Predictions

It is October 15th today. I have 78 days left in my big year. I have 334 species on my year list, 4 short of the record of 338 species. I have decided to create this poll just to see what the general consensus is among everyone: How many species will I see this year, when it is all said and done? Feel free to vote below...

Weekend at Long Point, plus another year bird!

This weekend, I joined the University of Guelph wildlife club on the annual excursion to Long Point. The club has a great group of people again this year, and the weekend was absolutely rocking, like usual! Thanks go to Alex Sutton and Koley Freeman for arranging everything for this trip.

I decided to leave the camera at home for the trip. I didn't want to have another thing to worry about, plus I often feel obligated to take a lot of photos when I have it with me. Besides, if a rarity showed up, there were enough people with cameras that I am sure we would be able have been able to document it!

On the Saturday, we arrived bright and early and headed down to Old Cut to check out the banding operation. From there it was a walk into the Provincial Park where we spent the majority of the morning. Birds were absolutely everywhere, and it was certainly the "birdiest" I had seen southern Ontario perhaps all autumn! It was a lot of fun picking through all the sparrows and kinglets. Highlights included Black-throated Blue Warbler, Vesper Sparrow, and an extremely late Least Flycatcher. We observed this guy for quite some time and were pretty convinced by the end that it wasn't anything rarer. This is the time of year that weird southern and western strays could show up and it almost seems more likely that a flycatcher seen this time of year (with the exception of the late migrating Eastern Phoebe) is a rarity, compared to one of the common species.

That afternoon as we drove to the campground to unload some gear, I got a call from Richard Carr. He had just found a Red Phalarope at Hillman Marsh! The wheels began turning and I tried to figure out when would be the soonest I could go to check it out.

On one hand, it was a 3 hour drive to get there - a long way to go for a code-3 bird which seems to be showing up in a few places this week! There was a Red Phallie in Kingston the day prior and one in Toronto on October 11. Sometimes these birds disappear as quickly as they are found, never to be seen again. Perhaps the wise thing to do would be to wait to see if the bird hung around, and chase it on Monday. Besides, I was busy with the wildlife club trip!

But on the other hand, this may very well be the last chase-able Red Phalarope for the year. Some years very few if any get reported in the autumn! Besides, it may be just a code-3 bird, but I am at the point where the codes don't really matter as I have less than 6 to go for the record. Fortunately, everyone at the club was supportive of the idea of me leaving to chase this bird. Perhaps they just didn't want me around? :P

Well, the decision was made for me. Three others jumped in my car - Erika Hentsch, Jamie Thompson, and Chris Ho - and we motored through the rain to Hillman Marsh.

Once we arrived we started scanning the water and my heart sank. There was no phalarope in sight at the location where Richard had seen it! I scanned further out into the marsh and was surprised to see a little white blob bobbing in the waves. After studying the bird for a bit I could see that it was the Red Phalarope! The views were very crappy, but everyone was happy to see their first Red Phalarope.

extremely distant Red Phalarope (photo courtesy Chris Ho)

Eventually Richard showed up and we ended up walking out on the Couture Dyke where he had excellent views of the bird from relatively close. It appeared to be a young bird in 1st winter plumage.  An American Bittern made a flyby as well which caused some excitement.

Success!! Thank you, Richard for the great bird.

The rest of the weekend was filled with fun and shenanigans. Some highlight species from today were Eastern Wood-pewee, Black-throated Green and Orange-crowned Warblers, Peregrine Falcons and Merlins hunting sparrows, and a Stilt Sandpiper. The warm temperatures also brought out a lot of herps and we ended up seeing around 100 snakes! They were mostly Eastern Garter and Brown as well as a single Northern Watersnake. A few turtles were poking around too. A great weekend was had by all!

Hawkwatching at Seacliff...

I headed down to the Point Pelee area to try my hand at some hawk-watching. I had one target species in mind - Swainson's Hawk! Quite a few of Ontario's records have occurred in October of birds migrating with Turkey Vultures. North winds were forecasted for the day, the first time in weeks that southern Ontario was to see ideal winds for hawk-watching! My theory was that there would be a backlog of migrant raptors eager to move on a day like this.

