On January 3rd I headed down to do some Niagara/Hamilton birding with Erik van Den Kieboom and David Turner. We left fairly early and drove straight from David's house in Grey and arrived at Niagara around 10am. Our first stop was the Whirlpool, where 2 Black-legged Kittiwakes had been hanging out. After a few minutes we located them flying below us with a few hundred Bonaparte's Gulls.
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| Black-legged Kittiwake |
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| BLKI |
Next we made our way to Dufferin Islands Park above the falls, where we decided to bird the park for a few minutes before going to look for gulls. There wasn't much around, but we saw a few decent birds including; Gadwall, Hooded Merganser, Cooper's Hawk, Carolina Wren and Ruby-crowned Kinglet.
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| Gadwall |
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| Carolina Wren |
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| Out of focus Ruby-crowned Kinglet |
We then took a walk along the edge of the falls and did some gull scanning. We didn't see anything crazy, but we did see all the normal goodies; 2 Icelands Gulls (kumliens), 4 Lesser Black-backed Gulls and a Glaucous gull.
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| Lesser Black-backed gull |
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| Iceland Gull |
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| Iceland Gull |
After that we retraced our steps and stopped for a quick scan at Adam Beck, where we saw 2 more Iceland Gulls.
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| Iceland Gull |
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| Iceland Gull |
Our final stops before heading on to Hamilton were the Queenston Docks and the overlook at Queenston Heights. Sadly we missed the Black Vulture at Queenston Heights by 5 minutes, but we did see 6 Little Gulls at the docks. We finished the Niagara part of our trip with 9 gull species, with our only miss being Black-headed Gull.
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| Horrible photo of a Little Gull |
On to Hamilton! First we went to the Lift Bridge to look for the continuing King Eider. The eider wasn't feeling cooperative and decided to spend the day somewhere else, however the Northern Mockingbird, Peregrine Falcon and ever-present Long-tailed Ducks didn't disappoint.
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| Northern Mockingbird |
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| Long-tailed Duck |
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Long-tailed Duck
Peregrine Falcon |
After that we did a few quick stops at Tollgate Ponds, Windermere Basin and Lasalle Park, adding some birds to our 2020 lists including; Ruddy Duck, Ring-necked Duck, American Coot, Great Blue Heron & American Coot.
Our day total ended up at 61 species, not bad for an early January day.
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