Erica and I had the great pleasure of joining an awesome bunch of people down in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic during the second week of January for the wedding of my good friend Brad. We've been back for a while now but I am still way behind on emails and of course blog posts (I still have a half-written "summary of 2012" post to finish...). Anyways, here's a few of the pictorial highlights..
We stayed at the Bavaro Princess All Suites hotel, which seemed pretty nice to us...Erica and I had been to one all inclusive before (in Cuba in 2006) and this one was much nicer. The area around Punta Cana definitely had a more tropical feel than the area we were in in Cuba. The hotel had pretty good grounds for birding which was good because we didn't really get off the resort too much for birds since we had lots of important stuff to do with the wedding ;)
Palmchat - the National bird of Dominican Republic
This was pretty much the first photo I took. I was literally standing in the drop-off area of the hotel waiting to get taken to our room. This is a Palmchat, an endemic family to Hispaniola and the national bird of the DR. It is also pretty much the most common bird everywhere we went...
We were kept very entertained by a territorial Bananaquit that sang right off our room
A couple Black-crowned Night-Herons hunted the ponds at....night!
In addition to the Night-Herons there was another flying creature hunting fish at the resort each night- Greater Bulldog Bats! I wasn't able to get a photo, but google them because they are pretty awesome! They were huge (about crow-sized) bats that hunt fish!! There's a wicked video I found here (I think it might be narrated by Oprah??She must be really hurting for work).
The only amphibian we saw was this Marine Toad, an introduced Central and South American species (thanks Jeremy!).
Hispaniolan Woodpecker was another very common endemic
I was pleasantly surprised to have a small flock of White-cheeked Pintail each day at one of the hotel's ponds
We saw a bunch of odes...this one may be a Perithemis species, very similar to our Eastern Amberwing
Lots of butterflies most days. This is a Gulf Fritillary (or something similar) and was pretty common
Broad-billed Tody
Given our location and prospective birding potential, Broad-billed Tody was my most-wanted endemic so I was quite happy to find this individual.
The hotel grounds had a few migrant warblers including Prairie Warbler
And Yellow-throated Warbler.
Other North American migrants that we saw (but I didn't photograph) on the grounds were Common Yellowthroat, Northern Waterthrush (common in mangroves), Black-and-white Warbler, and Black-throated Blue Warbler.
Vervain Hummingbird was 1 of 2 hummingbird species on the grounds
My number two species, Hispaniolan Lizard-Cuckoo
Check out that tail!
Northern Parula was also pretty common
Full view of the Hispaniolan Lizard-Cuckoo
Antillean Slider was common in the ponds and mangroves.
If you are looking for a good resource for Caribbean herps, check out Caribherp - there is a ton of information there. Aside from the Marine Toad the the Antillean Sliders we saw lots of small lizards that I haven't tried to ID yet plus a very cool observation of a tree snake species catching a lizard one afternoon on the Paseo Ecological. We also found a dead hatchling sea turtle one day on the beach.
Hispaniolan Woodpecker close-up
Hispaniolan Woodpecker again
Tricolored Heron was common in the mangroves, along with Green Heron and Least Bittern (single)
Another look at Palmchat
Cape May Warbler was the most common warbler on the grounds
Red-legged Thrush carrying food
Gray Kingbirds were everywhere but nice to see!
Livin it up!
The trail into the "nature area" at the hotel
Brad and Erin, the happy couple!
It was a pretty awesome trip! On top of all the birds and other great sightings going with a big group was a lot of fun! I also should mention an interesting story that happened during our trip to Del Este National Park on a guided tour. After the tour our guide wanted me to talk to another guide about my camera. It turned out he was a Dominican spider expert named Tony Tosto whose blog I had stumbled upon before the trip! He was pretty excited to hear that I had found his blog and I was excited to meet him. So check out his blog, it has some awesome spider shots!
Of course, we ebirded the whole trip and I ended up with 60 species (about what I expected), of which 18 were lifers (higher than I expected). I took full advantage of the ability to embed photos and videos - check out my favourite illustrated checklist here.
That about sums up the Linwood CBC this year (held Sunday, December 30). We did see lots of hawks as usual but the real story had to be the massive flocks of Redpolls we encountered during the day. Our area ended up tallying 2097 Common Redpolls plus 5 Hoaries and a single "Greater" (rostrata) subspecies. The latter two taxa were likely seriously under-counted since we only had good looks at about a quarter of the redpolls we saw. Here's our full list for the day.
The best way to get this insane number across is with a photo, so here's one. I snapped this of a portion of one of the flocks when they landed in a shrub for a few minutes. We had the scope on them and this is how we got our Hoaries and the Greater. There is also a Lapland Longspur in the shrub with them. Keep in mind that this is only part of the flock and by my count there are over 500 birds in the photo!!!
