My third Cormorant of 2022

  If you told me when I started out my big year that on December 20th I’d be driving 3 hours to chase a water bird in the dark, I’d probably believe you. You see I have no mis illusions about twitchers being sane people, I have accepted this long ago. Anyways, at 9pm on Tuesday, December 20th I was rolling up to Hamilton in search of a cormorant.

I’ll stop here and back things up a bit, specifically 5 hours earlier before this madness began. I was just driving back home from Sauble Beach, where Alessandra and I had been running a few errands for my parents, when I received a call from William Konze. William and I usually call each other when a rare bird shows up, so my mind immediately jumped to that possibility. He was over in Ottawa with Andy Nguyen, searching for Gyrfalcons after a successful Gray Partridge hunt (with binoculars, not guns), so he could just be phoning to talk about that… however, that was the less exciting possibility. “Check the Hamilton RBA on discord, there’s a Great Cormorant”, turns out my first hunch was right, there was a rare bird.

The Great Cormorant is a slippery fiend, and a bird that had been assigned to my “annoying misses of 2022” list along with other horrible, malicious birds like Painted Bunting and Western Kingbird. The first one of the year was in the winter, and although it was never technically in Ontario, it was tantalizing close… 1km across the river in Niagara Falls. That was annoying yes, but the topper came on October 23rd, when one was photographed on the Ajax waterfront in Durham. This individual was posted too late in the day to chase, but birders were there right up until sunset and it seemed like it was roosting there. The following day I was at the location before dawn… but nothing, no corm, it had vanished in the night. Knowing all this, I think you would understand why I have mixed feelings about this Atlantic mega-cormorant.

After a quick dinner back at home, and a bit of texting with Alvan and other observers, I made the decision to drive down immediately and search for it in the dark. My reasoning was 1) even if there was only a small chance of seeing it at night, it was better than no chance and 2) I would rather drive down at night than leave at 3:30am in the morning. Also Ezra Campanelli had seen the bird in the evening, bringing him within 2 birds of me…Alessandra was instantly on board with chasing it, which I’m not sure means she’s as crazy as me or she's just the most supportive girlfriend ever. Christmas wrapping was put on hold, gear loaded into the car, and we were off. Arriving at Bayfront Park, we pulled up to the Pier 4 parking area and walked out to the tip of land. According to  Alvan the bird was sitting out on a rocky breakwall. My scope is actually pretty impressive at gathering light in dim conditions, and with the faint lights shining off the docks of the marina we could make out shapes in the dark. Several hundred gulls roosted along the rocks, and meticulously we picked through them one by one. Great Black-backed still stood out, so surely a cormorant would too right? It’s interesting birding at night, as the normal issues associated with using a scope (heat shimmer, distance) are replaced by the shroud of darkness. Despite over half an hour of scanning in the cold, we couldn’t resolve any of the shapes into cormorants, though a few geese did give us a start. We returned back to Paris to stay with my aunt for the night, with plans to return the next morning.

December 21st marks the winter solstice, the day with the shortest period of daylight during the calendar year. On the plus side, since sunrise is so late it meant I didn’t have to wake up at an ungodly hour, so that was nice. On the down side, if I didn’t immediately find the cormorant I wouldn’t have much time to search during the day. 

We met up with William and Andy at Pier 4 at 6:30am, and the scene was basically the same as I had left it only a few hours before. Although sunrise isn’t until 7:49, the sky begins to lighten slightly around 6:40. It was around that time that my scope landed on a dark, bird-like shape tucked in behind some Herring Gulls. A few minutes of intense staring, plus a slight increase of light, resolved the bird into a cormorant. Size alone made it a Great because it towered above the nearby gulls (Double-crested look similar in size to gulls). Finally it was light enough that we could see extensive white on its throat, the clincher for the identification. The bird preened for about half an hour, then took off, circled twice low over our heads and disappeared over the high level bridge towards the city.

Poor record shots....

- First view predawn!

- Great Cormorant

The birders who arrived after sunrise were pretty disappointed, but luckily for them after another 40 minutes the bird returned, landing on the same break wall where it had spent the night on. My fingers were getting cold by this point (in my rush to leave the previous day I have forgotten all of my warm gloves), so after taking a few more photos we headed back to Bruce. It has been a pretty decent year for Atlantic birds for me... Great Cormorant, Dovekie, Razorbill and Northern Gannet. Will this be my last bird of 2022, who knows? One or two more would always be nice, but it’s a matter of chance at this point.

Ontario yearlist @ December 22nd - 359