I'm a bit late to the game here... mainly due to work... But I promised to write a post about my May 19th big day in Norfolk County so here it is! A big thank you to everyone who donated and raised money for Birds Canada and OFO.
***Warning... Very long and detailed post... got carried away
Ever since I got interested in the world of birds, the concept of a big day has always been alluring to me. As shocking as this may be to hear from someone who did a big year, I enjoy fast paced, competitive birding. Maybe it comes from, in part, my background playing sports and fascination with numbers and lists. I spent a lot of time reading blog and magazine articles about listing big day attempts, In Ontario and elsewhere... the accounts of birders racing around a region in a desperate, sleep deprived state trying to identify as many species as possible fascinating to me. A big day is a real test of knowledge and endurance, almost more of the latter honestly... When trying to muster the energy to keep pushing for new birds after 18+ hours of intense birding. The knowledge part is no to be scoffed at either though, definitely a make or break aspect if you're aiming for a high number. I don't mean ID skills either, though that certainly helps, I mean knowing locations inside and our. It's 4pm, and somehow even though you have had a great morning with lots of migrants, you are missing Northern Waterthrush. There are eBird reports 20 minutes away, but time is money on a big day and 50 minutes for 2 birds isn't a very good use of time. Luckily, you know of a small, out of the way wetland that nobody visits, and it's also on the way to your next stop. A quick drive by with the windows down easily produces waterthush, and it only took an extra 5 minutes. It's scenarios like that that make the planning effort of a big day so much easier, when you have a strong familiarly with a region and know where to find basically every target bird you could need.
In Bruce, I would try to do a serious big day at least once a year. Sometimes this would be with friends, travelling the distance of the county, but other years I did a more local approach and attempted a biking big day in my local patch. On top of being an adrenaline rush, a World Cup of birding even (though the opponent was just a high number most of the time), the big days were also fundraising efforts for Birds Canada and the Ontario Field Ornithologists, so that was the added incentive I didn't need to keep doing them year after year. During the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020, my friends and I decided to make a birdathon team and do yard "big sits" from our respective yards across the province. Even though it was quite different from what I was used to doing, it was still one of the more birdathons I have done (post here), and we raised more money than I had on any past birdathons!
Back in April of this year, Alessandra and I decided to do a big day around the Long Point region, since we would be staying down there for the field season anyway. I was really hoping that work wouldn't get in the way of doing the big day on a perfect weather day, of which there are precious few of every spring. Luckily our supervisors allowed us to take time off for it if we gave several days notice, so things were looking up, with a rough plan do do our big day around May 20th. I'm sure other birders share this opinion, but May of 2023 was a bit of a letdown in terms of migration. At least around Norfolk and Lake Huron, there was never really a crazy good migration day for the entire month. Sure there were some fun days, but not a single day (for me anyways) with high double digit numbers for multiple warbler species. Something similar happened in 2021, when the midwest experienced a fantastic migration, and here in Ontario things were delayed, then we had a few days of clear skies and everything seemed to have migrated over and left the province. This made choosing a day for a birdathon rather tough, as there wasn't an obvious day to pick. While looking at Birdcast and wind maps, May 19th started to look like it would be our best chance. It fell on a Friday, so we would have the following day off to recover after birding all day. We decided to give it the green light on the night of the 18th, and then went to bed promptly at 8:30.
NORFOLK BIG DAY - MAY 19, 2023
2:45am, the wake up alarm sounded. Was I slacking because I didn't start at midnight? Maybe a little, but we felt pretty confident that we could get all of our night targets before dawn with time to spare, and it was going to be a long day anyways. Alessandra and I quickly got dressed and stumbled out of the Old Cut field house (where we are living for the season) to the car, where we started driving off of Long Point towards the mainland. It was a cool night (around 7 degrees) and there was a slight breeze coming off the lake, though luckily not strong enough to impede hearing by much. A quick stop at the old provincial Park produced our first two birds of the day, American Robin and American Woodcock. Next we headed inland and spent some time listening around the forest tracts by Backus Woods. Barred Owl was a surprisingly easy addition, and we ended up hearing 4 during the night... Pretty good for Norfolk! We also heard plenty of Eastern Whip-poor-wills and a single Eastern Screech Owl, though every Great Horned Owl in the area chose remained silent. Grasshopper Sparrow and Field Sparrow were both night singing as we drove by the Timpf Farm, both welcome predawn additions. After that we stopped at Hahn Marsh, where we added 8 more species including Virginia Rail, Sora and Common Yellowthroat. It was just after 4:00am at this point, but the marsh was already starting to wake up for the day. Owls secure (- GHOW) we drove back to the point, where we wanted to be at dawn to try and find most of our migrants for the day. On the way we went for a walk at Big Creek, where we added both bittern species, Common Gallinule and Marsh Wren with only a short walk. The fish flies were nasty though, and walking through swarms of them left many caught on my hair and poncho... I hate how they try to fly into your mouth and nose. Getting back into the car was also a challenge with the flies, well over 50 snuck in with us and started buzzing all over the car : (
On the way back to Old Cut at 5:05am, we did a quick drive through of Hastings Dr, where it was evident that daybreak was about to occur. We heard and saw 23 species, and birdsong was everywhere. Nothing too unusual, just some new day birds like Eastern Kingbird, Baltimore Oriole etc. Arriving at Old Cut at 5:30am, we met up with our 3rd team member, Dale Auchinleck, who was a last minute addition a few days before our big day.