I arrived at the Seacliff hawkwatch around 9:45 this morning. Shortly after 10, the vultures started moving, something that would continue un-abated until 2:00 PM or so. My first interesting raptor was a juvenile Northern Goshawk which soared overhead just after 10:00 AM. Surprisingly, it was new for my "Point Pelee Birding Area" list.

Alan Wormington joined me for most of the day, and Richard Carr did for a few hours as well. We were kept on our toes all morning and early afternoon as the steady stream of Turkey Vultures continued. Mixed in with them, we had:

18 Bald Eagles - a record high count for the Point Pelee Birding Area apparently
1 Golden Eagle - adult bird seen as I was about to quit at 4:30 PM or so
4 Northern Harriers - some looking very Swainson's like!
60 Sharp-shinned Hawks - estimate
7 Cooper's Hawks
15 Red-shouldered Hawks - really good looks at some!
1 Broad-winged Hawk - low flying young-looking bird
1 Merlin
1 Peregrine Falcon
30 American Kestrels - estimate
MANY Turkey Vultures - we didn't count them. Holiday Beach had 7000!

Other interesting birds seen included 100s of swallows, mostly Tree but at least two Northern Rough-winged, 38 Chimney Swifts, and a good mix of sparrows and warblers including Fox Sparrow and Orange-crowned Warbler.

Holiday Beach had its 3rd Swainson's Hawk of the year today. Kind of frustrating*, since it probably went right past us!!! You just can't win sometimes.

I have some shitty record shots of most of the birds but I don't really feel like editing them.

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* by kind of frustrating, I mean really really really frustrating

Townsend's Solitaire!

In my last blog post, I was complaining about the lack of potential year birds. Well, that seems to have changed! First of all, a Red Phalarope was found by the crew banding birds at the Leslie Street Spit. Unfortunately, the spit is closed during weekdays, and I had work to do around the house, so I didn't chase it. The bird may have been visible from nearby Cherry Beach but I didn't really want to crawl through Toronto traffic for the slim chance at seeing that bird.

That seemed to be a good decision for two reasons. First, other birders who went looking for the phalarope weren't successful. Secondly, I heard a report of a Townsend's Solitaire in Hamilton, only 35 minutes from my house!

Townsend's Solitaire is a species of thrush that is native to mountainous areas towards the west coast. Every autumn some Townsend's Solitaires disperse into the lowland areas east of the rockies, and invariably some of them end up too far and show up all the way to the east coast. Ontario seems to get a few each winter but I had never seen one!

This bird was found by Matt and Brenda D'Agruma around noon as they were walking along the trail across the road from Hutch's Restaurant along the beachfront in Hamilton. They contacted Cheryl Edgecombe (who writes the weekly Hamilton rare bird alert), and Cheryl let me know. I contacted Matt D'Agruma and he gave me a great description of the bird, so I jumped in my car and headed down to Hamilton.

I parked at Hutch's and started walking down the trail, looking for the juniper trees where the bird had been seen. Eventually I came up to the trees, and even before I had a chance to start scanning for the bird, it popped out in the open!

Townsend's Solitaire - Van Wagner's Beach, Hamilton, ON

I was pretty surprised to find this bird so easily! It had actually been a jinx bird of mine for Ontario. I fired off a few frames of the bird until it flew into some low bushes.

For the next hour I stayed on the scene while some other Hamilton birders showed up. The bird was very elusive, and while I saw it 4 or 5 times, it was often very brief views, or a quick glimpse of it flying by. I was unable to get any more photos.

The bird appeared small and slender, something that kind of surprised me. I had assumed it would be more robin-sized, but in fact it looked closer in size to a Hermit Thrush. It was very active and alert, flying around a fair bit. The white outer rectrices were obvious in flight, as was the yellow in the wings.

