Remember in my last post when I mentioned the Lark Bunting had been refound on Amherst Island? Well on Saturday night I made plans to go after the Bunting the following day with Isabel Apkarian & Andy Nguyen. Ezra and William were joining us as well, but because they had to be back earlier they took a separate car. The ferry to Amherst starts running at 6:30am, which when I calculated that back to the time we would have to leave... well lets just say I wasn't that pleased: )
3:00am on April 17th found me leaving Isabel's place in Guelph, driving to a carpool lot and picking up Andy, then heading east towards Amherst. I promptly passed out in the front seat and caught a few solid hours of sleep before we arrived. After pulling up to the ferry terminal, I counted a grand total of 0 other cars there, and also 0 ferries. I did a quick google search and found something about the ferry being closed on Sundays. William pulled in with Ezra a few minutes later and we were beginning to get a bit nervous, thinking that we may have driven over 3 hours for nothing. Luckily a car pulled into a lot and a man in an orange work vest got out, only to be immediately pestered with questions by us (he looked very official... and hey, we were right, he worked on the ferry). The man informed us that yes, the ferry is coming, and it runs every day except for days with violent storms. Phew. After a short wait the ferry did indeed appear at the docks, and in no time we were heading towards the island.
Amherst Island is located just west of Kingston, and is a 20 kilometer long and 7 kilometer wide chunk of land that sits 3 kilometers offshore from the mainland in Lake Ontario. The island is dominated by farmland, with a few acres of forest dotted here and there. Birders know Amherst best for it's owls, as it's an internationally recognized location for wintering concentrations of owls (as well as other raptors). Some years up to 10 owl species have been spotted during a single winter, with concentrations of Snowy and Short-eared Owls climbing into the double digits. I always thought that my first visit to Amherst would be during the winter to witness the owl spectacle, and one day I will definitely have to make a trip back for it.
Driving across the island that morning, the narrow dirt roads, fields containing stone walls and sheep and the general feel of an old farming community reminded me of scenes of the U.K. that I've seen on television. Of course the lack of pubs, cars driving on the "wrong" side of the road and English accents didn't exactly help this image, but I think it's the closest I've seen to this in Canada anyways. 15 minutes later we were at the location where the bunting had been seen, a dirt road near the southeast edge of the island with fields dotted with pine trees on one side of the road and a rocky shoreline on the other. We decided to split up and cover more ground and started walking down the road. Song Sparrows were abundant, causing momentary excitement as they flushed from the edges of the road. There were also a good number of Savannah Sparrows and Eastern Meadowlarks around, the latter becoming the constant background noise during our birding on the island. A few other birds of interest included; Purple Martins, Common Loons, 2 Rough-legged Hawks, a Pectoral Sandpiper, a Snowy Owl and a very obliging Horned Grebe.
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| - Snowy Owl |
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| - Pectoral Sandpiper |
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| - Horned Grebe |
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| - Purple Martin |
Over an hour had passed at this point, and we were just walking along the shoreline when a message came in - Lark Bunting refound. We jogged for the car and sped back down the road, where we soon found Ezra and William standing on the shoulder. They weren't the ones who refound it, but they had just seen a small bird fly into a pine tree beside the road. Doug McRae and Gray Carlin pulled up and joined us, and after a few minute wait the Lark Bunting flew out and landed on a fence post. It was an immature male, with slightly ratty plumage and a large chunk of feathers missing from the back of it's head. This was an lifer for most of us, and a great addition for the big year. Lark Buntings are normally found in western North America, and here in Ontario they are quite rare, to my knowledge there are only around 20 records.
The bird started singing a few times, which added even more to the experience and was a real treat to hear. To my ears it sounded like a weird combination of a cardinal and some kind of mimic and was completely different than any song I've heard in the past.
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| - Lark Bunting |
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| - Flight shot |
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| - Eating a worm |
We weren't paying close attention to the time, and ended up getting back to the ferry dock just as it was pulling out. Seeing this meant we were stuck waiting for it for another hour, we decided to make the most of it and go explore more of the island. This worked out quite well, as only a few minutes into our drive Andy spotted an Upland Sandpiper on the road. This was a lifer for him, and also a yearbird for me. The rest of our birding was fairly uneventful, more of the same grassland birds. In the end we saw 61 species, not too bad for a morning of island birding!
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| - Upland Sandpiper |
On the way back we stood up on the top deck of the ferry and did some fake pelagic birding, scoring Long-tailed Ducks, Double-crested Cormorants and Mute Swans... all the exciting stuff. I must say I quite liked birding on Amherst, and I look forward to my next visit (maybe not during a big year, when I can actually explore the island properly).
With the current crappy weather conditions I'm back at home waiting for my car to be done at the mechanic and catching up on some work. I'm sure I'll be back down south in the next few days though!
Ontario yearlist @ April 20th - 207
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