Some Bruce Birding

The day after the Saugeen Shores CBC (Jan 5), I decided to spend the day birding around the northern part of the peninsula. Like the previous day it was mild and overcast, not bad weather for January on the Bruce. I was up at dawn heading up Hwy 6, with hopes that I might be able to find a Gyrfalcon (I saw one back in November in N Bruce) and also pick up a few yearbirds along the way. Long story short.. I drove a lot of concession roads and failed to turn up anything resembling a gyr, although I did turn around to scope this distant tree blob.

                          Anyone want to guess at it's identity?

I stopped in Lion's Head Harbour to look for the Harlquin Duck that had been at seen for a few weeks, and after a few minutes of searching I found it swimming along the shore with a Common Goldeneye. 

Some highlights from the day included;  8 Snowy Owls, Rough-legged Hawks, a few Northern Shrikes, Horned Larks and Snow Buntings. Also an Eastern Screech-owl calling in the evening at my place.

A few photos from the day below..

Yearlist at Jan 5th - 71

Saugeen Shores CBC

I’ve gotten a bit behind on my posting, so I’ll do a few updates before I get even more behind.

The Saugeen Shores CBC was on the 4th, so that’s as where I’ll begin. In a usual CBC fashion I was up and out the door before sunrise, heading down towards Port Elgin. This year I was covering area 5, which consists mainly of farm fields and a bit of the Saugeen River. Usually I cover area 1 (the Southampton townsite, lakeshore and the dump), but since I’m the compiler I thought it wouldn’t look good if I took the best area..

I arrived shortly after 8am and started by doing the boundary of my section, just to get a feel for the new area. Normally there are 3 or 4 people in each area and they carpool, covering the whole section together.. but obviously that wasn’t possible this year due to Covid. The way we worked around this issue was by cutting up each area into smaller sections, then assigning one person (or household) to each section. I was splitting area 5 along with Doug Pedwall,  so the area was smaller than normal. Basically it contained 3 county concessions, a few sideroads that connect them, a section of a major highway and a small conservation area that borders the North Saugeen River. The habitat all around here tends to be a good place to see overwintering raptors, so I figured it wouldn’t be that bad (plus I might get some yearbirds). 

Am I ever going to get to the part about the birds? Yes. I was building to that.

The day started off fairly quiet, a few Bald Eagles, a Rough-legged Hawk and the odd Common Raven out in the fields, but not much besides that. Such is the norm for Bruce birding in the winter, the first few hours of the day tend to be unproductive as the songbirds wait for it to warm up a bit before coming out in numbers. Since the fields were dead I decided to take a walk along the river and see what I could find, which turned out to one of my better stops of the day. Nothing crazy, but some pishing produced a Brown Creeper and both nuthatch species, a start anyway. The river itself had a few Common Mergansers and Common Goldeneye on it, which were my only ones of the day. A few Blue Jays, Dark-eyed Juncos and a Pileated Woodpecker were around too. The weather remained the same all day, overcast and 0°C. Even though it was fairly damp out, it was a lot better than some of the CBCs I’ve been on!

The next few hours were spent covering the field areas, where the birding had picked up considerably since my first pass in the morning. Highlights included; 2 American Black Duck, 7 Rough-legged Hawks, 4 Red-tailed Hawks, 8 Bald Eagles, 1 Merlin, 16 Horned Larks, 3 Pine Grosbeaks and a mega flock of Snow Buntings (at least 400).

And guees what?! I finally took photos!!

Snow Buntings 

Horrible Merlin photo 

Slightly worse photo?

Red-tailed Hawk 

Rough-legged Hawk 

Rough-legged Hawk 

The activity started to die down mid afternoon, so after a final drive around, called it quits and headed home around 3pm with a solid 28 species. 

Stopped briefly at the Southampton Harbour on my way through town, where I picked out a Glaucous Gull and a Great Lakes Gull (Herring x Great Black-backed) amoung a massive flock of Herring Gulls.

How’d the count do overall you may wonder? Slightly down on total numbers of individual birds, but we got recorded a new high number of species.. 67! Highlights were Tufted Titmouse, Bohemian Waxwing and Eastern Meadowlarks. Notable misses included Snowy Owl and Golden Eagle... yikes..

All in all not a bad day!

That's all for now..

A few owls for the list

I really don’t have much in the way of content for the blog today, but maybe a quick update is better than nothing? 

The Saugeen Shores Christmas Bird Count (for which I am the compiler) is tomorrow, so I drove back to Bruce with my parents. They wanted to check up on our place anyway, so it made sense to come up for a few days and knock off some Bruce birds. The drive up was fairly uneventful.. but I did manage to add a few yearbirds along the way including;  Snowy Owl, Northern Shrike and Rough-legged Hawk.