Eventually Rob Dobos and I managed to see it well as it perched at the top of a juniper bush. After a few seconds it flew across the pond and I figured I might as well get going!

Townsend's Solitaire - Van Wagner's Beach, Hamilton, ON

From what I hear, it was seen very sporadically until dusk. Perhaps it will hang around so more birders can see it.

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This very unexpected bird was a Code-4, my 24th Code-4 or higher bird for the year. I am now 5 away from tying the record, and I still have 8 Code-2 and Code-3 birds left!

Tomorrow, I am taking advantage of the forecasted north or northwest winds and heading down to Lake Erie to hawk watch. The conditions look ideal for a huge Turkey Vulture flight, as this will be the first time in over a week that the winds have been ideal. I am hoping that a Swainson's Hawk or two may be mixed in with all the vultures! All the west winds we have had lately may have blown a few into Ontario, and now with north winds, they will be migrating with all the raptors and will pass by the hawkwatches on the north shore of Lake Erie. It sounds good in theory!!

Cool stuff about rarities

Another few days has passed without any megas showing up in Ontario. Is it just me or has it been sparse for rarities the last month or so? While there have been a few interesting things showing up, most of them are either not countable for the year list because they are considered subspecies (Harlan's Hawk, Vega Gull) or because I already had one for the year (Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Western Grebes, etc)! Then of course there was the Eurasian Collared-dove chase which turned out to be a domestic Ringed Turtle-dove. What it all boils down to is that I have seen just one year bird since September 12. Where are the Western Kingbirds? But that should change soon as the continuous strong southwest winds ought to blow something interesting in! A few potential year birds have been seen the last couple of days - the season's first Purple Sandpiper at Presqu'ile yesterday, and a Red Phalarope briefly at Sault Ste Marie a few days ago.

I was bored a few days ago so I decided to go through the OBRC data and make some graphs. Most people assume that mid May is the best time of the year to see rarities, with the period from late September to early December generally agreed upon as the "best" rarity time in the fall. I decided to look at all the records of rare birds accepted by the Ontario Bird Records Committee to get a better picture of when rarities show up in the province.

For all of these graphs, I used all accepted records from 1997 to 2010. I didn't pick 1997 for any specific reason, it is just that I wanted some sort of cutoff since it is somewhat labor intensive working with these data. I only used accepted records, and I didn't include records in which the species identification was correct but the bird had an "uncertain origin". Here is the first graph - all of the accepted rarities by week of the year. Of course, click on the image to see it full-size.

A few interesting things stick out. The first obvious thing is the number of rarities that show up in the spring compared to the autumn. I knew May was good, but I didn't know that in the middle two weeks in May, at least 3 times as many rarities showed up than in any week in the autumn (except the first week of November).

Additionally, some weeks were amazingly dead. In the 14 years I graphed, the OBRC has only accepted 2 records from birds that were found between February 19 and 25! Compare that to the 130 accepted records of birds found May 7 to 13. The whole period from late January to late March is essentially useless for rarities in Ontario. The period from mid June to mid August ins't much better!

The next interesting thing was the first week of November. Why is there such a huge jump for this week? Looking at the data, I could see that most of Ontario's Cave Swallow records have occurred during that week, with most records coming from 4 years: 1999, 2003, 2005, and 2008. Cave Swallows are now no longer a review-able species partly due to the epic year 2010 was for them (2010 Cave Swallow records weren't reviewed).

For the next graph, I excluded all Cave Swallow records.

The autumn records are normally distributed around the middle of November. There is a minor peak around the second week of October, though I doubt it is statistically significant. More than 20 records have been accepted by the OBRC (since 1997) every week from September 17 to December 2. While no weeks are as epic as in the spring, it goes to show that the fall is pretty consistent for rarities from now until early December. Get out there and find some rarities!

For the last two graphs, I only included species which I haven't seen yet this year. The first graph is with Cave Swallows included, and the second is without Cave Swallows.

