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With great spring weather promised over the long week-end, I looked forward to doing my Birdathon where I had started birding in the late 1940s, in the Kingston area as a member of one of the teams that take part in the Kingston Field Naturalists’ annual spring round-up. Someone reminded us of how our birding knowledge had increased since the early round-ups – in the 1950s and 1960s teams had to struggle to get 100 species, whereas now we can expect to get 140-160 species in a 24-hour period.

Our team – Paul Mackenzie, Bruce Ripley, Lyn Bell and myself – planned to position ourselves at the north-east corner of the KFN property on Amherst Island for the 3 pm starting time, picking up the water- , shore- , and field birds we had scouted on the way out. We were somewhat disconcerted by the masses of midges which quickly covered our clothes, our eyelids, and our equipment as we walked out, but luckily they did not get smeared on the lenses of our binoculars and scopes.

Shortly before 3, a Night Heron flushed and disappeared into the reeds, and then a Blue-winged Teal flew arounda corner into a little bay. At 3:00 we began counting – five species of ducks, a handful ofshorebirds including the phalaropes which had led to the KFN’s acquiring the property, and assorted swallows, sparrows, and other species – but the heron and teal were nowhere in sight. Fortunately, as we walked out, a 5-minute detour flushed the heron, but there was no sign of the teal.

The Owl Woods produced most of its expected species, and on the road in we found two surprises, an Olive-sided Flycatcher and an Orchard Oriole. Bruce’s MP3 provoked a pheasant to call back from across a field, and later an American Bittern flew briefly ahead of us before diving into a small marsh. We left Amherst Island at 6 pm with a list which was modest, but which included several species we were not to see or hear again.

The roads around Yarker, Newburgh, and Camden East produced a number of hard-tofind species such as Chimney Swifts, Nighthawks, a Clay-coloured Sparrow, and a Vesper Sparrow, the last not singing, but coming quietly onto the road to investigate his MP3 rival. We also finally found a male Blue-winged Teal at one pond – the only one for the trip. At 10 pm we called it a night and headed home for a few hours’ sleep. At 2:30 we were on our way again. At the first of several stops along the Canoe Lake Road, when we played a Great Horned Owl call, we had not one but two Barred Owls hooting back, which seemed rather courageous/foolhardy on their part. As the sky lightened, the dawn chorus began; we picked up a Veery, several Wood Thrushes, assorted warblers including a Louisiana Waterthrush, and our only White-throated Sparrow of the day, though oddly enough, no Cerulean Warblers, even though Paul had heard several on a scouting trip three days earlier.

Then it was on to Prince Edward Point, which we expected would produce a variety of migrants, as well as a few special residents. While not as spectacular as during some heavy waves of migrants, the point and Point Traverse woods did not disappoint; we logged 19 species of warblers, including large numbers of Blackpolls, Bay-breasts, and Blackburnians, as well as a Parula with an almost Prairie Warbler-like song, and numbers of Long-tailed Ducks and White-winged Scoters offshore. Oddly, however, we saw hardly any migrant thrushes; two Swainson’s, no Grey-cheeks, Veery, or Wood Thrushes at all.

As the clock moved toward 3 pm, we found ourselves heading down the Ostrander Point road in search of the last few species we had missed; in the wet bushy area near the shore, we heard our last species of the day, a Willow Flycatcher, and wondered how he and the other residents will fare when the government rams through its massive wind farm project on their wetland.

The total number of species seen by one or more members of our team was 154; my personal total of species seen or heard was 150.

My special thanks are due to Paul, not only for scouting several areas in advance, but also for spotting a number of good species, and above all, for doing almost all the driving; also to Bruce for his keen ear which caught a number of the high-pitched little songs like the Blackpoll Warbler as we drove along.

Saturday, 20 May, 2011

The 2011 OFO Birdathon team (myself, Chris Earley, Paul Grant, Larry Staniforth, and Bryan Wyatt) did our Birdathon in Wellington County on May 20. Our plan was to make an assault on the 147 species Big Day record for the county, obtained on a historic day in 1988. Conditions seemed ripe. The cold April and odd May weather had constricted and slowed down migration and there seemed to be a lot more birds in the Guelph area than usual. With the expansion of some of the big birds (Trumpeter and Mute Swan, Bald Eagle, Wild Turkey, Sandhill Crane, Common Raven) along with others such as Red-bellied Woodpecker which weren’t an option in 1988, things were looking good. Was this to be the year …?

