April 22 birding

Just to wrap things up, I'll cover the events after my last post (covering April 21st). After having a fantastic shorebird evening around the Pelee area Ezra and I spent the night car camping, with plans to bird Point Pelee early the next day. Friday called to be the "calm before the storm", with relatively poor migration conditions forecasted until things picked up on the weekend. Since we were planning on birding Pelee on Saturday and Sunday, it didn't make sense for us to leave only to come back, so we figured we might as well see if anything was around on Friday morning.

The drive into the park was fairly quiet... very few birds hopping around on the road and cooler temperatures discouraging birdsong. The gate by the Visitor Centre was open, which meant I could drive right out to the tip parking lot. This saves about 2km of walking, with the added benefit of being able to access your car quickly. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was likely the last time I will be able to do that this spring, as the gate was closed the next day. We started by doing a reverse migration watch at the tip, as is the norm for a day of Pelee birding. It became apparent pretty soon that it wasn't going to be an active day though, as little flew off besides a few blackbird flocks.

- Northern Rough-winged Swallow - Pelee Tip

- Common Loon - Pelee Tip

After the tip we moved on to West Beach, where we saw very few birds... and no Henslow's Sparrows.  The remainder of the morning was spent covering various trails around the park, seeing relatively little besides some Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Hermit Thrushes and an early Yellow Warbler (yearbird). By 11:00am it was sunny and warming up fast, which was killing bird activity even more. We decided to head out of the park and north towards Lake St. Clair to try and pick up Yellow-headed Blackbird for the yearlist. Yellow-headed Blackbirds are rare in most of Ontario, with the only remaining breeding locations being in the Rainy River area and also here around Lake St. Clair. There had not been any reports there previously this year, but it was around the time that they normally return so it seemed worth the gamble.

We started out by checking the marshes along Angler Line, which is one of the spots where they have been most reliable in past years. It was getting balmy at this point, starting to close in on T-shirt weather. I have never really enjoyed birding on these still days when the temperature is in the mid 20s and the sky is blue. I'm weird that way... but normally it makes me feel like there are low chances of finding good birds, plus it's just too hot and the birds aren't as active... I digress. Walking the road beside the marsh turned up some Great Egrets, American Coots and also my first Common Gallinule of 2022.

After doing this and not seeing any blackbirds for 45 minutes, a car rolled up and put down its window to talk to us. The person inside turned out to be a homeowner down the road, who just happened to have Yellow-headed Blackbirds coming to her feeder regularly. She generously said that we could walk around her property to look for them, an offer that we quickly took her up on. Sure enough, as we rounded the house we discovered 5 male Yellow-headeds walking around the yard. This was my first time seeing this species actually on its breeding grounds, and also my first time photographing one in Ontario.

Some other birds from the area...

- American Coot

- flying coot... always weird

- Forster's Terns

The remainder of the day was spent birding around Essex. Highlights were few and far between, but the Windsor dump turned out to be a good spot, with 5 gull species including 8 Lesser Black-backed and a Glaucous (which I missed). 

That's all folks!

Ontario yearlist @ April 22 - 217