We had met Dale the previous week at Old Cut, a keen 19 year old birder from Germany who was a volunteer bander at LPBO for the season. After mocking a fellow volunteer for doing "intense birding" with a birdathon team at Pelee not three days before, Dale rather unexpectedly asked if he could tag along on our big day team. He mentioned that he didn't want to slow us down because he wasn't great with Ontario birdsong, but honestly the opposite turned out to be true during the course of the day, when he spotted several species that we would have otherwise missed. I've noticed that a lot of European birders travelling here for the first time are often sharper with identification than a large majority of long time local bird enthusiasts here, which I feel mainly steams from their intense studying of field guides and online resources before they travel here. Last spring I was birding on the tower at Point Pelee with a few Dutch birders, when they started picking out high flying female warblers in morning flight, something that only a small handful of Ontario folks are proficient at. For the majority of the day Dale came along with us, nailing IDs at a quick pace"...
After walking around the net run and looking off the dike at Old Cut, and not seeing too much besides Northern Parula and Swainson's Thrush, we headed out and into the new provincial park with hopes of nailing down a lot of migrant species. Half an hour later we were well into the park, and migrants were few and far between. Even though migration conditions had been decent overnight, there did not seem to be much of a turnover in migrants. The skies were clear, which meant a lot of birds probably just went right over.. Also cold temperatures likely didn't help much either. Walking through the first campground area led to an increase in new birds though. We heard a Prairie Warbler singing briefly, had a few Orchard Orioles and a Mourning Warbler, and Dale spotted a Red-throated Loon flying over. Shorebirds had been quite sparce for the entire month, but it seemed like we picked a good day as birds were finally arriving. A flock of Semipalmated Plovers flew by the beach, as well as some distant peeps (grrr). A single flyover Bobolink on our way out of the park at 8:00am would be our only one of the day. At this point our species list was at around 108.
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| - Baltimore Oriole |
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| - Me and Dale birding the park |
We then gave the trails at Old Cut another check (nothing) before getting in the car and heading inland, where we hoped to connect with some different breeding birds and hopefully more migrants. Our first stop was Backus Woods, which is definitely one of the best spots around the Norfolk region when it comes to forest bird diversity. A quick loop around the north trails netted us some good day birds, including Winter Wren, Brown Creeper, Prothonotary Warbler, Hooded Warbler and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. While getting back into the car I spotted a Sharp-shinned Hawk fly overhead, a nice bird to get as accipiters (and most raptors) can be tough on big days. Continuing with our Backus momentum, we made a detour over to the Timpf Farm, snagging Eastern Bluebird, Vesper Sparrow and Red-tailed Hawk with ease. We then circled back towards Port Rowan, stopping briefly at a small flooded field on Concession A along the way to look for shorebirds. Well, calling it a flooded field is a bit generous. It's really just a tiny puddle (maybe a 2 meter diameter of water) surrounded by long dried up and cracked soil and some tall grasses. You wouldn't think this would be an overly productive spot for shorebirds, but somehow it's been more reliable than most other locations in Norfolk. This visit proved to be no different, after a few minutes of scanning 4 Semipalmated Sandpipers and a lone Lesser Yellowlegs revealed themselves, with Horned Lark in the adjacent field being yet another new addition.
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| - "shorebird hotspot" |
A walk around the Birds Canada headquarters was extremely productive, producing 14 new birds for our ever growing list. Willow Flycatcher and Blue-headed Vireo singing at the forest edge, Lesser Scaup, Ruddy Duck and Northern Shoveler on the lake, as well as another Dale specialty.. the elusive Savannah Sparrow (another species that we only had once all day). We got lucky while scanning the bay, as a flock of shorebirds whipped by then dropped out of sight into an obscured inlet. Most of the flock was made up of Black-bellied Plover and Dunlin, with a single Ruddy Turnstone mixed in. As I said before, seeing any shorebirds around the area had been a challenge all month, so this was another nice bonus.
