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!

Another birdathon in the bag!

The weather looked promising so we started our 16th annual Baillie Birdathon yesterday at 5pm and finished up today at the same time with a nice list. If you want to see all the details, you'll have to sponsor me -> click here to make a donation online or else email me.

I will tell you that the highlight was the Blue Grosbeak that Eric Holden found at the Tip and that we saw "reverse" south three times (and photographed one of those times by Brandon!) but this bird found by my Dad wasn't bad either:

Prairie Warbler

On the 7th/8th I did something I had never accomplished before in 24 hour period - the Vermivora sweep. We found a spankin male Lawrence's Warbler, then in the afternoon I found a Brewster's and a Golden-winged Warbler and first thing this morning I had a couple Blue-wingeds, completing the sweep. Pretty sweet!

Golden-winged Warbler

2nd gen "Brewster's Warbler"

Looks like we're in for a solid four or five days of birding with lots of warm temperatures and southerly winds.

It's rarity season

We've started into what is arguably one of the most exciting times of the year for birding in Ontario. It's exciting because over the next week or two we should see about 1/3 of our Ontario bird species arrive back into the province. But from a birding perspective it is also really exciting because this is one of the best times of the year to find rare birds. Just check out this list from the last week or so:
Greater White-fronted Goose in Durham, Lambton, Dufferin, Kawartha Lakes, and York
Eurasian Wigeon in Durham, Elgin, and Ottawa
Eared Grebe in Chatham-Kent
Cattle Egret in Essex
Snowy Egret in Perth
Swainson's Hawk in Hamilton
Black Vulture in Northumberland and Essex
Marbled Godwit in Essex
A very early Acadian Flycatcher in Essex
Fish Crow in Hamilton and Toronto
Bell's Vireo in Middlesex
Worm-eating Warbler in Essex
Yellow Palm Warbler in Essex
Yellow-throated Warbler in Essex and Niagara
Prairie Warbler in Niagara and Norfolk
Blue Grosbeak in Perth
Spotted Towhee in Toronto
Yellow-headed Blackbird in Ottawa and Norfolk
Painted Bunting in Muskoka and Ottawa (sight report submitted to OBRC)

(species in bold are OBRC review list species)

remember this guy from last year?

And that's just the one's I know about, I'm sure there are more out there plus even more that haven't been found yet. We're prime time for all sorts of rarities, including a Swallow-tailed Kite, like the one I saw last year.

And there are lots of goodies outside of Ontario too, with European Golden-Plover and Black-tailed Godwit in Newfoundland today and a Willow Ptarmigan in New York.

Anyways, that's a pretty nice list from the past week, what will the next weeks bring? It looks like we won't be back to south winds until the 29th when we should get the next push of birds, but the nice thing about this time of year is birds move in pretty well any conditions. On schedule for the next week are the following birds:

27 April -	Wilson's Phalarope
	White-eyed Vireo
	House Wren
	Marsh Wren
	Northern Waterthrush
28 April -	Sedge Wren
	Grasshopper Sparrow
30 April -	Common Gallinule
	Dunlin
	Chimney Swift
	Red-headed Woodpecker
	American Pipit
	Black-and-white Warbler
	Nashville Warbler
	Kentucky Warbler
	Black-throated Green Warbler
01 May -	Eastern Whip-poor-will
	Warbling Vireo
	Wood Thrush
	Gray Catbird
	Ovenbird
	Blue-winged Warbler
	Orange-crowned Warbler
	Hooded Warbler
	Lincoln's Sparrow
	White-crowned Sparrow
	Rose-breasted Grosbeak
02 May -	Ruby-throated Hummingbird
	Least Flycatcher
	Eastern Kingbird
	Yellow-throated Vireo
	Veery
	Golden-winged Warbler
	Prairie Warbler Blackburnian Warbler
	Orchad Oriole
	Baltimore Oriole
03 May -	Great Crested Flycatcher
	Prothonotary Warbler
	Common Yellowthroat
	Northern Parula
	Black-throated Blue Warbler
	Yellow-breasted Chat
	Clay-colored Sparrow
	Scarlet Tanager
	Indigo Bunting
	Bobolink
04 May -	Black-bellied Plover
	Semipalmated Plover
	Least Sandpiper
	Swainson's Thrush
	Cerulean Warbler
	Magnolia Warbler

That's a hefty list! Get out there and see what you can find!!!

