the last CBC

So today I likely participated in my last Christmas Bird Count for this winter, and it, once again, was a good one. We met up with the gang at about 8am in our count area, and split up into 2 group. I was in a group with my dad, Larry, and Paul. The first place we stopped, we were looking for Long-eared Owls, in total at that location, we found 5! Though I did not see all of them, I did get a really good look at one as it was staring down upon me! The Long-eared's were definitely one of the highlights of the day, and later in the day another was flushed at a different location. But also a highlight from this location was a nice adult Bald Eagle soaring low over the creek that we all got a great view of.

There were a fair number of species that I was surprised about how high the numbers were today. Am. Tree Sparrows were seen/heard at almost all, if not every single stop! With a group of 50+ at one of the stops! Golden-crowned Kinglets were in fair numbers compared to other year apparently as well, and also Brown Creepers, 3 seen by our group today. One of the most surprising numbers was the Tufted Titmice, at one location, we had 6+ of them! I did not think or expect them to be in these high of numbers in that section of the county. Also a total of 4 Northern Shrikes total seen was quite high, though I was only able to seen 2 of which, the other 2 were Paul-only birds. But I do believe I was really surprised about the number of Hairy Woodpeckers, it seemed to me that
 there were many more Hairy's found by us then Downy's!

Very bad, very cropped Northern Shrike

Some of the other more notable species seen today are Brown-headed Cowbird (a few), a single Female Red-winged Blackbird!, at someones feeder with many other species. And, last, but definitely not leased, the most exciting bird of the day, Eastern Meadowlark! (Presumably eastern anyways). But this was by Far, the latest Meadowlark I have ever seen, I mean seriously, its the 29th of December! And it wasn't even on a pole in the meadow, it was in a tree! Messed up Meadowlark that one.
But all in all, a very Great Day, thanks to everyone that had taken part in it!

Good Birding!

Snow Snow Snow

I decided to go for my first cross country ski of the season today, as there is enough snow. But as I was skiing, I was also birding! I was surprised by what I had seen back in the forest. A small, noisy group of Wild Turkeys made a brief in-flight appearance in between the hawthorns. Had a couple Horned Larks fly-over calling over the period, as well as House Finch's. About half-way through my ski, I came across a little pocket of birds, at leased 10 B-C Chickadees, and one of each Brown Creeper, Downy, and Hairy Woodpeckers, and soon-after had a Cooper's Hawk fly by over the trees chasing a Mourning Dove, I lost it before I could tell if it caught it, so I'll never know, but there always cool to see around. Near the end of my walk I found another about 6 Chickadees in a group with a single Common Redpoll, first one I've seen up-close at my house for a while. Also, at about the same time, I had a single, lonely Common Grackle fly over! Its getting fairly late for them to still be around!

Black-capped Chickadee from a few winter's ago

Nemesis's

Hello all,
So today I decided to go to Ridgetown Sewage Lagoons in search of the 4 Greater White-fronted Geese that have been seen there over the past weeks. This is actually the second time I have gone to look for this species at these lagoons, the first time was this spring there were a few that stopped there. But, I missed them by only a few hours this spring so I decided I'd try again.
Today.....was not a different story.. None to be seen! Despite scouring the 600-odd Canada Geese on the northern cell, for almost 20min, I could not pick them out! Though I guess it wasn't a waist going, I did get the 3 Ross's Geese which was a lifer a couple weeks back, as well as 11 Cackling Geese! Definitely the large number of this species I have seen in one place. Also managed to find the one Blue-winged Teal that has been hanging around there, luckily for me, it flew right by my view as I was scanning for GWFG. When I first got there, I wanted to scan, and I was scanning, all the Tundra Swans looking for a Trumpeter, buuut, quickly decided that face was already numb and didn't want to freeze in order to do it, sooo, just the geese for me was my decision!
So in-between the drive there, and the drive back, we saw 3 of each Red-tailed and Rough-legged Hawk, 2 Am. Kestrels, one large distant raptor as we drove by(looked like a possible Golden Eagle based on size and shape), and a few groups of Snow Buntings and Horned Larks, one with a single Lapland Longspur(which we nearly hit with the car)! But, it all turned out well in the end!

