Thursday 3 May 2012

Recent birds and setbacks

Sorry for the short post tonight...its late, I'm tired, and frustrated so I don't feel like writing a whole lot. I've had some trouble with my car today and it may possibly be a blown gasket. I don't know much about cars, but apparently that can be quite expensive to fix. Hopefully when I take it in to the mechanic tomorrow that isn't the prognosis. Needless to say, this could throw a huge wrench in my big year but I won't really know until I find out how much this will cost. Oh, and the birds. Its been really good the last 3 days and I am now sitting at 262 for the year. The highlight today was a Chuck-will's-Widow which was found early this morning calling from just north of the visitor centre parking lot. At 8:40 PM, it started up calling again, much to the delight of the 50+ birders who came out to listen for it! Earlier in the day I saw a Yellow-breasted Chat at Blue Heron which was entertaining local birders for several hours. This morning the reverse migration was quite good and I had about 2000 birds in the 2.5 hours. The highlight for me was a Prothonotary Warbler, bright and early! A possible Dickcissel flew over as well, but we weren't able to confirm its identification. Year birds since my last update include: Ruby-throated Hummingbird Eastern Kingbird Tennessee Warbler Cerulean Warbler Magnolia Warbler Blackburnian Warbler Clay-colored Sparrow Scarlet Tanager Western Meadowlark (a new Ontario bird for me, found by Steve Pike and Andrew Keaveney) Semipalmated Plover Prothonotary Warbler American Redstart Black-throated Blue Warbler Olive-sided Flycatcher Chuck-wills-widow

1 comment:

Michael said...

We, the birders of NW Ontario, have agreed not to turn up any rarities until you're back on the road. Good luck Josh!