After we got the Glaucous-winged Gull in Brantford on Friday, we drove to William's house in Guelph and packed for our northern trip. Our plan was to drive to Terrace Bay first and get a Spotted Towhee that had been coming to a feeder there for a few weeks. After that we would bird the Thunder Bay area for a bit, before turning east and driving to Elk Lake for a Varied Thrush there (again a continuing feeder bird). It was originally going to be a 5 day trip, with the days following the rarity chases focused on birding the Cochrane/Timmins area and driving Detour Gold Mine Rd. Our main targets were the two rarities previously mentioned, as well as some northern specialties including;
- Great Gray Owl
- Northern Hawk Owl
- Black-backed Woodpecker
- American Three-toed Woodpecker
- Sharp-tailed Grouse
- Spruce Grouse
- Boreal Chickadee
- Evening Grosbeak
- Pine Grosbeak
- Hoary Redpoll
- Bohemian Waxwing
We left Friday afternoon and spent the remainder of the day driving. It was a pretty uneventful drive from a birding standpoint, we didn't see a whole heck of a lot besides some Red-tailed Hawks! It was all smooth sailing until around 8:30, when our vehicle (Williams Subaru) decided to throw a fit. We had just passed the small community of Espanola when the dash lit up like a Christmas tree with engine lights. Not what you like to see at the beginning of a roadtrip : ) To be safe we returned to Espanola and pulled into a small motel, where we wondered if it would be necessary to spend the night. A few Google searches later and a helpful phone call with a friend who owns the same car yielded some promising news, the lights we were seeing were almost definitely from an electrical glitch (apparently common in that year of Subarus) and not something mechanical. We did a few things to reset that and then the lights went out and all was well! Shortly afterwards we were on the road again to Terrace Bay, with an arrival time around 6am. I dozed off for a few hours and awoke at 4am to discover that we were in the middle of a heavy snow squall. At this point we knew we had made the right call bringing an all wheel drive vehicle, our small commuter cars would not have cut it! luckily all was well, and we rolled in to Terrace Bay a few hours later without incident.
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| - Welcome to the north! Yikes! |
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| - Not what you want to see... |
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| - The lovely driving conditions |
Just after sunrise we arrived at the people's house who had the Spotted Towhee coming to their feeder. It was very cold (-18) and snowy, plus the strong wind coming in off the lake added to the unpleasantness. The feeders, located on the porch of the house, were being swarmed by a massive flock of Pine Grosbeaks. These large, elegant northern finches were a nice way to start the day off, and the fact that they were a yearbird didn't hurt either : ) Soon the activity at the feeder picked up, and the grosbeaks were joined by Common Redpolls, Blue Jays and a Hairy Woodpecker. From what the homeowners said it sounded like the towhee only stayed at the feeder for very short periods of time, followed by long absences of an hour or even much longer. Knowing this we were prepared for a bit of a wait, but in the end it was only around twenty minutes before the bird appeared. It whipped up to the platform feeder, fighting the wind to stay there, and hungrily gorged down some sunflower seeds before disappearing into the adjacent conifers. This was a bird I had never seen in Ontario before, and was a great addition for the yearlist (my 9th "OBRC bird", will explain that and the whole numbers game in a future post). I got pretty trashy photos, as the light was bad at the time & I was having issues with the camera itself. Anyways here they are!
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| - Spotted Towhee |
After saying farewell to the homeowners, who had so graciously allowed us to visit their yard (if you're reading this thanks again!), we turned the car north and headed towards Thunder Bay. Along the way we stopped at a few small towns to look for birdfeeders along the way, which, we hoped would have some interesting birds at them. It quickly became evident that Pine Grosbeaks would be one of the staples of the trip, as we encountered them frequently in the townsites/alongside the highway. Most of the spots we visited were fairly quiet, however we did come across one birdfeeder in particular that was just hopping with activity. Besides a few dozen Pine Grosbeaks, a good number of Common Redpolls and Evening Grosbeaks were present too. We didn't know it at the time, but those would be our only evenings of the trip. It was lightly snowing while we were there, making the photography verryyy nice indeed.
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| - Pine Grosbeak |
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| - Pine & Evening Grosbeaks |
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- A staple of the northern trip, Ezra in his Birkenstocks... he got a few strange looks from locals. |
We continued onwards towards Thunder Bay, where we hoped to search for owls and other interesting birds. This was my first time in Thunder Bay, so honestly just seeing everything for the first time was a nice experience. Lake Superior loomed dark and icey in the background, and even at a distance it gives a completely different vibe than the more southern Great Lakes ~ just a more northern and mysterious feeling. Being birders, naturally the first location we visited was the Thunder Bay Landfill.