It was starting to really heat up at this point in the day, so we headed to Turkey Point to see if there were any shorebirds loafing on the beach.. and also to get some lunch. The main target for this location was Bonaparte's Gull, and maybe some shorebirds if we were lucky. A scan of the beach and marina revealed nothing, and I do mean nothing. There always seems to be some bonnies here, so that was a major oof. Dale treated us to lunch at a burger joint in Turkey Point, and then we were off again! The large food intake and first "rest time" of the day did have an effect on the team though, as soon after driving away both of my teammates were having an afternoon nap. I took advantage of this time to do some driving around the countryside, hoping to pick up some shorebirds and raptors. Driving through a few townsites with the windows down produced Chimney Swift and House Finch... Two more easy birds out of the way. My main destination was a small flooded field just outside of Walsingham, where we had had some luck with shorebirds during the past few weeks. Most of the fields around Norfolk had been dry all May, so actually finding one with water was a bit of a challenge. After pulling up to the said field and waking up the others, we scanned the field for signs of life. A lot had changed in a week, as it was now almost completely dry and overgrown with grasses. We still managed to pick up a day bird though, 6 Least Sandpipers were scurrying around the dried up muddy area.
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| - Midday nap vibes |
It was mid afternoon at this point, the sun glaring and the temperature near 25 degrees. The birding was definitely quieting down a bit, so we decided to return to Old Cut to get some snacks/water and walk around the shaded trails... Maybe kick up a lingering White-throated Sparrow. On route we stopped by Hastings Drive again, for a quick scan of the sandy beach at the end of road in case shorebirds dropped in. That turned out to be a very good decision, as the a large group of shorebirds were roosting on the sand! Among the 85 Dunlin were; 3 Sanderling, 21 Semipalmated Sandpiper, 12 Short-billed Dowitcher and also a Spotted Sandpiper a bit further down on the rocks. All but the Spottie and Dunlin were new, a fantastic score for some midday birding. Behind the shorebirds sat a Trumpeter Swan and a Caspian Tern, both new day birds. The former can be a tough bird to track down when you want it, and the latter had just been a weird miss up until that point. The daylist was up to 144 at this time.
Back at Old Cut we spent around half an hour working the forest for birds, of which there were a surprising number of considering it was the worst time of day for passerines. We saw 54 species around the station trails, including one new bird, A Ruby-crowned Kinglet... Quiet late and unexpected! We decided a good use of the late afternoon/early evening would be driving slowly around the sand roads at St. Williams and Backus, hopefully hearing a Pine Warbler or some cuckoos from the car... Both weird misses. The drive would turn out to be fairly quiet, but we did get our Pine Warbler (148), and also a surprise Blue-winged Teal flyby on the way out of Backus (149).
It was just after 7pm at this point and time was running out, so the big question was what to do with the remaining daylight. A few ideas were looking for songbirds in forest or walking Big Creek, but ultimately we decided to go back to Hastings and bird there thoroughly for an hour. Hastings had been quite good to us during the day, and there was also a report of Red Knot and White-eyed Vireo from earlier in the day... Both would be good day ticks, but also they are fun birds to see at any time in southern Ontario. As we were heading for the causeway, I spotted two Common Ravens sitting out in a farm field. Another tough Norfolk bird, and also our #150 for the day! Arriving back at Hastings, we quickly set up the scopes and scanned through the shorebirds again. This time the Red Knot (151) was quite obvious (of course), feeding out in the open with a group of Dunlin. Riding on that success I scoped through a flock of gulls that were loafing on the beach and picked on an immature Lesser Black-backed, a good bird away from the tip of Long Point (152).
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| - See the Red Knot? |
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| - Dunlin flock |
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| - Lesser Black-backed Gull |
A bit further down the beach a ratty, stained orange duck sat with some Mallards, head tucked in to its wing. Investigation with the scope revealed a female Greater Scaup (153), another late, unexpected bird. Waterbirds secured, we started working the treeline at the edge of the road to try and find that pesky White-eyed Vireo. A lot of songbirds were moving around the shrubs, including our last two easy warblers for the day, Canada (154) and Wilson's (155). We didn't admit defeat until the sun was basically out of sight and all the songbird activity had ceased... Ah well you can't get them all!
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| - Trumpeter Swan flying off to roost with Canada Geese |
We dropped Dale off at Old Cut after that (he had to band the next day) and headed to Big Creek to have a look off of the viewing platform to look for Black-crowned Night-Herons. It only took a few minutes before Alessandra and I saw a lone bird flying over the distant treeline, just as the sun was about to set. That Night-Heron (156) would end up being our last species for the day, not a bad species to end a fantastic day! We did put in some time listening for nighthawk and Great Horned Owl around New Provincial Park, but the wind picked up a bit and it just wasn't meant to be. At 10:30 we stumbled through the doors at Old Cut and immediately went to sleep, an exhausting day but well worth it.
Weirdest misses? Red-breasted Nuthatch, Northern Harrier, Common Nighthawk, Cooper's Hawk... Lots of weird stuff.....
In the end we raised close to $800 for Birds Canada, so it was definitely worthwhile. In the future I would love to try some more variations of the birdathon, like a pure biking big day and an attempt at the Ontario record....
