I returned to my home away from home, Point Pelee, during the wee hours of the morning on Friday, May 13. After an all-too-brief sleep in my car I entered the park around 5:30 AM, with a plan to ride the early tram at 6:00 AM down to the Tip.
It was a full tram and all the eager birders piled off and headed south to the furthest south point of mainland Canada, scouring the woods for whatever new migrants had dropped in overnight. I cut off on a side trail to the east side of the Tip to escape from the crowds, and had the entire beach to myself! Not two minutes later my attention was grabbed by a medium-sized songbird perched in the open along the trees lining the beach. Even in the pre-dawn lighting, its shape looked somewhat Summer Tanager like, and a brief check with my binoculars confirmed my suspicions. Cool!
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| Summer Tanager - Point Pelee National Park |
I sent out an alert and within a few minutes a large contingent of birders made their way back up the beach to where I was located, happy to lay eyes on their first Summer Tanager of the year. The bird was very hungry and actively foraging for insects quite successfully, replenishish its fat stores after a night of migrating.
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| Summer Tanager stakeout - Point Pelee National Park |
It can be identified as a young male Summer Tanager due to the interesting combination of red, yellow, and green plumage. Much of its head and body feathers had been replaced with the red feathers characteristic of adult male Summer Tanagers, while its wings, tail and some of its underparts still retained the green and orange tones from its first basic plumage. Adult males are completely red, while females can range from orange to greenish overall.
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| Summer Tanager - Point Pelee National Park |
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| Summer Tanager - Point Pelee National Park |
Summer Tanagers are a rare but regular spring overshoot in southern Ontario and generally 10-15 are reported each year in the province. I have observed 12 Summer Tanagers in Ontario in my ~8 years of birding, of which this was the 5th one that I have found.
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| Summer Tanager - Point Pelee National Park |
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| Summer Tanager - Point Pelee National Park |
The bird remained pretty reliable throughout the rest of the day and hundreds of birders came by to check it out. It was still around later that evening when I went on a long walk down to the Tip and back.
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| Summer Tanager twitch - Point Pelee National Park |
Another highlight of the day occurred only an hour after the Summer Tanager excitement. I was standing on the east side of the tip with a group of 8 or 10 birders, alternating between watching the skies for "reverse migrants" flying south off the tip, and scanning the open lake for whatever might fly by. Rob Waldhuber suddenly called out a small cormorant flying by, and within seconds the rest of us were on it. The tiny size (about half as large as the Double-crested Cormorants trailing it) and long tail identified this bird as a Neotropic Cormorant.
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| Neotropic Cormorant (lead bird) with Double-crested Cormorants - Point Pelee National Park |
The first Neotropic Cormorant for Ontario was a bird that Dave Milsom and Ron Tozer found at Wheatley Harbour on May 3, 2005. The bird hung around for a couple of days, allowing hundreds of birders in the Pelee area (and from further afield) to add it to their Ontario list. The second Neotropic was found in Muddy Creek near Wheatley Harbour on April 24, 2011 by Brandon Holden - it remained there until the 27th of April. I was lucky to see the bird twenty minutes after Brandon found it as I was not far away at the time.
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| Neotropic Cormorant (lead bird) with Double-crested Cormorants - Point Pelee National Park |
Since those initial sightings, Neotropic Cormorants have been seen at least 2-4 times a year in the province. This is probably due to a combination of factors - increased awareness of the species, a range extension to the north, and the constant study of cormorants by Brandon, who has found around half of them!
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| Neotropic Cormorant (lead bird) with Double-crested Cormorants - Point Pelee National Park |
Unfortunately the sighting of this particular Neotropic Cormorant was fairly short-lived - eventually the small group of cormorants it was with disappeared into the haze to the north. I wish I had my spotting scope with me since it was too distant to view well with binoculars. Even with blowing up the photos I can't really tell the age of the bird. Regardless, it was an exciting morning of birding at one of my favorite locations in the province!
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