This morning shortly after 4am I was on the highway with Ezra headed for Kingston for the Tufted Duck. The bird hadn’t been seen since December 31st (though it was reported later yesterday so not many people were able to search), so it was a bit of a long shot… but that’s what big years are all about.
We arrived just after sunrise to find a crowd of birders gathered around the parking lot at Cataraqui Bay. It was a crisp -19 C when we pulled in, surely colder with the windchill, oh the joys of Eastern Ontario in the winter! There was a large raft of aythya ducks present, however the Tufted Duck was not among them. We scanned through the flock several times, but failed to turn up any ducks with tufts. The rest of the morning was spent searching the waterfront west of Kingston, which yielded not much besides Common Goldeneyes and mergansers. A flyby Double-crested Cormorant was the highlight of the morning in terms of rare birds (quite uncommon here in the winter). Despite numerous birders scouring the local hotspots the duck remained MIA. Electric Light Orchestra's song “Don’t Bring Me Down” played us out of Kingston.
Since we were already over halfway to Ottawa, we decided to go for the “Ottawa winter Specialties”, which are Gray Partridge and Barrow’s Goldeneye. An hour later we made a quick pitstop along the Rideau River on route to the partridge spot. The goldeneye turned out to be quite easy, and we were in and out in under 5 minutes. No complaints here!
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| - Male Barrow’s Goldeneye |
Next we drove to one of the more reliable partridge spots just outside of Ottawa, where Alice Tremblay and Vincent Fyson had generously offered to meet us to help search for birds. We spent two hours driving and walking around the concession roads, but found nothing of note. Oh but we did find partridge tracks! Fresh ones too, but unfortunately they did not lead us to an actual bird. According to listing rules tracks don’t count… so we continued the search. Just after 3pm we had finished the route and returned the location where we had found the tracks to have a look around. I got out my scope and began scanning a nearby field edge when a bit of movement caught my eye… partridge! 4 of them actually, hunkering down on the edge of a small hill, enjoying some nice sunshine. This was a lifer for me, and a bird that I am quite happy about ticking off this early in the year. We also heard them call while we were there, which added even more excitement to the experience. Ezra managed to get a recording with his phone, which appears to be the first audio of the species for Ontario on eBird!
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| - Gray Partridge |
We finished the day with a Short-eared Owl hunting over a field, not a bad end to a good day! No Tufted Duck, but the Ottawa birding made the trip a success.
Day 3 tally ~ 78 species
Tomorrow we plan on working our way back via Algonquin Park, hopefully picking up a few northern finches and maybe even an owl on route.
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