Dark morph Red-tailed Hawk in Ontario

There seems to be a lot more interest in Red-tailed Hawk subspecies in Ontario lately. This is obviously a good thing as it is great to see people taking an interest in what is our most commonly observed hawk and probably most variable species in southern Ontario! This species makes for a great study here...I think of them like juncos - you can stare at them all day long and notice the individual variation from bird to bird - no two are exactly alike!

If you are interested at all in the variation of this species then you should probably head on over to Jean Iron's website to check out these articles by her and Ron Pittaway:
Subspecies of the Red-tailed Hawk (1993)
Dark Morph Red-tailed Hawks: calurus or abieticola? (2012)
Hawk Commentary (2016)

Another good article is Identifying Northern Red-tailed Hawks by Jon Ruddy (2014). Check the list of references in all of those articles for more reading!

Anyways, I point you to these information sources so you can read about these wonderful hawks before you see what I have to say/show...

Ken and I were down at Long Point for a quick tour of winter birds on Sunday morning. We weren't disappointed! We racked up 64 species in a morning of birding, highlighted by some good winter birds like Greater White-fronted Goose, Red-shouldered Hawk, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Hermit Thrush, Gray Catbird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Fox Sparrow and best of all, a dark morph Red-tailed Hawk. We weren't the finders of any of these birds but rather benefited from other birders being out and about in the days.

Anyways, here's the Red-tailed Hawk in question. For now, I have identified it as a dark morph calurus, sticking with the conventional wisdom that all dark morph birds in Ontario are of that species, but as Jean points out in her article, there could well be dark morph birds of the abieticola subspecies that no one has located in their remote breeding grounds yet!

Luke Berg also observed and photographed this bird on 14 January.

Greater White-fronted Goose and waterfowl at Long Point

Big Creek is finally open and the warm melt water flowing through it is starting to open up a lead in Long Point's inner bay, so this morning when I stopped to check out the bridge on the causeway there I was happy to find about 1500 Tundra Swans, hundreds of ducks and geese and a single Greater White-fronted Goose.

Here's a link to my full checklist from the causeway. With south winds predicted on Friday and Saturday there should be more birds filling into the small bit of open water this weekend!

Even though it is still cold, it does look and sound like March in the area. Check out this video from the IBA Canada YouTube channel that I took a couple days ago:



Thanks for looking and don't forget to support my birdathon for bird conservation!

Long Point gold - shorebirds and my rarest bird of the spring

To celebrate Ken's birthday I met him at his place at 4:30 this morning and we headed down for a morning of birding at Long Point. This time of year is great at Long Point with tons of species breeding locally all back on territory and a good number of migrants still coming through.

Our first stop was Hasting's Drive. We were greeted by lots typical late May migrants like flycatchers, thrushes and warblers like Tennessee, Wilson's and Blackpoll. We were walking along the road when we noticed a big flock (230 individuals) of Whimbrels heading west, then shortly after another flock (120). We're right in the prime time for Whimbrels moving through so we decided to head back to the car to do a proper lake watch with the scope. We were rewarded with a total of 865 Whimbrels plus 6 Red Knots (good Long Point bird) within the next hour and 7 Red-throated Loons. Here's our full checklist.

One of nine flocks of Whimbrels

After our success at Hasting's Drive we headed east towards Old Cut where on the way we heard a singing White-throated Sparrow - there's still a great mix of early and late migrants at Long Point making diversity really good. We made a quick walk through the LPBO Old Cut field station (full checklist here) and then walked through the New Provincial Park where activity was still good with lots of the expected migrants for the time of year. Here's our full checklist. We arrived back at Old Cut just in time for Avery (one of the banders at LPBO) to stick his head out of the lab and say "you're going to want to see this bird".

Sure enough it was a very interesting bird! My initial thought went to female Cerulean but the yellow on it made it obvious pretty quickly that wasn't correct. I'll let the photos speak for themselves:

The bird in question has a lot of features that point towards Magnolia Warbler, especially the back and rump, but there is lots wrong for that species - notably the pale head, throat and underparts and the tail (which should have white spots on the tail feathers rather than the white outer rectrices of this bird). Our best guess at the time was a Magnolia x Chestnut-sided Warbler hybrid but looking at the photos again I can see why Cerulean came to mind (check out that head/face) initially.

Magnolia x Chestnut-sided doesn't seem like too much of  stretch since the two species share a lot of breeding range and often are found in similar habitat. Cerulean x Magnolia would be more of a stretch since those two species don't overlap a whole lot or share very similar habitat. What do you think? According to Birds of North America online the only confirmed hybrid involving Magnolia Warbler was one with a Yellow-rumped Warbler from Dominican Republic (Latta, S. C., K. C. Parkes, and J. M. Wunderle. 1998. A new intrageneric Dendroica hybrid from Hispaniola. Auk 115(2):533-537.). That combination is extra interesting to me because I am convinced I observed such a bird just a week and a half ago...see my description of it here.

Anyways, we made a stop at Townsend Sewage Lagoons on the way home where there was a good number of shorebirds (see our full checklist here) including a beautiful female Wilson's Phalarope. We ended our day at about 140 species, not too shabby!

If you're thinking about visiting Long Point be sure to check out the new Long Point Birding Trail either online or by picking up your copy at Bird Studies Canada headquarters or the Old Cut field station.

May birds and bugs

It's been a pretty crazy last few weeks for me doing presentations about the Important Bird Area program around southern Ontario but it has been a great excuse to be out and about and seeing lots of fun stuff. I've even had a chance to take a couple photos of some of the goodies - check em out!

Acadian Flycatcher in the Norfolk Forest Complex IBA

Many migrants, like this Wood Thrush have nesting well on the way already

An Ovenbird nest with eggs

Eastern Tailed Blue nectaring on strawberry blossoms

Eastern Pine Elfin on garlic mustard

Female Yellow-rumped Warbler

One of my favourites of the spring - Golden-winged Warbler

Hooded Warbler on our birdathon

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

One of my all-time favourite species, Philadelphia Vireo

My Dad's find on our birdathon - a Prairie Warbler that was enjoyed by many at Pelee this spring

Ken found this Yellow-breasted Chat at Pelee and it stuck for lots of people to see.

Ovenbird

Blackburnian Warbler

Five-lined Skink

It's not too late to support my Baillie Birdathon! If you want to hear all about our day of birds and fundraising you'll need to sponsor me. See here for more details. If you already have sponsored me, thanks very much, the report should be going out to you in the next week!