After this little incident/problem that the Greater White-fronted Goose pulled, I think I am going to have to name it a new Nemesis Bird for me, taking number 2 on the Nemesis Scale. Number one Nemesis has to be Yellow-throated Warbler. If anyone sees one in Lambton County in the near future, let me know ASAP please! I went looking at Rondeau PP. for the ones that bred there this year 1-2 time, missed them, as well as missing the ones at Pelee Island while I was there. But oh well, what can ya do.

Good Birding!

Sandhill Lane

So today I decided to head over to Kettle Point for some birding, despite the strong south-east winds. For majority of the time spent birding, there was not much seen, only ducks were a small group of Red-breasted Mergs, and a couple Scaup. Did see a somewhat interesting Gull for a brief period before I lost it, it got scared up with a bunch of Ring-billed Gulls when a young Bald Eagle flew by close. It seemed like a Bonaparte's Gull at first, with the white outer primary's, but it seemed to large to be a Bonnie. But I lost it too soon to see if it had dark under-primary's. Oh well, guess I'll never know. As I was leaving the point, I saw a group of 4 Sandhill Cranes on a lawn foraging in a puddle, then as I drove away, I found one more, all alone also foraging.

Good Birding!

Two down, One to go

So this past weekend, I was involved with two different  Christmas Bird Counts. On Saturday, it was the Kettle Point/Pinery Count. It went quite well, myself and the group I was with was in charge of the In-park section of the Pinery count. At about 6 in the morning, we met up to do some owling in the freezing cold! From the different stops where we stopped for owling, we ended up with 6 Eastern Screech-Owls, and 3 Great-horned Owls calling to our play-back. We were fairly surprised by the 3 individual Great-horned Owls, seemed to be a fairly high count. Soon enough, it was to light out to keep owling, so we all headed to the visitor centre to figure out what our plan was. Our plan ended up being split into 3 groups, each walking a different off-route area near the Burley Bridge. My min-groups section was he section of the South-east of the bridge. But as one of the other groups went down to the bridge, my group stayed in the small parking lot, and missed hearing a Northern Shrike calling. But they missed a Pileated Woodpecker fly-over so I guess it was fairly even. Soon enough we all went off in separate directions. For the majority of our walk, it was very quiet, just with the odd Chickadee or Junco calling, but around the middle of our walk, we finally had something of interest along the Frozen stream. A Belted Kingfisher flying along calling. We were just hoping it wouldn't dive at the ice for a fish! Shortly after that, still as we were walking along the stream, my dad spotted a large raptor flying low on the other side of the river. He called me over, and I quickly identified it as an Immature Golden Eagle! This had to be the most exciting bird of the count, for me at leased.
We were the first group back at the parking area, so we decided to walk down to the bridge, only to find two Song Sparrows calling in the reeds across the stream. Shortly after, the second group appeared, and both groups saw 2 Immature Bald Eagles fly by, though we got to add them to our count total because they came out of our area! When all 3 groups were done, we decided to drive down to the lake, when at the lake, we didn't see to much, just Ring-billed and Herring Gulls, and Common Mergansers. We finished before lunch checking the Heritage Trail. We got a few birds, Titmice, W-B Nuthatches, and Red-bellied Woodpeckers were the bests, along with one more Bald Eagle at the lookout. We spent the time after lunch just walking trails.
First trail we walked after lunch was the Riverside Trail. This is one of my favourite trails in the park because there is often a lot to see here, but that day, we finished the trails with just a Downy, and a Hairy Woodpecker. When we finished hat we moved on to the Hickory Trail, which is another very nice trail, this year there was actually a pair of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers nesting on it! But we quickly finished the trail, with eve less then the last, just a single Hairy Woodpecker. The last rail of the day, was the Wilderness Trail, which for the first about half, got us a little nervous due to a lack of a single bird! But finally, we got about 3 Chickadee's. When we got to the lookout portion of the trail, it seemed the same as the lake earlier in the day at the opposite end of the park. But, after about 10min of scanning, myself and Larry, spotted a small bird way out at the same time. None of us had a scope with us at the time because it is a long ways to carry a scope. The bird was a smaller bird, ad was diving, instantly when I saw it my mind jumped to Horned Grebe, but was to far out for my 8X bins to tell. But luckily, Larry and one other guy that was with us, had 10X bins and confirmed the Horned Grebe. We soon headed back to the cars, and shortly after we got there, it started raining. Perfect Timing!

