Chronicles of an Ontario Birder

A quest for a sparrow

Haven't posted in awhile, so during the next week I'll be writing about some of my recent birding highlights. First up is the Nelson's Sparrow!

For a few years I've been meaning to do a really thorough search for Nelson's Sparrow on the peninsula, as it's a species I've never seen but know is annual. Nelson's Sparrows are small, brown and orange songbirds that breed along the shorelines of Hudson and James Bays and winter along the Atlantic in the southeastern United States. They are very rarely seen during spring migration, when they are in a hurry to get to their breeding grounds and skirt by us here in Southern Ontario. During fall migration they take a more relaxed approach, and for several weeks in early October birders have a chance to see them as they pass through. Some locations in Ottawa, Hamilton and Chatham-Kent get them annualy, but birders there put in much more effort. Elsewhere though they are far more difficult, but this isn't necessarily because they are that rare, but because they are very difficult to find and get a view of. This is probably a good time to mention that Nelson's Sparrows are actually wannabe mice, if they have a choice they will scurry along the ground, using flight as a last resort... their preferred habitat? Dense grasses in wet areas like marshed and shoreline edges. Wondeful isn't it? Anyways the whole Oliphant shoreline is prefect Nelson's habitat, and I know that these slippery little buggers are in there every fall, just laughing it up. Oh yeah, Bruce County only has 3 records of Nelson's, which is rather bananas.

So, on the morning October 9th I set out with Jarmo Jalava with the goal of finding one of these skulky grass dwellers. We began our quest in north Oliphant, where we donned our rubber boots and headed out for a walk along the coast. The method behind the madness? Randomly walk through the grasses and hope that a sparrow flushes ahead of you, which will then give you a window of a few seconds to identify it before it drops back into the grass. After over an hour of walking through some challenging terrain, I had nothing to show for it besides 50 Song Sparrows and one rubber boot that turned out to not be waterproof. We decided to move on to our next location, aiming to be done before noon when the rain was supposed to move in. I left my camera in the car this time, going on the assumption that if I didn't have it the bird would show itself. Another half hour passed, more song sparrows appeared and more water soaked into my increasingly soggy sock. Then it happened, a small sparrow flushed ahead of me and landed in a dead cedar. I had my binoculars on it in a flash and sure enough, it was a Nelson's! I frantically waved Jarmo over and he managed a quick view before it disappeared into the grasses again. I retrieved my camera from the car and rejoined Jamro, who was keeping an eye on the spot the bird had gone into. After a bit of searching we flushed it again, but this time it flew to a further, even more inaccessible location. Although we didn't get photos the views were awesome, so we left it in peace and moved on. A few minutes later Jamro flushed another sparrow, which turned out to be a 2nd Nelson's, this one much duller in colouration than the first. It was starting to rain at this point and I for one was getting quite hungry, so we headed out and left the sparrows to their mysterious ways.

I returned later that day with some other Bruce birders, and this time I managed to get a few photos of the one bird ~ quite horrible ones but I'll take them!

- Nelson's Sparrow

- The classic view of a Nelson's

An American Golden-plover landed briefly while we were there, which was a nice treat.

An unexpected lifer

September 16th started out normally, with me heading to work at MacGregor Point... unaware of the great birding day that lay ahead. Heck I only had my backup binoculars in the car, as I really wasn't planning on doing any birding. The morning proceeded without any major excitement, but then around 11:00am I started getting texts from birders I know. They basically all said "chasing the wheatear??", to which I responded with "wait, what wheatear!?". A quick look on the eBird alerts showed me that a Northern Wheatear had been found by Miriam and Waren Oudejans, in their yard by Owen Sound.

Among species that breed in North America wheatears have a unique range migration route. The species core range is across northern Eurasia, but they also breed in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and Arctic Canada. Breeders from Alaska and the Yukon (of the subspecies oenanthe) reach Africa by migrating westward across the whole of Asia and the Middle East, whereas the leucorhoa subspecies (the ones we get here in Ontario) from eastern Canada make epic trans-Atlantic flights eastward. They are one of the few songbird species that breed in North America but winter in the Old World. They are quite rare in southern Ontario, as we only get the occasional wayward wheatear that for some reason or another flys south instead of east. There is normally one every few years in the province, but often they are in far northern Ontario or are only one-day-wonders. Last year was quite sensational, with 3 wheatears seen in the province in the span of a few weeks. I didn't manange to see any of them as I was busy at the time, so I wasn't going to pass up the chance for redemption, especially since it was only an hours drive away.