To really do the photo justice you have to view it at full resolution, so head on over to Flickr to view the big version. I put up three different photos on Flickr - they are all pretty much the same but there are a few birds that change positions between photos.
And on that note, Happy New Year everyone! My 2013 year list is up to 1 species....Common Redpoll at my feeders!
For a birder from southern Ontario, Eastern Ontario is a very different place and since Erica's family is from that area I get to explore the birding there pretty regularly. One of my regular spots I like to check when I have time is the Long Sault Parkway. The eBird barchart has 199 species listed, which especially when you consider it is situated in a part of Ontario that is pretty under-birded, is pretty impressive. The best bird I saw on the list was Jacob Bruxer's Western Grebe that he found earlier this fall. There was also a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher back in 2009. The best thing I have been lucky enough to see was a Eurasian Wigeon a few years ago that had been found earlier.
It is a really neat causway that connects something like a dozen islands over a 10km stretch of road. There are lots of places to park your car and have a picnic and there are even some camping spots along the way. I usually only ever get there in the waterfowl season but I imagine it would be a pretty good spot for passerine migration too.
Anyways, while visiting for Christmas I made a quick trip there are on the 23rd. Here's my full list. It was fairly slow, with lots of ice building since my last visit on December 9. The best thing I found was a group of 51 Snow Geese mixed in with the Canadas right at the Long Sault end of the Parkway.
On December 9, I captured this pair of Common Loons in nice and close:
Snow Geese are definitely one of the birds I think of when I think of eastern Ontario with the massive migration of Greater Snow Geese passing through each year. The other eastern Ontario specialty is Gray Partridge. Even saying that I had only found Gray Partridge once before while visiting Erica's family. That was a pair of birds seen in the field across from her parent's house on March 21 of last year. Erica's Dad lets me know whenever he sees them which is still pretty infrequent. However, this morning we went for a cross country ski around the fields and found some pretty fresh tracks in the snow that I was pretty confident were Gray Partridge. I started following them and it was clear that they were enjoying the leftover soybeans in the field. A few minutes later I put up a group of 11 of them! They flew across the road so on our way out an hour or so later Erica and I took a detour to see if we could find them for a photo. We were in luck as they were busy foraging in a corn stubble field. This was the first time I have actually heard Gray Partridge.
I also took a quick video of them. Unfortunately as soon as I stopped recording the flock got up and flew a short distance and started making all sorts of noise...
In case you are interested in the exact spot where they were, here is our eBird checklist.
And here's a link to the eBird map of Gray Partridge in Ontario.
On the way east on Saturday we had to stop in Kingston for a few things so instead of actually setting foot in a mall I went around back to check out the long-staying Northern Mockingbird, which is a pretty good Kingston bird.
I'm just going to ignore the fact that it has been a while and jump right into this post. As you all know we are now well into Christmas Bird Count season and we've had the big weekend of counts done and starting to post the results. So far there are lots of pretty apparent trends out there in southern Ontario: lots of lingering waterfowl, some lingering Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Warblers, lots of Barred Owls south of normal, and pretty much no Robins. Most of the winter finches, with the exception of redpolls, appear to have motored right on through Ontario.
As usual I was out for two counts this past weekend and wasn't disappointed. Saturday's count was the Kitchener CBC. For this count we cover the area west of Erbsville which has a lot of nice forest. What it doesn't have is any water to speak of so unlike some other areas we didn't see too much of interest this year. Our best bird was probably the Swamp Sparrow in the wetland behind the old Erbsville Outdoor Education Centre. Here's our day's list if you're interested.
Despite our rather slow day the Kitchener count was a huge success. When all was said and done all the groups tallied 74 species on count day (beating the old high of 70!) plus 3 more species for count week. The highlight of count day was the Cackling Goose (new species for count) that has been present for some time now on the sports fields at Columbia Lake. You can see my summary of the count here. Here's a picture I took of the Cackling Goose on count day while Ken and I poached in Virgil Martin's territory:
Cackling Goose at Columbia Lake on count day
The Cambridge CBC was a completely different story for us. Since 1994 we have covered the area between Puslinch Lake and Valens Reservoir - in most years it is tough to get even a Canada Goose or Mallard since our's is one of the few sections without part of the Grand River in it and our species total usually suffers because of that. However, in warm years when Puslinch and Valens have open water (like in 2001 and 2011) our area kicks some serious ass! In 2001 I think Canvasback and Long-tailed Duck were both new for the count. In 2011 there weren't any new species but we finished with an incredible 52 species for our area. This year was no exception, even though we didn't break the 50 species mark. I'm pretty sure both the Lesser Scaup and Ruddy Duck were new species for the count and Red-breasted Merganser, Greater Scaup, and the huge count of Hooded Mergansers were not too shabby either. To top it off, Erica and I had a Barred Owl in our area on Friday night (count week)! It was a pretty rainy day on Sunday for the Cambridge count so not many pictures taken, but here are a couple:
female/immature Ruddy Duck and American Coot at Puslinch Lake
Couldn't resist...I might have trouble sleeping the next couple nights. Hopefully I'll be out on bird watch Thursday/Friday/Saturday. Brandon's blog is probably the best source of information if you want to get really excited about this storm in Ontario. But also check out the ebird story and birdcast for more information.