On Sunday Morning, myself and my dad met up with Jannette and Chris Davidson at 8:00 at the Point Edward Lighthouse. While we were there, we spotted tons of both Common and Red-breasted Mergansers, a few Bufflehead, Common Goldeneye, and a lot of Long-tailed Ducks out far. But Eventually I was able to find something different in the scope, a pair of Surf Scoters near the American side of the Bay. Another bird we saw on the American side was a Cooper's Hawk, a lone bird sitting on a tower across the lake was a weird sight. After a little while longer of scanning, we decided to head to the bridge in search of the Peregrine.
We spent about 10-15min at the bridge looking for the bird, but we didn't get any luck, we decided to head to Sarnia Bay/Marina in search of other water birds to add to the list. Around the Marina, we got more Mergs, Buff's, many Mallards, including one white one, an American Black Duck (only one of day), multiple Greater Black-backed Gulls, and a single sparrow sp. We just briefly saw the sparrow in-flight along a little trail by the Marina, and for the longest time, we thought it'd be our only sparrow of the day. Also seen in the Marina, was a pair of Pied-billed Grebes. The Grebes were probably one of the better birds of the count.
We realised we only had time for one more stop before meeting the other groups for lunch. We decided to go to Canatara Park. At Canatara, we were able to add a few species we weren't about to get anywhere else, such a Red-bellied Woodpecker, Tufted Titmice, a Sharp-shinned Hawk, and a pair of Snow Geese flying high over-head. And off to lunch we went. After Lunch we decided to check a few areas, the first, was just a small clay road with forest on one side, and a plant on the other. At this time, I probably doubled the total number of American Tree Sparrows I have seen in my life. There were at leased 80 in a single flock! Along with a single calling Song Sparrow. While driving around, we also got 4 Red-tailed Hawks. After a little while, we went back to the bridge looking for the peregrine again. Still Nothing! We decided to give up on the peregrine and headed back to Point Edward, which is where we got out last, and 41st species of the day. The last species was a group of 4 Lesser Scaup out on the lake. After that, not a lot happened other then the end of the count.

This little bit is not about the counts, but yesterday, I got a few good birds incidentally. At the Bluewater Centre for Raptor Rehabilitation, where I volunteer, I had a calling Pileated Woodpecker, then driving towards Wyoming from there, a saw an Red-Shouldered Hawk at the over-pass of 402 and Old Heritage Rd, and also, last but not leased, I had a Northern Goshawk fly over my vehicle in Watford on my way to the dump.


Good Birding!

CBC's soon!

So it's that time of year, time for the Christmas Bird Counts (CBC) to be starting up again. This year I m planning on taking part of at leased 3 CBC's, two of which are this coming weekend. This Saturday, is the CBC for Lambton Wildlife (LWI), in the Pinery. I have taken part with this count for the past 5+ year. For the past few years, myself and the "Junior Conservationists" of LWI, got up early to go owling in the park with Larry Cornelis. Most years we have gotten both Great-Horned and Eastern Screech-Owls responding to call-back early in the morning. So that should be fun!

This Sunday I am participating in a CBC that I have never done before, its the Blue Water Audubon Society CBC. I am fairly excited to take part in this one, and I hope that it turns out well. The section I will be doing is western Sarnia, north of Churchill Line. I will be doing it with my Dad, and Chris and Janette Davidson. It is going to be a fun day!

