You may have noticed that all my recent posts have been in chronological order, as I have been trying to catch up for over a month of missed blogging. I still have two weeks of Pelee to go until I am caught up, but right now I am going to follow the Star Wars theme and do things out of order! My recent Rainy River trip is still fresh in my memory, so I'm writing about that now... More Pelee stuff to come soon ; )
On the morning of June 11th my dad drove me over to Arthur before sunrise, where I met up with Ezra and loaded my gear into a grey Honda Civic, which would be our vehicle for the trip. My car had to go in the shop the following week, and Ezra's died completely back in May, so one of Ezra's friends had kindly loaned us a car to use for the week.
We began our drive northward around 6am, with the first stop along the way being a forest tract in Simcoe County. Despite spending the entire month of May in southern Ontario and seeing all of the regular rarities at Pelee, I had missed seeing a Kirtland's Warbler... a species which has been annual at the point for years. It was better than missing something like a Kentucky Warbler though, as in that case I almost certainly wouldn't have had a chance to see one again. With Kirtland's however there is a chance during the breeding season.
Kirtland's Warblers are one of the rarest breeding birds in North America, nesting only in Michigan and a few other isolated spots around the Great Lakes. The main reason why they are so scarce is because they are so darn fussy about their habitat, as they only nest in stands of Jack Pine and Red Pine that are between 5 and 15 feet tall. Kirtland's were almost lost a few decades ago, but intensive forest management through selective burning (to ensure there are always trees of an appropriate height) has allowed the species to rebound. Mind you their future hinges on the efforts of humans, but for now they are stable and actually increasing over their range. In the last decade there has been a new effort in southern Ontario to create Kirtland's habitat, with hopes of encouraging the species to breed in the province. The main area for this is Simcoe County, where a few properties have been burned and planted with pines. However no bird had set up territory yet.
Since we had to drive through Simcoe anyways, we stopped by a few of these sites just in case there were birds there. Our first location to check was the Packard Tract, a small pine forest near Angus that had just reached the warblers picky height requirements in the last few years. Literally as soon as I stepped out of the car I heard a loud, rich song with several quieter, slow notes followed by two higher pitched ones. Kirtland's Warbler! Definitely easier than I thought it was going to be! In no time we had located it, singing on top of one of the pines beside the road, In the background 3 more of them were singing... Craziness here in Ontario. After enjoying the bird for awhile (it was a lifer for me too), we continued on our way as there was a lot of kilometers left to go!
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| - Kirtland's Warbler |
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| - Strange thing |
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| - Wawa Lagoons |
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| - Dinner Big Year Style |
The following day was spent mainly in the car was well, driving from Wawa and ending up in Rainy River. Along the way we did stop at several locations, including Rossport and Terrace Bay. In Terrace Bay we met up with Jeff Skevington and Vincent Fyson, who were just returning from a trip out west and had some good Rainy River information for us. One of the surprises was they had found a singing Nelson's Sparrow the previous day, a bird I wasn't planning on seeing this trip. Again, there weren't any big highlights (no new species... from my jaded big year perspective) on the drive, though seeing some boreal breeding species was fun!
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| - Spruce Grouse |
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| - Moose |
Around 11pm we arrived at Wilson Creek Road, located just outside of the town of Rainy River. This spot had a few of our target birds, namely LeConte's Sparrow and Nelson's Sparrow. It was a very calm, warm night, ideal listening conditions. Even though it was so late there was still a lightness in the sky... This is summer in the north after all, where the darkness does not last too long. As soon as I stepped out of the car I heard a few singing Sedge Wrens, and also a Yellow Rail! Shortly after that a Nelson's Sparrow sang, followed by another further down the road. Then a few LeConte's started singing, a lifer for me! Who knew night birding would be so productive.
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| - Sunset coming in to Rainy River |
The morning of the 13th we got up early and tried to actually get visuals on the sparrows. The Nelson's remained out of sight, however one of the LeConte's popped up and offered good views. It was a bit distant though... so this was the best photo I got.
