Catching up one day at a time here… as I feel I will be doing until June, bear with me : )
On Thursday I headed down to Long Point for sunrise, where I planned to meet up with Ezra and Nathan and spend the morning birding. The weather seemed to look promising for a fallout… south winds and rain hitting around 5am, so it seemed like it would be worth a shot. I arrived at dawn, or rather what the clock told me was dawn, as it was so dark and rainy that it was hard to tell. Together we headed into the new provincial park and fanned out in search of newly arrived migrants. The wind and heavy rain was brutal, and coupled with 4 degree temperatures it was freaking unpleasant to say the least! The birding was pretty quiet compared to what we were hoping for… 2 Palm Warblers, some kinglets and sparrows but not much else. I did see two yearbirds, Gray Catbird and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, both common birds that I’ll see a plethora of this year though.
After getting thoroughly soaked, we spent the rest of morning birding the shore of Lake Erie, working our way over towards Port Burwell. Again, the birds were quite sparse, and I can’t really think of many highlights to note. The Sky had cleared up and the sun was actually coming out around lunchtime, so we headed back over towards Long Point, where we thought we’d spend the rest of the afternoon.
Plans on a big year constantly change though, and this was no exception. When an alert popped up on discord that Jeremy Bensette had found two Western Sandpipers at Hillman Marsh, it made the decision of what to do quite easy. Nathan stayed at Long Point for the rest of the day, as he quite sensibility isn’t doing a big year. Ezra jumped in my car and we started the 3 hour drive west towards Essex County. While on route, a post popped up that there were now 5 Hudsonian Godwits by Point Pelee! “Hudwits” are very rare in southern Ontario in the spring, and seeing them in their breeding plumage has always been on my wish list.
After arriving at Hillman, we started scoping through the massive flock of Dunlins that were scattered across the shorebird cell. After a few minutes we picked out two smaller sandpipers with orangeish scapulars, auriculars and crown. Beautiful breeding plumage Western Sandpipers, a rare spring bird in Ontario.
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| - Western Sandpiper |
While we were standing there with a crowd of other birders, someone mentioned American Avocets. Sure enough, three of them were feeding further out in the marsh! Everyone was so absorbed in the sandpipers that we didn’t notice avocets fly in, yikes! This was actually lifer for me, as was the western sand. I could have easily chased them in the past, but as I’ve said before ~ I never chased birds that I figured I would one day self find.
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| - American Avocets |
After that we bombed over to Bevel Drive, where after arriving we immediately discovered five Hudsonian Godwits. Two of these birds were in fine alternate (breeding) plumage, which was awesome.
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| - Hudsonian Godwits |
I didn’t expect to get the godwit or the sandpiper until the fall, so that was an unexpected bonus. It will also save me a trip later in the year to chase them.
Ontario Yearlist @ April 21 - 214
I’ll be back with more soon, but have to catch some sleep before waking up early to bird Pelee tomorrow! Hope are high for rares/migrants… I mean look at this!!
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