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!