The third CBC I was planning on doing is on the 27th, its for the Sydenham Field Naturalists. Last year was the first time I took part in it. It was really fun last year, and we saw lots. Some of the coolest birds we saw were 3 Long-eared Owls, and 2 Short-eared Owls. The Short-eared Owls were Lifers for me so I was extremely Excited about them! I suspect it will be a lot of fun again this year!


Also, yesterday I went to Forest Sewage Lagoons yesterday. These Lagoons are very good in my mind, and not very well known, I had just started going to them this year. While I was there, there were hundreds on Canada Geese, which ended up getting spooked, and picked up. But in that flock, I was able to pick out 2 Cackling Geese (the mini Canada's), before they took off. Also, as I was walking along the ditch there, I heard a little high pitched buzzy "tisp" call. I recognised the call because I hear many at the lagoons during the summer, but I just couldn't place it. But after a minute of looking, it got scared up out of the cover. It was a Savannah Sparrow! Never did I expect to find a Savannah Sparrow, in Ontario, in December. Definitely the latest in the season I have ever seen this species.

Good Birding!

Ross's? Read and See!

Hey All!
So as you may know, today I went birding and looking for the Ross's Goose in Sarnia today, andddd.... SAW IT!! GOT MY LIFER ROSS'S GOOSE!! WOOHOO!! So yeah, that wasn't very inconspicuous, buuuuutt......I was excited! It's an exciting bird! Though while driving around today, I only saw one raptor and that was an American Kestrel. The only other interesting bird seen while I was out birding was a Peregrine Falcon, likely one of the ones living on/around the Bluewater Bridge.
But, that's about it for today.

Good Birding!

Long time No post! Lately in my birding world.

Hey Everybody!
Sorry its been awhile since my last post! Over a month! So in the past.....48 days, a fair amount has happened for me, bird world wise. I finished my time at Long Point, went birding a far amount, got lifers, and year birds! I guess in this post I will just talk about the end of my bird banding time, and a few of the best times I went birding.

My last few weeks at Long Point were very good. 3 of the 4 nights I was up for owl banding were really good, so I managed to band a good number of  Saw-whets. Though when it was my time to leave and go home, I knew I would miss it there. All the friends I had made, and the banding I had done. Will I go back again? I sure hope so, it was an amazing and fun experience. Thank you to everyone at LPBO for the awesome experience.

Northern Saw-whet Owl I got to band.

Now if I was writing this in order of dates, my best birding day would be next.....buuuttt.. Since its the best, I am going to save it for last.And I'm kinda interrupting my train of thought on my birding lately, buuuut....I Just received word, like 3min ago, that there is a Ross's Goose in Sarnia!! This is a would-be lifer for me! So, if you are reading this today, hopefully there will be another post tomorrow, and hopefully it will say, "I got my lifer Ross's Goose today!" and not "couldn't find ross's goose :(". The bird is by a pond with some Canada Geese on 'Ronald Bloom Drive' or something like that. It has been posted on the Lambton Wildlife page on Facebook. But anyways, just thought I'd throw that out there. But back to birding.

Lately, randomly in the county, there have been a considerable number of raptors out and about. Lots of Red-tailed Hawk, and American Kestrels, but even the less common raptors such as Merlins have been in considerable numbers lately. One day this past last weekend, in about an hour drive, I saw 1 Northern Harrier, 1 Cooper's Hawk, 3 Red-taileds, 1 Rough-legged Hawk, 2 American Kestrels, and 2 Merlins! In one hour of driving! Even today when I went for a walk in our forest, had 4 different Red-taileds around! I know this isn't a raptor, but last week I also got my First of Season(FOS), Northern Shrike! Flying right beside the car close to the road, providing an excellent view! When I turned around to try to see it in an even better view, it was nowhere to be found. Oh well, it was still probably one of the best views I've ever had of the species!