The general shape of the graphs compared to the previous two are relatively the same, and reinforce that I should really be out there looking hard for the next 6 weeks or so. It is also important that I keep my schedule open during this time as there is a great possibility of potential year birds showing up left, right and centre for the next 6 weeks. From October 15 to the end of the year, there has been an average of 9.7 rarities that are also potential year birds every year. Of course some of these are duplicate species, and not all of them would be chase-able. It just shows that the potential is there for me to grab 5 or 6 more Code 4+ birds this autumn.

Anyways, just some "fun" things I was doing when I was bored!

Last of the Moosonee photos

Here are the remaining miscellaneous photos from the north. Kicking it off is an American Pipit from the Moosonee lagoons. It was a new photographed bird for the year, and along with Winter Wren, Rusty Blackbird, and American Tree Sparrow, I am now up to 279 photographed for the year! 300 is in sight...

American Pipit - Moosonee sewage lagoons

Both on the way up and on the way back from Moosonee, we checked out several dam systems including Abitibi. These large open areas contained a lot of great habitat, though we didn't find anything too rare. Here's Alan looking at something interesting:

Windblown Savannah Sparrow from Abitibi:

Savannah Sparrow - Abitibi dam

Shorebirds were fairy sparse on the trip. We had some Killdeer and a Black-bellied Plover on Lake Timiskaming, some American Golden-Plovers, a single White-rumped, and some Pectoral Sandpipers along the Moose River, and various yellowlegs scattered here and there. A group of "yelling"legs, mostly containing Greaters provided the soundtrack for our time at the Moosonee lagoons.

juvenile Greater Yellowlegs - Moosonee sewage lagoons

A juvenile Red-necked Phalarope was also at the Moosonee lagoons on our first day. It is getting rather late up there for Red-necked and I was hoping that it was the more desirable Red Phalarope, but that was not to be!

Merlins are a common feature anywhere in boreal Ontario.

Merlin - Moosonee sewage lagoons

One day, I was walking an overgrown baseball diamond in the north end of Moosonee when I flushed a Nelson's Sparrow. While common breeders on the coast, they aren't seen as often in town. Alan got some really great photos of it and this is the best I could do.

Nelson's Sparrow - Moosonee

Water-taxi on the Moose River...

Some Common Goldeneyes at the Moosonee lagoons:

Common Goldeneyes - Moosonee sewage lagoons

And to close, my first of autumn Northern Shrike that I found hunting tree sparrows along the railway tracks on afternoon.

Northern Shrike - Moosonee

Charismatic mammals and a request

I am only 6 away from tying the big year record, and so consequently the number of potential species I could add is dwindling. I have made a list of potential species that I could still add, in the hopes that somebody reading this blog at some point in the remaining 12 weeks knows of the location of one of these birds and can help me out. The list, entitled my "Hit List" can be found here. It contains only species that I haven't seen yet this year and includes most of the species which one could expect to show up from now until the end of December. If anyone knows any details on any of the species listed, let me know! Of particular interest are hummingbirds. Almost all of the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have now left the province, so if a hummingbird shows up at a feeder there is a very good chance that it is a Rufous Hummingbird or even something more obscure. Often Rufous Hummingbirds will be seen into November and December in Ontario. If you know of a hummingbird visiting a feeder between now and the end of the year, I would really appreciate any info on it!

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When we were up in Moosonee we saw more than just interesting birds. The mammals were almost as interesting! On our first day in Moosonee, we were walking back to town from the lagoons when Mark noticed this little Pine Marten scaling a hydro pole. I'm not sure what he was hoping to find up there!

Pine Marten - Moosonee

Once we "caught" him climbing the pole, he ended up just hanging out up there and keeping a close eye on us.

Pine Marten - Moosonee

Pine Marten - Moosonee

On our last morning in Moosonee, we got word that a Bearded Seal was hanging out on one of the docks in town. We swung by to check it out, and sure enough there it was!

Bearded Seal - Moosonee waterfront

Apparently this Bearded Seal has been occasionally seen on this very dock over the past couple of years! It was quite tolerant of people and I was able to take some close-ups while it rested.