The birding mecca of Perth County

We had our family Easter scheduled for Sunday in Stratford, in the heart of Perth County. Birding wasn't on the original schedule but as it happened several nice birds turned up nearby including:
-Eurasian Wigeon at Mitchell Sewage Lagoons (AKA West Perth Wetlands) found by Jarmo Jalava on 13 April
-Snowy Egret in St. Marys (posted to Ontario Birds Facebook group by Herman Veenendaal on 18 April)
-Blue Grosbeak outside of Russeldale found by Rita Christie on 18 April and reported to eBird

So, naturally we left a bit of time before dinner to try and find some of these. Our first stop was Mitchell Sewage Lagoons, where we didn't find the Eurasian Wigeon but did find Josh and Barb (and a Horned Grebe). Here's our full list.

Muskrat at Mitchell

Josh, Barb and Brett Fried and Erika Hentsch were unsuccessful in finding the Snowy Egret earlier in the morning so our next stop was Rita and Ron Christie's place.

When we arrived Ken and Josh were pretty confident they saw the bird fly out of the crab apple and then disappear behind the house. A few minutes later I saw a bird that I was pretty sure was it fly by again, but we still hadn't nailed it down for sure (or even knew if it was still around). After about an hour of waiting it finally showed in the top of a crab apple before heading for the feeder:

It came back a few a minutes later for another look before we headed out:

We were pretty excited to see such a rare bird in Perth County. Apparently this would be record early for Ontario (the next earliest is one last spring at Ojibway Park found on 19 April 2013)

Henslow's Sparrow at Pelee and more

Ken and my Dad and I were heading down to Pelee for the day to do some long weekend birding. We were excited to see the report on Ontbirds that Chris Gaffan had found a Henslow's Sparrow there last night.

While waiting to pay at the gate house we had our first highlight, a friendly Mink!

Mink

After a few stops outside the park we arrived at Delaurier Homestead trail where we ran into Josh - he hadn't seen the bird yet but after a few minutes of looking the bird hopped up into the open briefly:

Henslow's Sparrow at DeLaurier

While the bird allowed a few nice looks it spent most of it's time running through the grass like these guys are known to. It was amazing how it could disappear in the thatch. At one point we watched it look up at us, completley in the open (this year's grass isn't grown yet), then look down and dive into the grass and dissapear!! After we were satisfied, we walked the rest of the trail, picking up an early House Wren and a few other birds (full checklist). Just as we were coming back to where we had seen the Henslow's previously it flushed up again and allowed an even better look before doing its vanishing act into the grass

better shot of the Henslow's Sparrow

After Delaurier we checked Tilden's Woods (didn't get the Louisiana Waterthrush) and White Pine before leaving the park. Along Tilden's I saw my first few Red Admirals of the year. Be sure to enter any butterflies records you have into eButterfly or send them to the TEA's Ontario Butterfly Atlas.

My first Red Admiral of the year

On the way home we made stops at Hillman Marsh, Blenheim Sewage Lagoons, Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons and then Laurel Creek in Waterloo. We finished the day with about 100 species in relatively little effort - gotta love this time of year!!

At least one creature had a good winter

As the snow melts we've seen repeated evidence that there was at least one animal that benefitted from this harsh winter. If you remember back to December, we had quite an ice storm in much of southern Ontario. This resulted in millions of broken tree limbs that ended up on the ground. Then, as I'm sure everyone here has forgotten, we got hammered by snow all winter, with seemingly no break. That built up a nice thick layer of insulating snow.

So, what resulted was a whole whack-load of branches being buried by the snow. This is perfect for the small mammals that live in the sub-nivean space (below the snow). They had insulation from the cold, protection from (some) predators, and an ample food supply in the form of delicious bark of small branches.

Now that the snow has melted it has revealed their presence:

This is a good reminder of how deep the drifts were!

 

Have you seen branches like this? We've been seeing them all over near our house north of Kingston and I assume it is mostly the work of Meadow Voles, but would be interested to hear other thoughts. The deep snow also made it possible for things like rabbits to reach branches higher up that they normally couldn't reach.