Located just on the edge of town, this location has hosted many good birds over the years and is always a worthwhile spot to check when in the area. This was one of the highlights of the trip, though it was because of a relatively common bird verus a rare one this time. The bird was Bald Eagle, and the excitement stemmed from seeing the sheer number of birds in one location. A conservative count of 400 eagles were packed into the dump area... on the trash mounds, perched on the ground, flying and covering the trees that ringed the edge of the landfill. I have seen large concentrations of eagles before, but nowhere close to these numbers. Among them was a leucistic eagle that was entirely blondish/white, pretty cool! Unfortunately it was fairly distant, so I wasn't able to obtain great photos. Besides the eagles it was fairly quiet there, with the exception of an immature Glaucous Gull.
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| - Bald Eagles |
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| - Leusistic Bald Eagle |
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| - Glaucous Gull |
We spent the remainder of the daylight searching the backroads around Thunder Bay for Great Gray Owls. The drive was very quiet overall for birds, a few Common Ravens and a small flock of Common Redpolls were the main sightings. There really haven't been many great grays seen in the area this winter, so we didn't feel too badly missing it. Although its a good bird, there will be more chances to see one this year. We finished the day by driving to a motel in Nipigon, where we caught up on some much needed sleep and planned out the following days.
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| - The farthest northwest we made it |
The following day was mainly spent driving, as we traveled the 7 hours from Nipigon to Elk Lake, where our target for the next morning, a Varied Thrush, was being seen. The day started off with a dead car battery, never pleasant discovery in the early morning. A quick boost from a car that was passing by our motel quickly rectified this though, and soon we were on the road. The morning was nice and sunny, a pleasent change from the snowy drive on the way up.
On the way we stopped at the site of a forest fire that happened last year, hoping for some northern woodpeckers. Black-backed and American Three-toed Woodpeckers specifically, both of which are commonly found at these old burn sites, as they forage for insects on the dead trees. Black-backs are the more common of the two, but you never know what you will get in these forests. We parked and snowshoed in, which was quite the workout in -22°C with a few feet of snow on the ground. After half an hour we had seen nothing, not a single bird. Away from the major highway there was no noise besides a light wind rustling tree branches, this is the sound of north in the winter ~ a desolate silence. After half an hour of walking a tapping sound caught our attention, and we looked up to see a female Black-backed Woodpecker working it's way up a fir. Shortly afterwards we had another, this time a male bird with a nice yellow cap on it's head. My camera battery was dead, so here's one of Ezra's shots.
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| - Some of the habitat on the road |
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| - Black-backed Woodpecker (photo credit Ezra) |
The rest of the drive that day was rather uneventful as we drove east on Hwy 11, in fact even seeing any bird was exciting occurance (normally it would be raven). In total we saw 6 bird species all day!! The plan for the next day was seeing the Varied Thrush in Elk Lake, then birding the Timmins area. Tueday would be focused on Detour Lake Road north of Cochrane for winter specialties like Northern Hawk Owl and Hoary Redpoll. A wrench was thrown in this plan however when as we were driving to Elk Lake, we received a phone call informing us about a Burrowing Owl in Toronto. We briefly thought about turning the car around then, however we decided it made more sense to look for the thrush since we were already in the area.
Monday morning started off with another dead car battery, oh the joys of traveling in northern Ontario! Another boost, this time from the friendly motel owner in Elk Lake, and we were on route for the thrush. It was a long journey there, a gruelling three minute drive to the other side of town. The thrush was apparently being seen very sporadically at a birdfeeder, so we went in knowing a long wait may be in the cards. The birdfeeder, a large wooden platform on the front porch of the house, was quite busy with bird activity when we arrived. On top of the dozens of Pine Grosbeaks and Common Redpolls, a Dark-eyed Junco and a Common Grackle were foraging for seeds. A few minutes later they were joined by another great bird for the winter in northern Ontario, a Rusty Blackbird! You would have thought that I would have charged my camera battery at the motel, but unfortunately I was tired and forgot... so no photos of the blackbirds. We had been there over half an hour, which felt considerably longer due to the -26°C tempature, when I saw the Varied Thrush fly out from under the porch and disappear behind the house. Ezra and William were a bit farther down the road looking at another feeder, so they missed it.... we warmed up in the car for a bit and then continued our vigils. An hour passed, no sign of the bird. Toronto was almost a 5 hour drive away, so we wanted to leave early to get there before dark to try for the owl. Luckily, just as we were giving it a final effort, the bird flew out from under the porch (I wonder how long it had been sitting there laughing at us), briefly perched on a tree in the front lawn, then flew off again. This time Ezra did see it, and managed to get a quick record shot as it flew away. William had the bad luck of being in the wrong spot at the wrong time yet again. We gave it 5 more minutes then left, but not before I had a Bohemian Waxwing fly over, one of our northern targets and my first of the trip.
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| - Varied Thrush (photo credit Ezra) |
We raced down to Toronto, but unfortunately struck out on the owl despite our best efforts. It was a bit of a shame to cut the trip short, but that's a big year for ya... ever changing plans. We got our two main targets anyway (thrush and towhee), so it was still a worthwhile trip for sure! We will just have to do another later in the winter for the remaining northern birds.