In the last month or so on my property, there have been numerous interesting sightings. I've had a flock of  about 50 Redpolls fly-over, I would be willing to bet that there was a Hoary with them, but there no way I could pick one out in that short time as they flew over. I've had Bohemian Waxwings on a couple occasions, sadly none were very good looks, and one of them was just heard, but still a good bird. Numbers of Red-bellied Woodpecker's have been very high, one day with 4+ individuals! And of course the odd Pine Siskin here and there flying over still. But one day, I heard 2 distinct calls of Evening Grosebeaks flying over! Which was awesome!, but kinda sucked at the same time, I had never seen this species at the time. But luckily, a few days later, a flock of about 25 flew over calling! I got a fairly good look because they were fairly low. So i did end up getting my LIFERs Evening Grosebeaks on my property.

I have been to Lorne C. Henderson a few times since I've been home as well. One day, shortly into November, I had a (probable second year) Golden Eagle fly right over me! Another FOS bird! Also, both species of Crossbill, Red and White-winged, have been seen and heard flying over, and feeding in the trees while I was there on other days. Though I am very surprised that those are the only winter finch species I have seen there recently.

We are now......not up to the best birding day yet...but close. The second best birding day lately was a Kettle Point on the 5th of November. Some of the coolest birds I saw while I was there are: Surf Scoter, Bald Eagle, both Crossbills, Iceland Gull, Brant, Little Gull, Pomarine Jaeger, Purple Sandpiper, and, my first ever Lesser Black-backed x Herring Gull Hybrid! The hybrid gull was very difficult to ID, took probably 20min at leased of observation to finally confirm. Was only my second Gull hybrid I've ever found. For the rest of the species, it is not the first time I have seen them at this location, but it is the first this year! The Little Gull surprisingly gave me a little bit of trouble to ID as well. It was a second winter bird so it didn't have the upper-wing pattern of a Juvenile, but it didn't have the black under-wing of an adult. This was the first second year I have seen of this species. Brant, Little Gull, Pomarine Jaeger, and Purple Sandpiper I have only seen there once before, the Jaeger and the Sandpiper I have only seen once in my life before! This was a very Awesome day for birding here! But surprisingly, that wasn't the best birding day for me!
http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/view/checklist?subID=S11968047
Here is my checklist for that day.

We have finally gotten to my best birding day. This day took place at Point Edward, Sarnia, during those super strong North winds on the 30th of October, I spent more then 5 hours birding there that day! The first bird I saw while I was there was Brant, which is typically a fairly rare species for the county, usually on 1-2 recorded a year. But, this day, at one point in the morning, I counted approximately 160 individuals! They were moving all around and there would have been many out of my view, I would not be at all surprised if there were over 250 individuals there that day! It was utterly Crazy! All 3 Scoter species were seen that day, with 100+ individual White-winged, 42 Surf, and 13 Black, all three of these were high-counts. All the likely ducks were seen there as well, also in fairly high numbers! There were Tons of Horned Grebes in the water flying back and forth, with a few Red-necked Grebes thrown in with them! 38 Greater Black-backed Gulls seen, which is the highest count I've ever had of the species, also a few Glaucous Gulls, and individual Lesser Black-backed, and Thayer's Gulls. Out in the distance, 2 Jaeger sp.'s were seen, to far out to ID. One of the best birds there was my second ever Red Phalarope seen flying halfway out. This is another species that there are very few recorded in the county. But the best bird of all, was my LIFER's Sabine's Gull!! Got great looks at 2 as they flew by together! This was very exciting for me! They're very cool looking gulls! Sadly I missed my would-be lifer black-legged kittiwake, but it was still an amazingly awesome birding day!
http://ebird.org/ebird/canada/view/checklist?subID=S11902915

Here is my checklist for that day.


But anyways this is the end of this post. Sorry for not posting lately!
And thank you for reading!

Good Birding!
(ps. if either of my parents are reading this, can I borrow the car tomorrow?)