On October 30th the conditions looked decent for a morning flight watch at "The Bluff" in Huron County. This is one of my favourite birding spots, but I've visited it a lot less than normal this year due to big year madness..
Anyways there weren't any rare birds around to chase, so I got up at a time that was much too early and headed over to the Bluff with Alessandra. There we met up with Isabel Apkarian and Andy Nguyen for a day of standing on a sand cliff beside the lake. Activity started off fairly slow, but things began to pick up after 9am with large flocks of Evening Grosbeaks and Pine Siskins. After seeing all the recent grosbeak reports across southern Ontario it was fun to connect a flight of them (my first ones since March). Red-necked and Horned Grebes were sitting out on the glassy calm water, with Red-throated and Common Loons flying out in the heat shimmer. The winds had shifted a bit more southwest than I was hoping for, which seemed to contribute to lower numbers of birds than expected. A massive flock of geese contained 2 Snows and 2 Cackling, adding further to the day list. While scoping a distant treeline I spotted a flying Pileated Woodpecker, a new species for my Bluff list.
By noon the songbird movement was winding down, with only the occasional flock of finches passing over. We were considering packing it in, but then a bit of a raptor movement started with a few groups of southbound Red-tailed Hawks, so we stayed until almost 3pm. The raptor highlights were a lovely dark Rough-legged Hawk, a Golden Eagle and an adult Northern Goshawk. Unfortunately for Andy he needs goshawk for the year and left twenty minutes before I had it... Next time Andy!
The Black-capped Chickadee movement was pretty fun as well, with groups of 5-20 birds moving all day through the corn field. It's a bit odd to look up and see a flock of chickadees in the sky, not how you see these guys most of the time. I always wonder where these chickadees and coming from and where they're going...
Highlights from the the day below below;
- 9 Red-necked Grebes
- 5 Red-throated Loons
- 1 Wilson's Snipe
- 1 Golden Eagle
- 4 Northern Harriers
- 17 Sharp-shinned Hawks
- 3 Cooper's Hawks
- 1 Northern Goshawk
- 72 Red-tailed Hawks
- 1 Rough-legged Hawk
- 1 Pileated Woodpecker
- 350 Black-capped Chickadees
- 474 Evening Grosbeaks
- 22 Purple Finches
- 324 Pine Siskins
- 632 American Goldfinches
- 2 Lapland Longspurs
- 16 American Pipits
- 55 Species total
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| - Rough-legged Hawk |
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| - Wilson's Snipe |
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| - Pine Siskins |
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| - Siskins |
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| - Evening Grosbeaks |
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| - Evening Grosbeaks |
 |
| -More |
A nice break from chasing and a really enjoyable day at one of my favourite spots: )
On the subject of the big year this past week has been pretty annoying.... There have been 5 good birds... Ross's Gull, Great Cormorant, Gray Flycatcher, Cassin's Kingbird and Atlantic Puffin... and they have all been one observer wonders/not chaseable... Argh! A nice chaseable mega would be nice right about now please....
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