Local rarities

I've managed to get out locally a fair amount in the last little while, and as a result have some birds to show for it.

When birders think of Guelph and Wellington County, there's not much that comes to mind. Guelph isn't a hotspot for raptors, shorebirds, ducks, gulls, warblers, vireos, or really, anything. I guess Snowy Owls do come down into the northern part of the county most winters, which is pretty cool I guess. But that's about it.

However, Wellington county is where I have decided to make my home for 4 years (I am in the final year, now), so you make do with what you are given. I like to think that over the past little while I have seen some decent birds in the county (best was last year's Parasitic Jaeger and Connecticut Warbler, probably).

Anyways, so recently I've gone out and seen some "local" rarities. The first was a juvenile Red-necked Grebe. I first heard about this bird from a posting by Fred Urie on a local birding forum. The bird was hanging out in a smallish pond along Wellington Road 32 and present for a few days . Red-necked Grebes are abundant in Lake Ontario, but not so much inland. I went out on October 4, and there it was, the little stripey-headed bastard in all his glory.

juvenile Red-necked Grebe, Guelph

Earlier in the week I was looking at some google maps and came across the "Hespeler Mill Pond" in north Cambridge, which looked promising. I decided to check it out since it was only a couple minutes from the Red-necked Grebe spot.

Surprisingly it was actually quite productive! A Great Egret, a nice variety of puddle ducks, some kingfishers, Cape May and Bay-breasted Warblers and some random shorebirds. Shorebirds are tough to come by in this part of the world, so to get 10 species in one spot was quite something! The best of the bunch were a pair of Long-billed Dowitchers, closely followed by Black-bellied Plover and Wilson's Snipe. I think there are only a couple of county records for LBDO prior to these ones (This spot was just over the county line, in Waterloo).

juvenile Long-billed Dowitchers feeding

Other than these birds, it has been pretty decent in Guelph...an Orange-crowned Warbler here, a Cackling Goose (or 6) there. And this morning I woke up to the thump of a junco hitting my window. Winter's almost here! By the way, he sat on the ground for about 10 minutes before flying away.

More phalarope awesomeness

I decided to once again make the short trek over to Tilbury this afternoon while taking a break from work. Many of the same ducks and herons were still present, including the female Northern Shoveler (she was joined by 5 others on Saturday, but they were now gone), a handful of teal, a couple of Black Ducks, and a dozen Wood Ducks. While scanning the shorebirds, I was happy to see that the young Red-necked Phalarope had returned. It had been absent yesterday, apparently.

This is an awesome little bird and one of my favorite species. The lighting wasn't ideal at this time of day, but even still I slowly crawled down the embankment and grabbed about 100 photos of the little guy. Makes me wish I had an extra 100 or 200 mm on my lens!

juvenile Red-necked Phalarope - Tilbury lagoons

Every so often, the phalarope would spin quickly in a circle, creating a vortex that sucks tiny invertebrates up to the surface, which it promptly plucked off of the water.

juvenile Red-necked Phalarope - Tilbury lagoons

About a dozen total species of shorebirds were present including 4 juvenile Baird's Sandpipers, an adult White-rumped Sandpiper (the first of the fall for me at Tilbury), and 3 adult Long-billed Dowitchers.

adult Long-billed Dowitcher - Tilbury lagoons

While I was watching the shorebirds, I noticed that they all started lifting a wary eye to the sky. I took this as a hint and looked up, but the only raptorish shape I could see was a Chimney Swift way up high. About 10 minutes later the same thing took place.

juvenile Red-necked Phalarope - Tilbury lagoons

This time, though, the culprit was a juvenile Peregrine barelling in. It chased a flock of peeps around for a bit before eventually leaving. At one point the falcon was dangerously close to the phalarope, huddling close to the water! I found it interesting that the dowitchers and Greater Yellowlegs didn't fly when the Peregrine flew in - in fact the dowitchers never stopped feeding the entire time the aerial assault was on.

Peregrine Falcon - Tilbury lagoons

The flocks dissappeared, but over the next 20 minutes slowly started arriving and feeding. Here is a Lesser Yellowlegs trailed by a couple of peeps. I think the front two are Semi-sands and the back one is a Least.

shorebirds - Tilbury lagoons

Also seen was a single American Pipit, my first of the fall and first for Tilbury. I also heard a couple of Bobolinks as they migrated south over the lagoons (also new for my Tilbury list). I think I've seen close to 100 species of birds there over the last year.

Not much news

Another week, come and gone. I did make it out to the Tilbury lagoons twice, and as expected, nothing new was seen.

Shorebirds included 11 species, and the highlight were the same 4 Long-billed Dowitchers. Many of them are undergoing extensive feather molt.

Long-billed Dowitcher - Tilbury lagoons

The duck scene is getting slightly more interesting. On Wednesday, among the 300 Mallards I noticed a female Bufflehead, 3 Northern Shoveler, 11 Wood Ducks, and a smattering of both species of teal. One can only hope for a Cinnamon Teal or Garganey.

At work, I spent an hour one afternoon with 3 of my co-workers as well as Tom Preney hiking through the Springgarden ANSI. We checked out a nice spot that had a large amount of Rough Blazingstar. Here is a Silver-spotted Skipper on it:

Silver-spotted Skipper on Rough Blazingstar

This appears to be a meadowhawk of some sort.

Meadowhawk sp.

And finally, a little American toad I found sitting on a trail.

American Toad

This weekend I am slated to work a fair bit but I am hoping to get out at least once to Point Pelee or Tilbury. I would also like to take a walk in the Ojibway Prairie and try to turn up some new butterflies.....

In other news...its almost jaeger time!!!! Once we get a few cold fronts followed by some east winds, Long-tailed and perhaps Parasitic should start to show up in western Lake Ontario. SW winds may bring something good to the tip of Pelee. Unfortunately I will miss the majority of Long-tailed Jaeger season because of my trip to Nova Scotia. It was not too long ago that a Manx Shearwater was spotted at Van Wagner's Beach early in the jaeger season (August 31, 2006), as well as a Long-billed Curlew (August 23, 2009).