Obviously I was fairly distracted for the remainder of the day, as I was trying to calculate just how fast I could get over there... without speeding of course : )

Long story short, shift ended and I drove up to Sauble, where I met my mom who decided to come along for the chase. She brought my binoculars and camera, as it would have sucked going for such a cool bird and not getting photos. An hour later we had arrived at the destination, which was devoid of other birders and the homeowners, but luckily not the bird (I couldn't leave you in suspense any longer). It was basically that fast though, stepped out of the car and under 20 seconds later it popped up on a fence post. I found a spot to watch it, a nice shady patch of grass hidden under a tree, and settled in for the next 45 minutes. Definitely one of the more cooperative rarities I have seen, it spent the entire time hunting insects along the fenceline beside me, sometimes coming as close as 15 feet away. It's foraging style reminded me a lot of a bluebird, sitting waiting for insects, then diving after one before returning to the fence again. A small flock of Palm Warblers kept it company, which was cool to watch as they were hunting in a similair manner. Just a magical experience, not much else to say about it!

And now the photos!

The bird of the day, the mighty Palm Warbler!

While I watching the warblers I also saw this thing

Northern Wheatear

One of my favorite photos at the moment

Lookin' cute

Another Palm

On my way home I stopped at Oliphant to have a quick scan for shorebirds. It was fairly quiet at first then... wham! Juvie Long-billed Dowitcher hanging out with a few yellowlegs. Long-bills are rare in Bruce (12ish records I think?) and this was only my 2nd, so I was quite pleased. A great way to end a unexpected and exciting day of birding! It cooperated very well for photos too, and I managed my best yet photos of the species.

Long-billed Dowitcher - Oliphant Fen

The blog, it still exists!

Yikes... I have neglected the blog so much this year, I honestly forgot it was here for awhile! I have been pretty busy these past few months with work, and free time goes mainly to other things (including a new weather birding channel I started on twitter... check it out).

Anyways... As we are now getting into fall migration and I will be out birding more (hopefully), I figured I will try to blog more again. I plan on using this page a lot during my big year, so I should probably get back in to the swing of things. I had a lot of directions I wanted to go with this post, but at the end decided to list some birding highlights since my last post in April.

From a birding perspective in Bruce County May of 2021 was many things, though I think perplexing and at times frustrating sums it up well. The waves of migrants came in brief periods of one or two days, followed be a week or more of lull. The weather really did us no favors... after a long spell of poor migration weather (cold temps, north winds), the winds shifted and there was no rain in the way for songbirds. A few things happened then. 1) With no rain in the way to stop them, the boreal breeding species that were behind schedule basically jumped over us and in a span of a few days it seemed like they were gone. 2) The way the wind patterns played out in May were very favorable for migration in the midwest, which makes me wonder if some northern Ontario breeders took the way of least resistance and went that way instead. I could go on more, but you get the idea. For a comparison there were days in May 2019 when I was seeing 60 plus Cape May Warblers in a day. This spring I don't think I ever got higher than 5. Some May photos below...

There were still birds around though! I missed a lot of the rarities seen in Bruce, but did manage to get a few decent things. I spent most of May around my "patch', which includes Sky Lake, Isaac Lake and Oliphant. So here are them birds.

Blackburnian Warbler - My yard

Black-and-white Warbler - Isaac Lake

Yellow-rumped Warbler - My yard

Snowy Owl - Mar

Rose-breasted Grosbeak - My Yard

American Bittern - Isaac Lake

Caspian Tern - Isaac Lake

Black-crowned Night-Heron - Isaac Lake

Orchard Oriole - My yard (3rd yard record)

On May 14th I got a text from Ethan Meleg informing me that he had just found a Wilson's Phalarope about 10 minutes away from my place. Needless to say I raced over, and luckily the little fella was still there. It was a bit far for photos, but it was an overdue county bird for me so no complaints! Thanks Ethan : )

Wilson's Phalarope - Purple Valley Road

A worse photo of it that I am including for no reason

Continuing on with the shorebird theme, the Oliphant Coast was actually decent this spring. After a few years with the water being too high, it was a nice change to actually have some shorebird habitat near me. I didn't have anything crazy, but the Black-bellied Plovers, Short-billed Dowitchers and Pectoral Sandpipers were a welcome sight.