We started at 3:30 am at my house in downtown Guelph, then stopped at a few owling spots on our way north, and were totally skunked on the owls. Our first bird was a Canada Goose, but things picked up. At dawn, we looked out over a wetland just south of Luther Marsh, and were surprised when a Common Nighthawk buzzed past us at head height. It was to be the first of three nighthawks in three different locations, which is quite unusual for Wellington County. At Wylde Lake, the bog at the south end of Luther Marsh, which is the usual stakeout, we got a singing Lincoln’s Sparrow, but didn’t get the Hermit Thrush we were hoping for, and there was little sign of migrant warblers – which are vital to a successful Wellington Big Day.

We then entered the Luther Marsh property (with special permission from Grand River Conservation Authority), working our way north along the west side. Things were OK but not spectacular as we birded the forest at the south end, but we were in for a disappointment as the forest opened up to reveal that the lake was completely fogged in, so we couldn’t see into the open water we were relying on for waterfowl. Still, providence smiled on us as two Black Terns were foraging in the one small piece of marsh that we could see through the gloom, and Virginia Rail and Sora both responded to a Virginia Rail recording, the Virginia approaching to with three feet of us, giving us a wonderful look.

As usual, the best place for warblers at Luther was along the Bootleggers road, near where it runs into the lake. We quickly added Bay-breasted, Tennessee, Chestnut-sided, and others, along with Blue-headed and Philadelphia Vireos, as the sun started to break up the mist. Tantalisingly, as the mist cleared, we could see a Bald Eagle perched just out of the county (the boundary runs through Luther Lake). Then Bryan finally picked out one sitting on Big Island in the county and countable! Over the lake we noted a distant Caspian Tern, lots of Ospreys and cormorants (which have taken over much of the old Great Blue Heron colony, forcing the herons to start nesting in a nearby forested area and to spread out around the lake itself) but very few ducks (4 species).

By the time we left Luther at noon, we had 101 species and we were feeling quite good about our day, but we were 19 species behind the 1988 total (though we’d stayed later at Luther on that day). The Arthur sewage lagoons were excellent, giving us 5 new species of ducks (including, oddly enough, a resplendent male Red-breasted Merganser) and almost all of the very few shorebirds we were to get. Wellington County remains a very tough place to find shorebirds!

From there we swept south to Guelph via various hotspots. In Guelph itself we picked up a staked out Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks on nests, Chimney Swift, House Finch, Eastern Bluebird, and the elusive White-breasted Nuthatch within the city limits. The best bird of the day was a singing Prairie Warbler in a fairly large rolling hawthorn savannah near a high school on the edge of town.

The north end of Mountsberg Conservation area, as usual at this time of year, had too many fishermen in boats, so there were no waterfowl, but we did get a Marsh Wren. Nearby Badenoch Swamp offered up our first Willow Flycatcher of the year (and another nighthawk) as darkness descended. It’s handy to have a nature interpreter on your team. Chris did a marvellous Barred Owl imitation and managed to solicit a response from what must be the only Barred Owl territory in the county. After striking out at a couple of Eastern Screech-Owl spots, we went to our usual spot and Chris whistled a bird in in no time. And that was it.

When we tallied up we had reached 140 species .While that didn’t break the record of 147 species, it was the second highest one day total on record for the county (from numerous previous attempts, trust me!). Of course, we missed a few seemingly easy birds. Given the decline of grassland birds, we should have staked out an American Kestrel and Vesper Sparrow: Upland Sandpiper appears to be gone. And it’s always tough to find a Swainson’s Thrush in Wellington County when you want one! Chris heard a Blackpoll Warbler just on the wrong side of the county line, and we had no luck on some of the other later migrants such as the cuckoos and flycatchers. While we could have used a few fortunate breaks, we did have a marvellous day out looking at birds, and who can ask for more than that?

