingbird and a very early Barn Swallow. I'm still hoping for a Fish Crow to fly over, especially as there seem to be about 7 or 8 birds in the Hamilton/Guelph/Cambridge area.

For those of you interested in wind patterns (and seeing whether birds will be getting pushed into Ontario), check out this link: http://hint.fm/wind/ - it shows an hourly forecast of wind conditions in the US, but Southern Ontario is close enough. My guess is that on days with strong southerly flow from the Gulf coast all the way up here will be pretty good for migration (and rarities?)! It's also pretty cool to see the Coriolis effect in action once in a while, as winds spin counter-clockwise into a low pressure system and clockwise out of a high pressure system due to the rotation of the Earth.

Don't forget to try the quiz below!

April Quiz, etc.

Well, the March Song quiz did not go as well as I'd hoped - only one person responded! The answers in order were: Black-capped Chickadee, Black-and-white Warbler, Winter Wren and Spring Peeper (bit of a trick there).

In other news, I've added 2 new ones to the yard list: Fox Sparrow and Purple Martin, and added one pretty sweet bird to the Bigby list: Fish Crow a few minutes before a project meeting yesterday! Thanks to Reuven for finding these birds! Purple Martin was kind of an interesting one, not only in that it was quite early and completely unexpected, but it was my 100th species for March (first month to get over 100 this year), and my 2500th Ontario tick in eBird! Pretty cool stuff. I didn't manage to actually get out birding this weekend due to homework issues but maybe sometime this week...

Now, on to the April quiz. Good luck!