Black-bellied Plover - Oliphant

Black-bellied Plovers - Oliphant

Short-billed Dowitchers - Oliphant

On May 16th I decided to repeat the yard big sit that I had so much success on in 2021. I spent a solid 17 hours on & around my tower and shattered last years number by 2, ending at a solid 96 species. I really wanted to get 100, but it just wasn't in the cards (big shoutout to Zane Shantz for breaking the 100 species barrier in his yard a few days later... To my knowledge the first time that's been done at a single location in Bruce County). There were some nice highlights during the day, including;

- Dowitcher species (saw a backlit, distant bird... need both for the yard list argh)

- Eastern Whip-poor-will

- Solitary Sandpiper

- American Bittern

- Red-shouldered Hawk

- Red-headed Woodpecker

- Peregrine Falcon

- Yellow-throated Vireo

- Evening Grosbeak

- heavy Pine Siskin migration (260)

- Rusty Blackbird

- 16 warbler species

Full checklist here

On May 23rd I did a big day in my 5MR (5-mile-radius) to raise money for bird conservation. The day was horrible for weather, (very cold and rainy for most of the morning) but I still managed to see 123 species and raise a few thousand dollars so again, not complaining! There were a few standout birds from the day, including; Least Bittern, Black-bellied Plover, Black Tern, Black-crowned Night-Heron Mourning Warbler, Clay-colored Sparrow, Grasshopper Sparrow and House Sparrow (major highlight, a tough bird for my area LOL).

Black Tern - Isaac Lake

There were other highlights in May including the observation of my mortal yard nemesis bird... The Green Heron. It has taken years, but alas the heron is finally mine mwhahah. A singing Golden-winged Warbler was also a nice surprise one morning. 156 for the yard this year, not too shabby.

Golden-winged Warbler - My yard

A few interesting things happened during the month of June. I tracked down some birds that I hadn't crossed paths with in May (lack of effort mainly) including Piping Plover, Sedge Wren, Upland Sandpiper and Yellow-billed Cuckoo. I also bought a new lens (Nikkor 300mm F4), so obviously I had to track down the quintisential Bruce species to test it out on.... Results below.

Brewer's Blackbird - Mar

Same bird

Brewer's Blackbird - Mar

Common Grackle... not

Piping Plover - Sauble Beach

Upland Sandpiper - J/I line

Glorified Field Chicken

Testing out the lens for flight shots.. it works!

The biggest highlight of June was one of my most unexpected lifers so far this year... The Henslow's Sparrow. In my own county to boot. The birds exact location was ~~redacted,~~ it stayed for ~~Redacted,~~ was found by ~~Redacted~~, what else is there to say!?

Herre is a recording I took of it singing, play at full volume as it is very faint!

July was pretty quiet from a birding perspective. I was busy with work, birds were busy nesting and. The Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas did provide me with some motivation to get out birding in the summer, which in the past is not something I have done too much. In mid July a few Dickcissels started popping up around the county, and after a few attempts I managed to catch up with one in Zanes yard. Photos were obtained and I'll leave it up to you if there's a bird in here or not ;)

Dickcissel - Miller Lake Area

The other summer highlight happened during work, when I was walking down a road at MacGregor Point Provincial Park (my place of employment) one late July morning. I was just listening to birds while walking... "red-eyed vireo...american redstart... here's a prairie warbler...... wait a sec...". Something I really wasn't expecting to encounter in the park! Prairie Warblers are barely annual in Bruce, some years they aren't here at all and others there are one or two. This bird was a new Bruce bird for me, so of course I was quite excited.

Now on to August!

Not much birding, a few cool things, weather that was was too hot. That basically was the month in a nutshell, but I'll elaborate a bit.

During the summer I often switch gears and focus more on odes, leps and herps, and this year was no exception. I have way too many photos to put up, so I'll go with herps for this post..

Ring-necked Snake - My yard

Dekay’s Brownsnake - MacGregor Point Provincial Park

Smooth Greensnake - MacGregor Point Provincial Park

Northern Watersnake - MacGregor Point Provincial Park

I made two trips down to Exeter Lagoons, West Perth Wetlands and Wildwood reservoir in search of shorebirds. One with Erik Van Den Kiboom (aka "boomer") and the other with the some folks from the Bruce Birding Club. I was hoping to find a Western Sandpiper, but the birding gods were not on my side. On my first trip I focused on West Perth and Exeter... and the next day a western was found at wildwood.... this is just the way things go sometimes! There were some nice shorebirds around though, notably a pair of Long-billed Dowitchers and a Red-necked Phalarope

Purple Martin - Exeter Sewage Lagoons

Red-necked Phalarope - Exeter Sewage Lagoons

Long-billed Dowitchers (ones with long bills) - Exeter Sewage Lagoons

Fall migration has been progressing quite well so far, the songbird numbers are more than making up for the disappointment in May. On one particularly intense migration day occurred on a day I was working at MacGregor Point. Honestly one of the best visible migration days I have witnessed... Constant northbound warblers from sunrise all the way until the afternoon. Unfortunately I couldn't give it my full attention as I had to work, but it was still pretty crazy. I will let the eBird checklist speak for itself.

Some other random things