Just wow... what a first day. It was a true whirlwind, but honestly I couldn't have asked for a better start.
The day started around 6:00am, when I met Ezra Campenelli, Nathan Hood and William Kronze in Hamilton. The game plan was to head to Niagara-On-The-Lake (NOTL) for Razorbill & King Eider, then hit Dufferin Islands for the Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, followed by the Rufous Hummingbird in Oakville and finally the Golden-crowned Sparrow in Toronto. An ambitious day for sure!
On the way to NOTL we made a brief stop at a nice looking patch of forest beside the road with hopes of hearing some owls. No sooner had we rolled down the windows when ~wham~, Great Horned Owl hooting! An awesome first bird for my big year, certainly beats House Sparrow : )
We rolled up to Queens Royal Park before dawn and quickly added several birds by call... Dark-eyed Junco, Carolina Wren and American Robin among others. As the light levels started to increase we began scoping the river mouth for interesting birds. Thousands of Bonaparte's Gulls streamed past, and we managed to pick out 6 Little Gulls. A few minutes later William spotted the young male King Eider flying into the river, a nice starting rarity! It landed with a large group of Long-tailed Ducks, and I was able to get this photo through my scope. Andy Nguyen also met up with us here & he followed along for the rest of the day. I apologize in advance for all the bad photos in this post... I was mainly just going for records shots... so : )
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| - King Eider |
Despite our best efforts we missed Razorbill, which was hopefully because they were just elsewhere and not shot by hunters! (while we were there was a boat of hunters on the American side of the river hunting waterfowl, we even saw them get a White-winged Scoter). We decided to cut our losses and head for the duck, making a quick stop at Adam Beck on the way. In our brief time there we picked out 5 Iceland Gulls among the swirling mass of Herrings.
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| - Iceland Gull |
The Whistling-Duck was almost a drive by, we pulled into Dufferin Islands, got out and it was right there. Just like when I was there on my previous visit to the area in November, the duck seemed quite content hanging out with the local Mallards and ignored our presence completely. I even took a photo with, not something you can do with every rarity.
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| - Black-bellied Whistling-Duck |
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| - Hooded Mergansers |
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| - Gadwall |
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| - Me with the duck |
We then rushed back down the QEW to Oakville, where we had spend no more than 5 minutes before the Rufous Hummingbird flew in, another easy tick.
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| - Rufous Hummingbird |
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| - Rufous Hummingbird |
Originally we were planning on leaving the Mountain Bluebird until day two, however it was only noon and we were making such good time, so we decided to go there before the Golden-crowned Sparrow. 50 minutes later we were pulling into the Home Depot parking lot just outside of Guelph, which was just beside where the bluebird was being seen. The location the bird had been reported at was a small marsh which could be seen from beside railway tracks, however around 2:30 trains start going by and flush all the birds, so there's a bit of a time crunch. A birder who was just leaving informed us that the bluebird was currently being seen, so we sprinted the last 600 meters down the path (you have to do these things during big years). A crowd of birders were gathered there, and sure enough the bluebird was still there, foraging in the marsh with 8 of it's eastern counterparts. This was also my first lifer of 2022!
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| - Mountain Bluebird |
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| - Mountain Bluebird |
We were on a mission for rarities though and there is no time for aesthetics, so we quickly retraced our steps back to the car and headed towards Toronto. The drive was fairly uneventful, though we did add several new birds including Merlin. We pulled up to the Golden-crowned Sparrow stakeout just before 2:30, and after waiting a few minutes and looking through House Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows, the golden-crowned popped out underneath the feeder and allowed to to take some photos before disappearing again. I know some other people had to wait a lot longer to see this bird, so we were quite lucky there.
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| - Golden-crowned Sparrow |
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| - Golden-crowned Sparrow |
At this point it really started sinking in that what a phenomenal day we were experiencing, as we had seen all but one of our target species. With over an hour left before sunset we checked out a few Toronto hotspots and picked up several new birds, including; Snowy Owl, Long-eared Owl and Northern Harrier.
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| - Snowy Owl |
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| - Long-eared Owl |
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| - Long-eared Owl |
There was one other major surprise during the day, a Boreal Owl! This species can be quite a difficult one to come across om a big year, often requiring a special trip to Cochrane to find them on territory... so this was very convenient.
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| - Boreal Owl |
I ended the day with a total of 57 species, including 5 owl species and 4 OBRC level rarities... Not a bad start! Tomorrow will be mainly focused on Harris's Sparrow, Harlequin Duck and Niagara goodies like Black-legged Kittiwake.
Some random photos...
Wow, what a good start to the year! Must of been the most rarities you've ever seen in a day!
ReplyDeleteAmazing start! So excited to blog along with you The Kryzanauskas crew
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