Ken came up this weekend and we did some "local" birding. Saturday it was western Prince Edward County with nothing too unusual amongst the rain/cold/wind. We were mainly checking out Point Petre. White-winged Crossbills have definitely started to move (we had a single) and same with Evening Grosbeaks, even though we didn't have any. Pine Siskins are still going strong. We had another late Vesper Sparrow (had one last week too). We did a quick zip into Gosport to nail down the continuing Glossy Ibis and Hudsonian Godwit. Ken managed a phonescoped shot of the ibis here.
This morning Ken and I walked around Gull Island at Presqu'ile first thing. We had our first Snow Buntings of the fall plus a decent mix of 8 shorebird species. Add in the Hudsonian Godwit and Killdeers at Gosport again and we had ten shorebird species on the day!
After Gull Island we got some danishes and then made a couple stops along the lake between Presqu'ile and Cobourg. Tons of Red-breasted Mergs and Greater Scaup moving (east) and good numbers of Common Loons and Horned Grebes but not much else.
I was headed home today from Peterborough when I noticed a big flock of waterfowl flying south up ahead. As we approached the flock, I realized it had the characteristic "jumbled" look of a flock of Brant! I estimated there were about 150 birds in this flock and I was pretty excited. Less than 10 minutes later I was pulling out of our carpool parking lot in my own car when I noticed another flock, right above me! This one was even bigger (about 300) and also contained 2 Canada Geese holding up the rear. Even better, I managed to get my bins on this flock and enjoy it for a second or two through them.
The second flock was really amazing because it was traveling very quickly- I followed it all the way from Springbrook to Stirling, a distance of about 11.5 km! I was traveling about 95km/h but the flock was going more in a direct S direction while I was going SSE.
Brant at Presqu'ile PP, Northumberland on June 1, 2009
I still get pretty excited anytime I see Brant in Ontario because I did all of my birding growing up west of Toronto, where Brant is a very uncommon migrant. There seems to be a sort of imaginary line east of Toronto where beyond that Brant become much more common. In the Ottawa and Kingston areas this is a pretty normal migrant to see going overhead in late May and October. The reason for this is that the Brant we see in Ontario likely all pass through southern James Bay and then follow the Ottawa River valley and cross over to the Atlantic in the NE US. It will be interesting to see if these Brant were part of a larger movement of birds exiting southern James Bay after some north winds and stormy weather there....we'll have to wait and see if Josh and Alan were on the coast yesterday and today watching thousands of Brant pass by...For those of you who don't know, they are at Netitishi Point, on James Bay. Netitishi Point is an Important Bird Area, partly because of the large number of Brant and other waterfowl that pass through there each year.
Well, I made it out to Point Petre yesterday morning. There was a nice selection of sparrows, including a late Grasshopper and a single Vesper. The only other highlight here was a single female Black Scoter hanging out with some Long-taileds...I made a few other short stops on the way home with nothing much of note to show for my efforts except maybe a latish Caspian Tern at Wellington harbour/bay.
Today was a bit different story, Erica and I met up with Doug McRae, Barb Charlton, Mark and Diana Peck, and Sarah and Georgia Petrasek at Presqu'ile. We birded Owen Point and then walked across to Gull Island (no hunting there on Sundays...). The crossing to Gull Island was a bit ridiculous; it is so dry you could have done it in sandals and not gotten your feet wet! Just before we crossed a large shorebird flew in from Gull Island and obligingly fed along the shore for us.
Yep, that's a late Willet! I can't remember hearing of one before in Ontario in October...Checking Bob Curry's Birds of Hamilton he lists a late date of October 19 for the HSA. Anyways, a pretty sweet bird to say the least. The rest of the island was pretty standard fare. On the way back to the cars we had a late Northern Parula along the trail. Here's the full list of goodies from Owen Point and Gull Island.
After the island, we had word of Evening Grosbeaks visiting Bill Gilmour's legendary feeders so we headed over that way. The feeders and bird baths were hopping, but the Grosbeaks had apparently taken off shortly before we got there when a Merlin buzzed the yard. There were a few nice birds around including a Fox Sparrow, Eastern Towhee and a late Gray Catbird at one of the baths. Here's the full list.
From there Erica and I headed home but not before checking out the Hudsonian Godwit present for a few days now in Gosport. All in all it was a very birdy morning, with a bunch of new Northumberland birds for me, bringing me up over 200 now for the county...