We arrived back later in the afternoon, so there wasn’t any time to go birding. I did flush a Ruffed Grouse on my road just before dusk, so that was cool..

After dark I went out to listen for owls, hoping I could add a Great Horned Owl or maybe a screech. It was one of those perfectly still nights, overcast and pitch black. After a few minutes of silence, a Barred Owl sounded off nearby, my favourite owl vocalization by far and a nice highlight to end the day. I did a poor barred imitation, then waited, shining my headlamp’s beam over the nearby trees. A few minutes later I was just about to give up when my light illuminated the owl in a tree right beside me. We had a stareoff for what felt like minutes, then it lifted off and disappeared into the night.. quite an awesome experience! I hear Barred Owls infrequently at my place, but it’s always a bird calling in the distance, this was my first time actually seeing one on the property.

Off for the night now as I’ll be up early for my last CBC of the season.

(A quick note on Covid precautions.. we brought all of our food up from Paris and gassed up before we left, so our only “contact” up here will be at the gas station on the way back.. where I’ll pay at the pump)

Down Long Point Way

Just posting a quick update for today. 

This morning the American White Pelican that was found a few days ago by Tim Lucas was seen again near Port Rowan. It’s only a code 2 species on the provincial level, but they are never that common in southern Ontario. Anyway it was only a 50 minute drive for me so I zipped down and got around 11am. It only took a minute to locate once I arrived, one of those quick and easy chases. The views left much to be desired for through, the pelican was wayyy out in the bay and just looked like a distant white blob. It appeared to be sleeping when I first arrived, but after watching for a bit it sat up and flapped its wings a few times, revealing dark flight feathers and a long orange bill... proving that it wasn’t a buoy😅.

I tried digiscoping a photo, but it didn’t turn out great. Calling it a record shot is a bit of a stretch..

Since I was already in the area I headed over to Long Point for a bit of birding. A few stops along the causeway produced Sandhill Cranes,Tundra Swans, Canvasback and a Northern Harrier. The highlight was a Little Gull that I saw in flight with a distant group on Bonaparte’s. 

I only birded briefly in the new provincial park area, as there wasn’t much around save for a few Common Redpolls. 

I headed back to Paris in the afternoon, so that was it for my birding today. 19 new species for the yearlist anyway.

January 1st, the beginning

In a lot of ways a big year is a numbers game, so you would think that the goal would be to see all the likely species as soon as possible. Some people may do this, starting with a few big days and trying to be #1 on the eBird top 100, but my approach will be a bit different. I don't want to go crazy in the first week few and burn myself out, so I'm approaching this like a marathon rather than a sprint. There will be plenty of time in the year to get things like Glaucous Gulls and Northern Shrikes.

Anyway for my first day I decided to stay around Paris and see what birds I could find locally. Sure there are a few rarities around that I need to chase, but none of them are overly urgent and I wanted to spend my first day birding, not driving. 

I was hoping to get a nice first species... and would have been happy with a Downy or Red-bellied Woodpecker, anything besides a House Sparrow or European Starling.. but it wasn't meant to be. As soon as I stepped outside I was greeted by the shrill call of a House Sparrow.. Drat!

To start my year, I took my dog on a walk to what used to be my favourite spot in around here in the winter, the Paris Golf Course. I said used to, as it was sold to developers last year and is now being torn apart to create a new subdivision. There is still a nice, albeit small patch of forest edge habitat left there though, so I decided to give it a try. 

The fun thing about birding on the new year's day is, well, everything is new! American Crows and Dark-eyed Juncos are suddenly excting again. Don't get me wrong, I always enjoy seeing common species, but there's something thrilling about seeing first of year (FOY) birds.

The walk turned out to be ok, with Cooper's Hawk, and a flock of Common Redpolls being highlights. When I returned home I was up to 18 species, not crazy, but a start.

I then spent the rest of the morning driving around the countryside with my dad, adding some species to my list including Trumpeter Swan and Northern Flicker. I stopped briefly at a feeder by Glen Moris where Evening Grosbeaks had been reported, since I needed it for Brant County and it's always an awesome bird to see. As soon as pulled up to the house and opened my window I heard the loud, piercing call of an Evening Grosbeak.. tick✔. At least 20 birds were swarming around a feeder, acting in their normal rambunctious way.

Evening Grosbeaks

This was actually my only photo of the day, as the weather wasn't very photography friendly.. future posts will definitely have more photos!

The rest of the morning/early I spent hiking along the Nith River at one of my favourite trails. It was fairly quiet, but there were a few birds around including Eastern Bluebird, Belted Kingfisher and Song Sparrow. 

So not the most exciting day (no rare birds I mean), but it was fun.  I ended up with 40 species for day 1. 

Off for the night now..