Follow-up to my previous post about 50 Days of Rare... This one just covering how I've started off the challenge.
One of my goals this month is to get out birding as much as I can, particularly at spots that have high potential for rarities. For the past few weeks the weather has been quite boring in terms of "rarity weather"... High pressure just holding over northeastern North America and giving us hot, sunny weather with mainly poor winds. So not exactly inspiring conditions to go rarity hunting. Promising weather is coming down the pipe though, and by the weekend there should be some interesting birding to do. Anyways, I decided to keep things local until then and bird the Lake Huron shoreline hard, mainly between my place and Sauble Beach. This area has some great birds around this time of year in the past, most notably Michael Butler's Ontario first Eurasian Dotterel... so the potential is definitively there for something cool. The water levels have dropped significantly at Oliphant this season, which has created lots of promising habitat (large mudflats/exposed shorelines). This is something I've been waiting for for years, so I'm thrilled that I'm able to be home this fall to see it.
- October 1
Alessandra and I drove to Oliphant at sunrise and met up with Alfred Raab to scour the "North Flats" area. The morning was nice and sunny with basically no wind at all, which was kind of cool since we could hear birds calling way out on the islands (over a kilometer away). Lots of pipits/siskins flying overhead, as well as some Lapland Longspurs and "Yumps" kept things interesting. Right off the bat we came across a large flock of shorebirds containing 6 species, most notably 12 American Golden-plovers, 1 White-rumped Sandpiper and 9 Semipalmated Sandpipers (getting late for them). For a local birder this was quite exciting, as it was the largest flock of shorebirds/best diversity I had ever seen there. Pretty pumped to see what happens there this season! After that we scoured the fen area for songbirds, and Alessandra got on a Nelson's Sparrow, the 6th record for Bruce on eBird... not a bad way to start off the month! No major highlights after that, 2 more American Golden-plovers were cool though! By the time we finished off there it was midday, so we headed back home for the day.
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| - American Golden-plover |
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| - Semi Plovers |
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| - Nelson's Sparrow |
Nothing else too noteworthy besides a patch rarity... House Sparrow.
- October 2
Birded the yard for an hour at sunrise... ended up with 32 species so not too productive... But there were a few highlights including yard lifer Blue-winged Teal, 2 Northern Shovelers (3rd yard record) and a decent passage of Yellow-rumped Warblers (53).
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| - Yellow-bellied Sapsucker |
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| - Blue-winged Teal |
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| - Yump |
After that Alessandra and I drove over to Oliphant and combed most of the shoreline. It was fairly quiet compared to the previous day, highlights being 1 American Golden-plover and 17 Semipalmated Sandpipers. There was a dog walker at the good spot where we had a lot of luck the previous day, so that hurt our shorb count I'm sure. From there we headed down to Sauble Beach, where we spent a bit of time scanning the beach and river mouth. Again not too much, save for some Bonaparte's Gulls. On our way back towards home we checked some field habitat (nothing) and the Wiarton Sewage Lagoons (a few Redhead). We had stuff to do for the rest of the day so no more birding.
- October 3
Arrived at the Oliphant shoreline just after sunrise and started scouring the fen area for sparrows and shorebirds. Nothing on the sparrow front, but the plovers put on a decent showing with 8 Black-bellied, 6 American Golden and 13 Semipalmated. A few other random things but nothing noteworthy...
Once we were done at Oliphant we drove north along the shoreline, stopping briefly at a few spots before visiting Petrel Point to look at the perfect Scissor-tailed Flycatcher habitat (fun fact, this spot has Fulvus Whistling-Duck record). Petrel was very dead, not even a single Black-capped Petrel flying by... annoying...
It was really heating up at that point so we headed home for the day to get some chores/computer work done. It may hurt my chances of finding birds, but I hate birding midday on hot sunny days, it just kills my enthusiasm/drive... Would I go out in gale force winds and driving rain? You know it. A hot, cloudless day with no wind? Forget it.
Anyways that's what I've done so far this month, 78 species so far for October. More posts to come in the near future
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