Thanks to the team for their excellent companionship and for working so hard to make the day a success; to the OFO executive for choosing me as the Celebrity Birder for 2011 and making it all so easy; and to the generous OFO members who contributed over $4000 so far for OFO and Bird Studies Canada through the Birdathon.

Mike Cadman

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

It started off well – brilliant stars and a nearly full moon, a warm, clear night, and a northbound flight of thrushes as I waited in my driveway at 2.30am for the others (no, we didn’t start at midnight). To my ears, most of the thrushes were Swainson’s and Veerys but with a nice sprinkling of the high down-slurred calls of Gray-cheeked. But the rest of the day was an endurance test in record-breaking high temperatures – the car thermometer stayed at 34C for six hours in the middle of the day and with the humidity it was technically nearer 40C most of the time. Not surprisingly, most birds were in the coolest spots they could find and not at all keen to show themselves, let alone sing, so we worked hard for our final somewhat disappointing total of 140 species.

My companions were Richard Pope and Bill Gilmour. Our itinerary was entirely within Northumberland County, east of Toronto, so we were also sneakily trying to set a new Northumberland Big Day record, presently standing at 149. Night birding gave us a cooperative Eastern Screech-Owl, Whip-poor-wills and American Woodcock but the firefly-lit marshes were silent. As first light glimmered, we did some one-stop-shopping for grassland sparrows on Trenear Road near Brighton. A Grasshopper Sparrow, beautifully illuminated in the car headlights as we drew up at this excellent location, sat on the road and sang for us, and five more minutes produced Clay-colored, Field, Vesper, and Savannah as well.

Our next stop was Owen Point at Presqu’ile Provincial Park to scan Lake Ontario before the heat-shimmer got too severe. We picked up quite a few species here, but there were disappointingly few shorebirds, and the lingering Red-necked Grebe and Red-throated Loons, present for days before, had disappeared. As we birded the area around the Lighthouse, the Red-bellied Woodpecker squawked on cue but there were very few warblers and other small passerines, and Bill’s usually well-attended backyard feeders were unexpectedly quiet.

Inland the heat was building, what birdsong there was diminished even further, and new species were few and far between. We did have a few bonuses – feisty Blue-winged and Golden-winged Warblers dutifully sang where we looked for them, Black-billed Cuckoos were already calling as we drew up at a woodlot where we had heard them last year, and Richard’s strange howls were convincing enough to call in a Barred Owl where we hadn’t expected to find one. An Upland Sandpiper quietly sat on a fencepost for us to enjoy, and a Red-headed Woodpecker was flying to its nest even as we turned off the main road to look for it. So we succeeded with several relatively difficult species, but even common warblers were impossible to find – Blackburnian was probably our biggest miss, though we tried in many likely places.

The mosquitoes were loving the merciless heat. Scope-carrying birders are their main delight – as you walk along, the hand you cantilever your scope with is exposed and unprotected, almost instantly becoming a mass of painful mosquito bites. Perhaps a golf-glove would help- We struggled on, tracking down new birds excruciatingly slowly. Some light relief came at a manmade pond near Grafton, where we added Solitary Sandpiper and Lesser Yellowlegs before realizing that one of the ducks on the shoreline looked very strange, a strikingly-plumaged almost-textbook Baikal Teal! But some features weren’t quite right and we concluded it was a Baikal Teal X Mallard hybrid. Would we have counted it if it had been a “real” Baikal Teal? At this point in the day, probably we would!

As dusk approached, back we went to Presqu’ile. We scoped the beaches for the elusive Piping Plover or any other new shorebirds without success. As night fell, we stood on top of the marsh viewing-platform listening to Marsh Wrens and Swamp Sparrows, but not one American Bittern called in the hour or more we were there, even though Bill had had several noisy bitterns in sight from exactly the same spot only a few nights before. Our last bird was a ghostly Common Nighthawk floating by on the horizon. But by now we were almost completely surrounded by rapidly gathering thunderstorms, with impressive lightning flashes to the east and south, so being on top of a high viewing platform no longer seemed such a good idea. It was nearly 10pm, time to call it a very long day.

Margaret Bain