Pelee Weekend! Day Three

I'm down at Pelee again for the weekend, and the conditions look good to bring a lot of new birds into Ontario overnight, with hopefully some southern rarities mixed in! Here is the last post from last weekend - it will be quick since I will be in the park in 6.5 hours!.

Painted Turtle at De Laurier

Dave and I birded Pelee with a bunch of different birders throughout the day, including Jeremy Bensette, the Burrells, the Holdens, Barb Charlton, Tom Preney, Dwayne Murphy, and a few others I am forgetting. The birding was much better than the previous two days and I saw several first of the year! Orange-crowned Warbler, American Redstart, Indigo Bunting, Peregrine Falcon (finally!), Blue-winged Warbler, etc. The highlight of the day though was this Henslow's Sparrow that Dwayne Murphy spotted when he was birding with Jeremy Bensette and I. He had gone up the path and flushed the sparrow into a small bush.

Henslow`s Sparrow

Henslow`s Sparrow

This is a pretty awesome sparrow that we rarely see in Ontario. Luckily Pelee seems to be a great place to get one during April through May - this was my sixth Henslow's, all but one along the west beach at Point Pelee.

A small group of us stood by the area where it had happed down to, and for a good ten minutes until the crowds arrived, it crept through the grasses like a mouse.

Henslow`s Sparrow

It was tough to get a clean shot of the bird as their always seemed to be a blade of grass in the way. After a few minutes it causiously walked out into the open and continued to feed.

Henslow`s Sparrow

Henslow`s Sparrow

At close range the light purple and maroon back is almost brilliant in the right light, combined with the olive-green nape and yellow face. For such a secretive sparrow it is intricately marked.

Henslow`s Sparrow

We ended up leaving Pelee by mid afternoon and drove straight all the back to the GTA. We decided to make a quick detour to see if we could find a Willet in the fields off Brittania, amd after a bot of searching found the bird at dusk in a flooded short grassy field with a dozen yellowlegs.

 It was the end of a pretty good weekend of Pelee birding for Dave and I. Dave added a lifer and some new Ontario birds, while we both saw a ton of new birds for the year including most of the rare birds that were around. A pretty good weekend, though I have much higher hopes for this upcoming weekend. The warm, southerly flow over the last two days is carrying over into tomorrow. 30 km;h south winds are forecasted through the night, which should bring a big wave of neotropical migrants into Ontario. Hopefully some stop at Point Pelee, since it is peak season for a rarity or two to appear!