Bearded Seal - Moosonee waterfront

Bearded Seals are the largest of Ontario's pinnipeds and can be found along the coasts of Hudson and James Bay. This was my first!

Bearded Seal - Moosonee waterfront

We had two more interesting mammal sightings. The first was a lynx on the road to Fraserdale late one evening. We turned the car around and went back to where it was and had great looks as it crouched in a ditch at the side of the road. Eventually it bounded towards the treeline and kept an eye on us from under a spruce tree. This was a "life mammal" for Alan and Mark, and only the second I had seen.

The other interesting mammal sighting was one "that got away". I was driving along HWY 129, northeast of Sault Ste Marie. We were in a fairly desolate stretch when a large cat-like mammal bounded off the road. Mark also got to see it. Unfortunately it had disappeared before we were close, but it had a long tail and was certainly cat-like. It may have been a cougar, but I guess we will never know.

More rarity photos from Moosonee

Continuing on, here are a few more photos of some of the rarities we saw while up north.

The Carolina Wren was one of the biggest surprises of the trip and perhaps our "rarest" find. Carolina Wrens normally range no farther north then about the north shore of Lake Ontario. The odd one seems to be found in Ottawa, and every now and then one pops up further north to Sault Ste Marie or an area of similar latitude. "Northern" Ontario, which basically includes all the area north of Sault Ste Marie and North Bay, had 3 reviewed records as of 2010. I knew Michael Butler found one earlier this autumn, so this would probably make the 5th sighting for northern Ontario.

Of greater interest to us was that it was the farthest known record of this species ever! This bird probably got caught up in the nice warm, south winds a few days previously and flew the wrong way. It eventually saw the town of Moosonee as an opening in the vast spruce and tamarack forest and so decided to go in for the landing. Eventually it wandered over to the ravine next to Store Creek, a ravine which looks remarkably similar to actual Carolina Wren habitat in southern Ontario, and set up shop.

Carolina Wren - Store Creek, Moosonee

This little guy was quite active, singing up a storm and churring away. It seemed quite interested in us and came in close to check us out on several occasions. No doubt all the singing was to try to attract some similar looking friends, but I don't think he'll have much luck in Moosonee!

Finding rarities is the pinnacle for a lot of birders, myself included. There is something satisfying about finding something rare that no one has seen before in a certain area, and that extends over to "vagrant" birds. While a very exciting find, I couldn't help but think that I had used up a huge chunk of my rarity karma on him. Really, I could have picked 50 species which would be a more expected find in Moosonee which I would have preferred over the Carolina Wren! Its just that these charismatic little "churrrr"ing machines are found in southern Ontario, and so seeing one in Moosonee does no good for the year list.

Carolina Wren - Store Creek, Moosonee

I guess we must have had some karma left since we were fortunate to see a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher near Fauquier, Ontario on the way back. Alan was the first to notice the flycatcher sitting on the wire, but we turned the car arround and had fantastic looks at this beaut flycatching from the wire! This was the 3rd Scissor-tailed Flycatcher I had seen in Ontario. It is a pretty sweet record as well, being the 2nd furthest north this species had been recorded in Ontario, and the 2nd record for Cochrane District. It was also the rarest bird that I had seen in Fauquier, Ontario - surpassing the Common Raven I had here in January (an assumption as I can't actually recall any ravens from that particular town, but most likely I saw several).

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher - Fauquier, ON

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher - Fauquier, ON

I think the Highway 11 corridor from Nipigon all the way across to Smooth Rock Falls is a fantastic rarity trap that does not get explored very often. It offers a swath of open habitat after seemingly unending boreal forest, a great spot for birds like the above Scissor-tailed Flycatcher to take a break. The only problem is that it is a pain in the ass to get to since it is so far from home.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher - Fauquier, ON

A few more rarities from the trip: photos that aren't of birds or other wildlife! Here's Alan looking incredibly joyous (and this was before all the rarities, though he had seen the Canvasback not 15 minutes prior)

Idiot #1 - Moosonee lagoons

And Mark demonstrating the cool way to use binoculars.

