Today started with a 3:50am wakeup call followed by a 2 hour drive to Guelph to meet up with William Konze. The plan was to drive to Niagara for first light, get the Razorbill and then drive to Pickering for the Black-throated Gray Warbler.
We made good time on the way down, arriving at Niagara-On-The-Lake just before sunrise. The car read -6°C, but it felt considerably colder beside the river. We got the scopes out and began scanning. No matter how warmly you are dressed, the cold always manages to find a way in on these chilly, predawn mornings. Half an hour passed, I was having January 1st déjà vu and was beginning to get a bit nervous honestly. Two Little Gulls flew by and a constant stream of Long-tailed Ducks kept me busy scanning. Then William exclaimed "got it!", which are the two words that birders love to hear the most during a rarity chase. I got a decent view as it drifted along at the edge of the river, and I may have breathed an audible sigh of relief. A few minutes later we noticed a 2nd bird closen swimming fairly close to the other one. Then William had a 3rd one a bit farther out. When it rains Razorbills it pours! It was too far for photos really and this horrible, pixelated image is the best I was able to get…
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| - Razorbill |
We left Niagara around 8:30 and zipped down the QEW towards Pickering, and hopefully, another rare bird. We were half an hour out from the warbler when I got a ping on my phone from the provincial rare bird alert that Luke Berg had found a Tufted Duck. I assumed, reasonably, that the Kingston bird had been seen again. I wasn't really looking forward to another long drive, but then I noticed the location ~ Frenchman's Bay in Pickering... at the exact spot the warbler had been reported! We rolled up to the parking lot at Frenchman's Bay, a large sheltered inlet located just beside the massive Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, snd began scanning. Half of the bay was frozen, and thousands of Canada Geese, gulls and various other waterfowl were scattered around the open water. We were some of the first birders on the scene there, and could see the people who found the duck were on then the far side of the inlet, so we tried to look in the direction they were scoping. A few minutes later I was looking through Greater Scaup and Canada Goose with my scope when I panned across a duck with white sides, a defined black back and some elongated feathering on the back of the head. Tufted Duck! It certainly didn't have as much of a "tuft" as the one I was in Hamilton in 2017, but I feel like at that is mainly a molt related thing.
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| - Tufted Duck |
We then drove over to the over side the bay, where the warbler had just been refound. It was a longer walk than I was expecting, almost a kilometer to get out to the end of the point there. There was a crowd of birders gathered at the end of the spit of land when we got there, though they were focused on the duck but said the black-throated gray had been seen a few minutes before we arrived. The warbler had been seen skulking in some dense tangles of dead grass and shrubs, so I slowly walked around the area looking for movement. It was the call that ended up giving it away actually, a sharp "TEP" reminiscent of a Yellow-rumped Warbler. Following the call I located the bird on a small pine tree beside the water and enjoyed amazing views as it foraged in the underbrush. True to the previous reports it was very skulky, so even though the views were great, getting good photos was a challenge. This was an Ontario lifer for me, and also the third great rarity of the day! At one point I could see the warbler and the duck from the same spot... craziness.
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| - Black-throated Gray Warbler |
There was also a nice Mink there...
I then headed back towards Guelph with William, stopping briefly to pick up an immature male Harlequin Duck along the way.
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| - Harlequin Duck |
The plan was to have a nap for a few hours, then drive through the night so we could begin our northern trip tomorrow morning. Plans involving birds though, especially on big years, often change at the last minute. I woke up from my nap around 5:30 to discover a lot of missed calls on my phone. The Glaucous-winged Gull that had been seen in Barrie back in December had been refound in Hamilton just before dusk! Needless to say our plans were thrown into chaos. As it stands we will try for the gull at sunrise tomorrow, and if we get it before dark we will still continue with the northern trip. If not, well who knows haha...
3 big rarities on January 6th though, pretty darn crazy! Todays rarities bring me up to 7 OBRC rares for the year... and it's only week one!
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