Shortly after Ken Burrell’s successful Cochrane trip in February, Jeff Skevington and a few others decided to try and recreate the trip in March. I was invited along and I (somehow) managed to talk my mom into a northern trip, so after booking a room at the Westway Motel for 3 nights the plan was set.
On March 14th, I left the house with mom around 7am and started driving. We swung by Southampton on the way to pick up Dana Latour, who was joining us for the weekend. We searched for the King Eider by the lake for a bit since we were already there, but didn't have any luck.
Driving to Cochrane really makes you realize how large Ontario is, as we left Bruce around 9am and arrived at the motel after 8:30pm. It was a nice day for a drive though and it was my first time going to Northern Ontario, so just witnessing the change of landscape was interesting.
My phone was glitching and it didn't turn on for most of the weekend, so I didn't take any photos on it. So anything that isn't avian was taken by Dana Latour (C, TM, all rights reserved)..
Around 100km past Sudbury we started noticing more snow on the ground and there was a drop in temperature, yes we were finally out of Southern Ontario. It was on Hwy 144 near Gogama where we had our first northern birds, Red & White-winged Crossbills and Common Redpolls. These finches were feeding on the side of the road and would flush up as we got close, so the views were very brief. After we stretched our legs at Gogama, I took a turn at the wheel and for some reason we started talking about birds we'd hit while driving.. Well it was certainly a weird coincidence, no sooner had I said I'd never hit a bird when we rounded a corner and a Ruffed Grouse walked out onto the road. I won't get into graphic detail, but let’s just say there wasn't enough left of it to make a Stuffed Grouse! We rolled up to the motel just before 9pm, tired but looking forward to the next day.
We left the motel at 7am on Sunday morning and drove to the other side of town to meet up the rest of the birders. The group consisted of Jeff, Angela and Alexander Skevington, Jeff’s parents, Paul Lagasi and the young birder car (Riley Walsh, Nathan Hood, Ezra Campanelli and Quinten Wiegersma). After brief introductions, we were off! The plan for the day was to head up hwy 652 (Detour Lake Road) for about 200km, looking for most of the boreal specialties. The trip got off to a good start when the group found a Northern Hawk Owl just outside of town! It was a bit far for pictures, but the scope views were amazing. The owl was a lifer for a some of us and we enjoyed watching it for a few minutes before heading on.
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| - Northern Hawk Owl |
The style of birding for the day was basically driving along at a speedy 40/kph, then stopping whenever we saw birds or came across an opening in the forest (where we would scan for owls and woodpeckers). The road was very quiet for traffic, so this meant our style of birding could work. Transport trucks made the day exciting though and it seeemed like every half hour one would come roaring around the corner behind us, sometimes calling for evasive action on the part of the birders.
The first flock of redpolls we came across contained a nice Hoary Redpoll...
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| - Hoary Redpoll |
White-winged Crossbills and Pine Siskins were the most common finches of the day and we saw hundreds of each. If we stopped anywhere along the road and listened for a few minutes, we would usually hear a few finches calling.
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| - White-winged Crossbill |
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| - Pine Siskin |
A few km after the first hawk owl we stopped for a quick scan of a burnt area. A Black-backed Woodpecker sounded off in the distance and Jeff spotted our 2nd Northern Hawk Owl of the trip. This owl was farther back than the first one, but I still took a few photos.. because why not?
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| - Northern Hawk Owl |
After we got in our cars and started moving on a few of us saw a Merlin flying over the road, which is a pretty good winter bird for the area. A few minutes later we stopped for yet another Northern Hawk Owl! This one flew as we were getting out of the car, so no pictures. There were some cooperative White-winged Crossbills around though.
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| - White-winged Crossbill |
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| - the Crossbill with white wings |
It was well after 1pm when we hit the 120km marker on the road when the bird activity was slowing down and we were thinking of heading back. Luckily we decided to keep driving however, because the best birding of the trip was still ahead of us. I forget the exact location, but somewhere after the 140km marker we stopped to look at some grouse that were sitting in the trees beside the road.. Sharp-tailed Grouse!! This was a lifer for me and was a bird I was hoping for on the trip, so it was very exciting getting great views of 3 of them.
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| - Sharp-tailed Grouse |
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| - Sharp-tailed Grouse |
It continued to get better though, as Dana found a Northern Hawk Owl on a nearby telephone post.
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| - Northern Hawk Owl |
Surely we had used up all of our bird luck? NO! The experience went from epic to totally insane as a large raptor flew in.. a Gyrfalcon!! For a brief moment, I saw the grouse, the owl and the falcon at the same time.. it really doesn't get much better than that in birding! The owl quickly made a fly for it, obviously trying to stay off the gyr’s radar (I mean, could you blame it?). The Gyrfalcon circled a few times, then seemed to see the Sharp-tailed Grouse for first time and took a dive at them. The grouse had been totally still until then, closely watching the raptor’s every move. But as soon as they realized they had been spotted they scattered. After it's unsuccessful attempt, the falcon stopped at the pole the hawk owl had been on briefly, but then kept flying and disappeared out of sight down the road.
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| - Gyrfaclon! |
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| - Common Redpoll & Gyrfalcon |
This all took place in a few minutes, but it was definitely one of the most exciting birding experiences of my life.