Idiot #2 - Moosonee lagoons

Here's the crazy duo together. Fortunately I have no photos of Idiot #3 to share.

Fancy chickens in the north

Spruce Grouse have to be one of my favorite bird species, one I don't get to see enough of. Prior this year I think I only had one sighting of this species in Ontario! In early April, a visit to Algonquin Park gave me great  views, though way too brief, of a displaying male. In July I managed to flush a female Spruce Grouse from a thick spruce thicket in the Rainy River District. Finally on this trip, we had some great sightings of this species and we got to spend a prolonged amount of time studying them.

The above image is the typical way we would first see these birds - standing on the side of the road. On the drive to the Abitibi dam, we managed to see 7 separate Spruce Grouse! One group contained a male and three females.

Grouse are amazingly tame and if we moved slowly, we were able to walk right up to them. I had to take the 1.4x extender off of my lens, and even then they were too close!

A few kilometres down the road, this little guy wattled onto the shoulder. We drove back to where he was and watched him do his thing for a few minutes. Male Spruce Grouse, like many other "chickens", have a mating system that involves an elaborate display in an attempt to woo the females. This time of year, the temperature and length of daylight is similar to the spring, when mating happens. This triggers the males to perform their displays, though they probably won't get lucky since the females aren't ready to mate in the autumn. This Sprucer did not display while we were here, but that is probably why he was on the road - a nice open area, with good visibility for all the females to see him!

Some rarity photos from the Moosonee trip

To kick things off, here are the photos of the Lesser Black-backed Gulls we found at the North Bay landfill. This landfill is a FANTASTIC birding location, and I highly recommend that any birder who travels through North Bay make a stop. They are very tolerant of birders, there are a ton of gulls, and the scrubby areas around the edges can be great for passerines. We had 150 American Pipits, 20 Lapland Longspurs, 80 Chipping Sparrows, 100 Savannah and Song Sparrows, and 500 White-crowned Sparrows. Of course there were a few interesting things mixed in - Orange-crowned Warbler, Clay-colored Sparrow, Indigo Bunting, etc. I can`t wait to visit again when I go back north in a few weeks!!

2nd winter Lesser Black-backed Gull - North Bay landfill

I think that Lesser Black-backed Gulls are regular here, it is just that no one checks this spot very often. According to Martin Parker these were the first confirmed LBBGs for Nipissing District.

juvenile Lesser Black-backed Gull - North Bay landfill

Once we arrived in Mooonee, the first thing we did was check out the sewage ponds south of town. A Canvasback had been found there a few days previously, and Alan was anxious to add this one to his southern James Bay list!

Canvasback (bottom right) - Moosonee lagoons

That was easy. This species has only been seen up here a couple of times before.

Canvasback - Moosonee lagoons

One day, we were walking around the north end of town when we noticed there was a bit of a hawk flight going on. We ended up finding a picnic table and watching the skies as Rough-legged Hawks and Peregrine Falcons streamed overhead. This raptor caught as by surprise as we didn`t really know what it was at first. It had the proportions of a red-tailed hawk but was more or less black and white with no brown tones, and with a lot of white on the tail. The bird came in quite close and we were able to study it well and grab some photos. My camera ended up deleting the photos, but fortunately I was able to recover them thanks to some software that Dwayne Murphy provided (thanks Dwayne!). This bird appeared to be a Harlan`s Hawk - a rare form of Red-tailed Hawk that breeds in Alaska and winters in the southern Great Plains.

"Harlan's" Red-tailed Hawk - Moosonee

Harlan`s Hawk has only been recorded a couple of times before in Ontario, and never in northern Ontario. There is only one previous record that has been accepted by the OBRC. This is the only shot that shows the upperside (barely). Excuse the poor shot!

"Harlan's" Red-tailed Hawk - Moosonee

That's all for now. The next post will have some shots of the Carolina Wren (first for the Hudson Bay lowlands) and the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher!