Chronicles of an Ontario Birder: Rares of the fall : Part 1

Rares of the fall : Part 1

This past fall has been an amazing one for me from a rare bird perspective. Maybe not compared to what some other Ontario birders saw, but for a birder who rarely chases outside of the Bruce, it was mighty fine. Not a single dip : ) I'll talk about them each a wee bit, and include some of my photos. I scored 7 new Ontario birds in total, which I am quite happy with.

Rares in order of date..

September

- Northern Wheatear

October

- Hudsonian Godwit

- Nelson's Sparrow

- Rufous Hummingbird

- Groove-billed Ani

- Razorbill

November

- Summer Tanager

- Black-legged Kittiwake

- Towensend's Solitaire

- Rufous Hummingbird #2(!)

- Black-bellied Whistling-Duck

- Glaucous-winged Gull

Alright... read on to learn about the what? Where? Why? When?....

Septemeber

I was busy working all month, so cut me a bit of slack for not chasing any of the rarities that were around :) The wheatear more than made up for this though, a truly spectacular bird, and not even an hours drive away! I already wrote a post on that bird, so here's a photo.

- Northern Wheatear

October

The month started off with a bang... two self found county lifers in the span of 8 days! Both at the same location too, the Oliphant Fen Nature Preserve. The birds were Nelson's Sparrow and Hudsonian Godwit, 4th and 3rd county records respectively. I have already done a post on these birds, so I won't elaborate more.

- Nelson’s Sparrow

- Hudsonian Godwit

The next bird was the complete opposite of a close to home and self found bird... A 5 hour twitch. The suspect this time was Rufous Hummingbird by Wheatley, a real stunner of a male too. Rufous Hummingbirds breed across the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska and winter mainly in Central America. They have a rather unique quirk to their wintering range though, as some spent the colder months along the gulf coast of the southwest US and Florida. Annually some strays turn up across the northeast during fall migration, likely birds headed to the gulf region that crossed the continent a bit too far to the north. These small hummers are quite hardy, and sometimes are seen all the way into January in places as close as Ohio. Normally I am rather reluctant to chase birds this far away... but my work contract had just ended and I had a week off before my next job started, and well, I felt like an adventure! So I left my house at 9am on the morning of October 22nd and headed for Wheatley, well in a roundabout way. First I drove to Guelph, where I met some friends (Erik, Isabel, Owen and William) who were carpooling down with me. Chasing birds is always more fun with company, if for nothing else than to convince each other that you didn't totally waste your day if the bird isn't found :)

Three hours, one snack break and 54 roadside Red-tailed Hawks later we had arrived at our destination, a dead end road near Lake Erie. We all has those pre arrival jitters, which seem to increase with your proximity to the location. The bird had already been seen for several weeks, however nobody can know when the last day of a rarities stay will be. This time we got lucky though and didn't have to wait long, well I didn't at least. As we pulled into the driveway I saw the hummer zip over the hood of the car, but everyone else missed it. I said we should head out now that I had seen the bird, but my companions did not agree (apparently they wanted to see it too?). We got out and began our vigil of the hummingbird feeder, which lasted roughly 10 minutes before the bird finally returned. Steller views were enjoyed by all, a gorgeous bird and one that we rarely see the adult males of here in Ontario.

- Rufous Hummingbird

While we were standing in the yard we noticed a massive line of Turkey Vultures streaming by along the shore. Hundreds, if not thousands of birds passing by in a constant stream. We headed down the road a few kilometers to a location with better visibility, where we enjoyed 45 minutes of raptor migration. The highlights were a few Red-shouldered Hawks, and a late Broad-winged Hawk. Most of the birds were high and distant, so this is the best that I managed for photos.

The ride back seemed to pass quickly, with our quarry conqured and our stomachs full of ONroute takeout, how could one complain?

- TERRIBLE Broad-winged Hawk photo

Next up was a real rarity, the Groove-billed Ani. This bird was posted on the Ontario wide rare bird alert on Discord by a birder who had found it at his family's farm in Perth County. The photos were phenomenal and it seemed like a bird that would stick around... but then the birding community collectively sucked in its breath as we read that dreaded sentence "The homeowners don't want visitors". It seemed that all hope was lost for awhile, but then the finder posted again (After several birders stepped up and offered to manage visitors), this time saying the bird would be available to see for the next two days, but only the next two days. The Groove-billed Ani, a strange looking member of the cuckoo family, is normally found in the tropical lowlands from northern South American all the way up to southern Texas. They do have an interesting history of vagrancy, with numerous records all around the Great Lakes region. Ontario has had 5 previously, with 4 of those records coming from a ten year span in the 1980s. Since then though there have been an ani drought, with no records even remotely close to the province. So you can imagine how much excitement such a bird would cause, as for a lot of people this would be their first chance to see an ani. The following morning was an anxious one, as I checked my phone waiting to see if the bird had been refound. The property it was at, so I was told, was a small parcel of land in the middle of an agricultural area. The only habitat was a thin strip of tall vegetation interspersed with small spruce trees that divided the lawn from the adjacent field. Surely if the bird was still there the numerous birders who had arrived at sunrise would have found it. Then, just before 10am, the message came that the bird was still in fact there, it had been hiding in center of one of the small trees and had managed to evade detection. I should mention it was a miserable day, one of those chilly later October days with biting wind and rain, so the bird shouldn't be blamed for laying low. The way it was set up was that birders could book hour long time slots to see the bird, ensuring the property wasn't overrun at once. I had booked the 3pm slot, as I figured that would be a safe bet. I flew (drove the speed limit) down to Kincardine, jumped in the car with a friend who was carpooling with me and headed towards the site. Bird chasing is an interesting thing we do as birders, and the emotions associated with the chase are always equally interesting to me. When I leave home spirits are high, and I'm quite confident that I will in fact see said bird. After this, and for the remainder of the journey, it seems like that initial sense of hope fades, slowly being replaced by thoughts like; "There haven't been many reports recently, maybe it left" and "What am I doing right now". Then as I near the destination, 10 minutes out, 5 minutes, I start getting quite hyped, like a player before a big game. Desperately you want to just be there already, to know if the drive had been worth it, or if the day would be a bust. In this case the rain had just ended and it was starting to clear up as we pulled in the driveway. There were close to 10 cars lined up in front of a barn, one was just pulling out and stopped as it passed our vehicle. It contained the Guelph gang (who I had just chased the hummingbird with the previous Friday), and they gave us the news that the bird had just popped out and was offering amazing views. We rushed over and there it was, slowing working it's way through the grass, acting like a small, feathered mammal, mere feet from onlooking birders. It looked wet, bedraggled and generally in a bad mood, and it completely ignored us as we watched it. In a way it felt too easy, we hadn't even had to look for it, just walked up to the crowd of birders and bam, there it is. Though I was not complaining of course! We watched it for awhile, the the rain started getting bad again so we ducked out and began our journey back to Bruce. I got some decent photos, something that I don't often do with rarities!

- Groove-billed Ani

The final chase of the month was as opposite from a western hummingbird and a southern cuckoo as you could get... an eastern seabird! On the 10th of October a Razorbill was found along the Ottawa river, a great bird for Ontario and one of only a small number of records for Ottawa. Then, while watching the bird, the finder saw another Razorbill! More birders arrived to look and found 4 birds. The day after that (Oct 12) at least 9 Razorbills were being seen along the river. One of my friends who was there at the time believes there were a dozen anyways, maybe more. This type of invasion is unprecedented for the area, as all previous records are of single birds. There was a massive invasion of Razorbills in Lake Ontario during the 1970s, however nothing like that has been seen since. For those who aren't aware, Razorbills are black and white. duck-sized seabirds that are found on the Atlantic Ocean. They are very rare inland, however occasionally they will follow the St. Lawrence down and make it into the Great Lakes system. What drives these birds away from the ocean? It's hard to be 100% sure of course, but the two big things are food shortages and strong easterly winds (both of which seemed to be in play this time). The Ottawa birds continued to be seen for several weeks, however after the 12th a maximum of two birds were seen at a time. I really wanted to see a Razorbill, however Ottawa is basically 8 hours away and even though I was tempted... I'm not that crazy (It's not my big year YET)

Then on October 29th, the thing that the southern Ontario birding community was hoping for happened, Razorbills were seen on Lake Ontario. Three birds were seen in Durham, then one in Toronto, Peel and Hamilton. These locations, while still not close to me, are considerably closer than Ottawa. The following day called for northeast winds, which are perfect for lakewatching in Hamilton. I convinced Jarmo to come down with me (didn't take much) and the morning of the 30th found us driving southward towards Hamilton. The thing about plans though, especially when chasing unpredictable birds like alcids, is that they can change in a hurry. It was around 9:30am and we were just over an hour away, when I got a notification on my phone that a Razorbill was just found at Thickson's Point by Whitby. Unlike the previous days sightings, this bird was sitting on the water and not just flying by. At the same time, I was texting with a few friends who had been at Van Wagner's Beach in Hamilton since daybreak. They said so far it had been a bust and the lake was quiet. Decisions decisions! Whitby and Hamilton were roughly the same distance from us, so stick with the plan and go to Van Wagner's, or change course for the seemingly chaseable Whitby bird?? After a strategy discussion with Jarmo, we decided to go to Whitby. Reports continued to come in as we drove, so we were feeling fairly hopeful. We arrived at Thickson's Point just before 11:00am and walked down the path, towards what we thought was the viewing point. Long story short it was the wrong spot, as ten minutes later we came out to an exposed Bluff and saw a crowd of birders 800 meters or so down the coast, quite close to where we parked. The bird it turned out, was last seen just as we were arriving. Doh! Our location seemed to have just as good of view as where the crowd was gathered, so we opted to stay there and try to find it ourselves. Thousands of Red-breasted Mergansers were streaming by, as well as smaller numbers of Long-tailed Ducks and scoters. This kept us quite occupied as we carefully scanned the passing flocks. 15 minutes passed, then 20. Suddenly Jarmo exclaimed that he had the bird! It had flown in with a flock of Long-tailed Ducks and had just landed on the water. I rushed over and looked through his scope and... nothing, the bird had vanished. We desperately tried to refind it, as the crowd of birders started making their way up towards us (Jarmo posted on the rare bird alert). Another 15 minutes passed, I was getting rather nervous that I would miss this bird, and Jarmo was getting rather nervous as he would have to drive the 3 hours home with me in the car. I walked down the bluff with another birder, and after a few minutes we got a quick view of it flying out of sight to the west. Not that satisfyingly, but hey, at least I saw it. I then checked my phone, 6 Razorbills had been seen in Hamilton at Van Wagner's Beach... *@#$. Since we were already in the area (kinda), we left Thickson's and drove to Hamilton. We arrived at the said location just as the winds seemed to die, and guess what? Hour and a half later and Nada. Like literally no birds, a lone Iceland gull was the only highlight. Even Bruce lakewactches have more, which is saying something. So to sum it up, yes we got our target bird... but it was an interesting day haha, seemingly like we were always in the wrong place. That's just birding for you though, sometimes you just have to make a call and gamble that it's the right one. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos, so you'll have to use your imagination!

Part two will be here sometime, with my November/December highlights