Buoyed by the excitement of our last stop, we decided we might as well continue to the end of the road and see what we could find. It was a fairly quiet drive up, but we did pick up a Northern Shrike, a Pine Grosbeak, another Northern Hawk Owl and a lone Sharp-tailed Grouse.
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| - NHOW |
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| - Sharp-tailed Grouse |
We turned around about 3:30pm and started the long drive back to Cochrane. We made surprisingly good time (for birders) on the way back, stopping only a few times for Northern Hawk Owl #6 and #7. Not a bad hawk owl count for one day!
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| - NHOW |
We also came across a flock of Bohemian Waxwings on the way. They didn't come close for pictures though and I only got a few flight shots.
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| - Bohemian Waxwing |
A Canada Jay popped up for a photo too.
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| - Canada Jay / Gray Jay / Wiskeyjack |
After getting back to Cochrane around 7pm, we grabbed a quick meal at Harvey's and went back to the motel for a bit. For most people this would be a full day of birding, but it was a still, clear night.. which meant owling. Mom decided to opt out and stay at the motel, so at 9pm the Skevington car stopped by to pick Dana and I up. After meeting up with the young birder car, we were off. Over the next 3 hours we retraced our route up Hwy 652, stopping to listen for owls any time we passed a stream or good habitat. It was a cold night (-22°C), so after a few minutes of listening everyone was ready to get back in the cars!
At 11:40 we hadn't heard any owls and we were thinking of heading back, but figured since we were already cold and tired, we might as well keep going. Our “last” stop, which was beside a river, made the evening a success (I say “last”, because I honestly don't know if we would have turned around without an owl). After standing beside the car for a few minutes, a Boreal Owl started singing on the other side of the river! We quickly walked closer and got out our flashlights. A quick blast of playback brought it in and we got great views of it for a few minutes before it disappeared into the night. Nobody got photos, but Ezra got a decent recording.
Boreal Owl recording
We arrived back at the motel around 1:30am and after a quick group meeting we decided to start an hour later the next day.
Even though we got to “sleep in" on Monday, when my alarm went off I was still exhausted from the previous day. But birding doesn't wait for you to wake up, so we got ready quickly and headed out.
After meeting up with the group again, we headed east out town in search of birds. A few minutes down the road we came across our first Northern Hawk Owl of the day (8th of the trip), so naturally we stopped for pictures. This turned out to be our last hawk owl of the trip.
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| - NHOW |
The plan for the day was to head towards Fraserdale, then head N on towards Otter Rapids. The road was fairly busy with traffic (compared to hwy 652), so stopping with a few cars was a bit difficult. The first few kilometers produced a lot of finches, mainly Pine Siskins and Common Redpolls. The wind picked up mid morning and it started to snow, so birds became harder to find.
We sped up a bit to get to Abitibi Canyon, where we stopped for a few minutes to look out at the massive Abitibi Canyon Generating Station.
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| The group posed for picture in front of the station.. |
Next we decided to drive up a somewhat sketchy winter road towards Otter Rapids, because why not? I was driving at the time and was glad to be in a four wheel drive vehicle with high clearance for the road. Looking in my rear view mirror, I would see the Skevington’s mighty Prius motoring on behind me and kept wondering if the tow ropes in the back might get some use..
We ran into a bit of bird activity after the dam and turned up Pileated and Hairy Woodpeckers, more crossbills and 3 Bohemian Waxwings.
Birding was pretty quiet for the follwoing hour, but it picked up a bit when we saw 2 Sharp-tailed Grouse fly off from beside the road. Continuing on we saw a Ruffed Grouse crossing the road and we got our first (and only) good views of Red Crossbills of the trip. We came across the 50th parallel marker a little later, which really put our location into perspective.
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| - This was the where we turned around, near Otter Rapids |
The road from there to Otter Rapids seemed to be where all of the redpolls were hiding and we probably saw well over 1000. The diversity wasn't great though and we only managed to pick out one Hoary Redpoll and one "Greater" Common Redpoll.
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| - Redpolls |
We did a bit of birding around Otter Rapids and even though we didn't turn up much bird wise, it was a cool vista.
The return trip was rather uneventful and after we passed Abitibi Canyon we didn't stop much. A few times we even got up to normal driving speed, which is quite the accomplishment for a group of birders! The weather certainty hadn't improved when we hit Fraserdale and the drive back to Cochrane was snowy and birdless. Even though Monday wasn't as productive as the previous day for birds, just being in new territory and birding was exciting.
Tuesday morning we got up fairly early and packed the truck for the long trip back to southern Ontario. After saying farewell to the Skevingtons, we departed Cochrane and headed towards the Gogama Burn, where we were making a brief stop to look for woodpeckers. We snowshoed in about 1km before we turned around, as we wanted to get back to Bruce at a “reasonable” time. We got good views of 8 Black-backed Woodpeckers, but we dipped on American Three-toed Woodpecker (one for next time).
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| - Black-backed Woodpecker (taken by Dana) |
The drive back was quiet for birds, but it was kind of exciting to get back to spring birding. After we passed Barrie we saw massive flocks of Canada Geese were flying north and Red-winged Blackbirds were singing beside the highways.
Besides Three-toed Woodpecker I got all of my targets on the trip👌. It was exciting just to see the northern finches (all of which are absent in Bruce this year) and northern birds like Canada Jays and Bohemian Waxwings too. Plus exploring a new part of Ontario was a mind opening experience, it certainly makes everything in southern Ontario seem close!
All in all an epic trip!
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