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| - LeConte’s Sparrow |
The rest of the day we spent exploring the backroads of the Rainy River area searching for our other target birds, which were Western Meadowlark, Black-billed Magpie, Marbled Godwit (me) and Franklin's Gull (Ezra). The former two fell quickly, and over the course of the trip I saw a good number of magpies, and a smaller number of meadowlarks. The magpie was a lifer for me, and it was definitely one of my trip highlights. Larger than a crow with striking black and white plumage with a bluish hue, they are very unique and striking birds. They were unexpectedly skittish however, so no 5 star photos were obtained.
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| - Western Meadowlark |
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| - Black-billed Magpie |
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| - Same fella |
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| - Sharp-tailed Grouse |
I have never been to northwestern Ontario before, so birds aside it was a cool experience exploring a new area of the province. Predominantly farmland dotted with stands of mixed forest, the Rainy River area has a small, farming town vibe that reminded me in a way of the northern Bruce Peninsula. Once you get away from the town though the boreal forest takes over and there are a lot more coniferous trees, versus mainly broadleaf in the fields. We didn't have much time to bird the forests unfortunately, as we were pressed for time and only focused on target birds. On the western side of town there is a river that winds its way back out to Lake Superior, and also acts as the border with the United States. When we visited the whole area was experiencing the worst flooding they'd seen in over 20 years, and the water levels were so high that many of the lawns in Rainy River were practically underwater.
On Tuesday we alternated between checking the fields for godwits and Sable Island for Franklin's Gulls, and despite putting in a dawn to dusk effort on both days we came up empty. We did see another bear though!
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| - Black Bear |
I wasn't really expecting to have and issue finding godwit, and frankly I was getting a bit concerned. Yeah, there are normally a few in southern Ontario during the fall, but I didn't want to have to waste time chasing one then. On Wednesday morning I followed some advice from Glenn Coady, and after spending less than 5 minutes at the locations (a sprawling field of tall grasses beside the road) 3 Marbled Godwits flew by singing. Success was sweet! This was another lifer for me, and an overdue one too. I have had plenty of chances to see one before... But again.. not a chaser : ) Getting my first one on breeding grounds was a cool too. They are truly massive shorebirds, larger than Ring-billed Gulls with very long bills.
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| - Marbled Godwit |
Continuing off that success we drove over to scan Sable Island, and in less than 10 minutes Ezra had spotted his Franklin's Gull flying by. Third day is the charm...
Originally we were planning on leaving the following morning, but since we already had seen our targets we decided to to head home a day early. Western Kingbird was the only miss of the trip, however it was the least likely of our targets and there is a chance to get it in Southern Ontario this fall. On the way out of the Rainy River area a White-tailed Jackrabbit ran across the road ahead of the car! There are only two records of this mammal for Ontario on iNaturalist, so it was a pretty exciting find!
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| - White-tailed Jackrabbit |
The rest of Wednesday was spent on the road, with me driving close to 10 hours and ending up in Sault St. Marie... Tiring!! On Thursday we spent the morning scouring Manitoulin Island for Ring-necked Pheasant, which I somehow still needed for the year. We came up empty there, but birding on the island is always fun and I ended up with 70 species. The Lake Huron "pelagic" birding (from the Chi Chi Maun ferry across to Tobermory) was a swing and a miss, and shockingly no storm-petrels or shearwaters were seen... Though this is Ontario and Lake Huron is not actually an ocean, so my expectations were low to begin with.
I arrived home that evening with 6 new birds for the year, which I will take as I was expecting 5 on the trip. I look forward to my next chance to explore the north, when hopefully I'll have a bit more time!
Kilometers driven: 5467
Species seen: 101
Bug bites: 100000
Tomorrow I start work for the summer, and I don't plan on birding that much until later in August... Besides chasing rarities of course. In the next week or two I should be up to date with May birding.
Ontario yearlist @ June 19th - 331
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