New birds over past week.

So I haven't posted in over a week, so there are a few things I should probably post now. So my last post, I said I was at 52 species for the year, unfortunately, it gets harder to find new species the further into the year it gets, so, since then, I have added 17species. Which I am very happy with because I haven't really gone on any really good birding trips since then. I am also very happy with some of the birds I have gotten, there are a few that I may not see again in the county this year, and some that are just strait up fair quality birds! Some of the fair quality birds I've seen since then: American Robin(not very present this winter), Brown-headed Cowbirds, Great Blue Heron, Pileated Woodpecker, White-crowned Sparrow, and White-winged Crossbills. Then there are 3 species that I could easily miss for the rest of the year. Bohemian Waxwings, 5 seen/heard in a flock of Cedars yesterday afternoon, which is probably my most-likely to find again. A single Hoary Redpoll in a flock of about 70 Common's, which was seen on the 5th. And best of all, on the 11th, I got my LIFER and Yard Bird, Barred Owl! This species is a very good species for the county! This will probably be one of my highlights of the entire year!

 Cropped

This was a very lucky, unlikely, and exciting find!

Unfortunately there are a few species on the river right now that I am unable to go see for the next little while, I really hope they stay. A Trumpeter Swan at Cathcart Park, and a bright male Harlequin Duck near Courtright, which is a would-be lifer for me. Both of these species would be awesome additions to my year, and life lists. Hopefully they will stay a little while longer.

Good Birding!

Day 2, Owls 2

Yesterday, my dad and I decided to go birding, and we decided to go to the south-western portion of Lambton. I had 3 personal goal birds for this trip, of which, in the end, we got all 3! But on the drive down there we also got some good and/or year birds! For example, near Rutherford, on Oil Heritage Rd, we spotted a large Buteo sp. in a tree right beside a field, once we got a bit closer, it turned out to be my first Rough-legged Hawk of the year! We decided we wanted pictures, so we turned the car around and took a few poor but ID'able pics. But the bigger surprise was, climbing trees, surrounded by field, was a little Brown Creeper! Another Year Bird! Which wouldn't'v been seen if we didn't turn around for the Rough-leg.

But soon enough, we were back on our trip towards our first stop. Our first stop is the place that last year, at the SFN CBC, I got my lifer Short-eared Owl. This year, because we split into two groups, I didn't go there, but, the people that did, flushed up 4! So I figured they should still be there. But a couple km down the road from there, we spotted some weird, camo, birds sitting on a stump on the other side of the ditch. What was it? A Short-eared Owl! We quickly turned around and started taking pictures. Sadly, none of mine turned out as good as I had hoped, but some of my dads are really good! Here is the best one I took:

 It was a very beautiful bird, and was the first time I'd seen them not in flight! Definitely the highlight of the day!

So we made our way to the location we expected Short-eareds, but as we walked all along the grass, none were flushed! But I did actually get two new for year species whilst we were there, a calling Red-bellied Woodpecker, and a Northern Shrike chasing another bird along the forest! Shrike was another of my goal birds for the day, so that's 2-down, 1-to go.
Our final location is where we have gotten Long-eared Owls both CBC's we have done. And today was no different, as my dad walked through trying to flush them, I was at the end watching the get flushed out! We saw at leased 8! As I was watching them flush, I was trying to get pics, but, they are so dang fast!! No possible way to catch them!
So that's 3/3 of my goal birds for the day! And soon enough it was time to head home.
So after day two of birding, I am up to 52 species for the year!

Good Birding!

Happy New Year! It Should Be a Fun, Big Year.

So today, the first day of 2013, I went birding (as I do most new years days). But today was different. As a few of you may know, but not all of you, this year, 2013, I am doing a mini, Lambton County Big Year. This mean I am going to try to see / find as many species of bird, in my home county of Lambton Ontario, in a calender year. I am very excited to do this, I think it will be a great challenge, loads of fun, and a fantastic learning experience. The reason I have decided to make this year my Big Year is because, it is pretty much the only year where I plan to be home the whole year. For half of 2014, I plan to be in College, so I wouldn't have a full year birding in the county, and after that, there is a good chance that I will be living and working somewhere else. So that is why I have chosen this to be my big year. I am very excited and hope to learn lots. I don't know if anyone has ever done a Lambton Big Year, but that doesn't mean I don't have a goal to aim for. But if anyone knows if there is, please let me know! And Wish me luck!!

Surf and White-winged Scoters, Scaup, and more? (photo not by me)

So today, mid-morning, I head to Sarnia for a day of birding. On the way to my first destination, I saw 5species, one of which was my first species of 2013!, and that was, Horned Lark, too bad my #2 wasn't the first, because a Merlin would be an awesome first bird of the new year! Oh well, still a good #2! So soon enough, I found myself at the Point Edward Lighthouse, only to find about 3 Thou. Redheads, 1.5 Thou. Long-tailed Ducks, 12 Lesser Scaup, and 2 distant White-winged Scoters being the bests. I decided not to stay there to long because firstly, my hands were Freezing! And second, I wanted to move around a bit so I can clear some species off my need4year list. So next up, was the bridge looking for the Peregrine's, but after a little search, I could not find them, I guess they will have to wait for another day. 

Next was the Sarnia Marina and Area, which gave me my biggest surprise of the day! I counted 6 Lesser Black-backed Gulls in the area! 1 Fly-by and 5 sitting on the ice with all the other Gulls. I was crazily surprised at this number for I have never seen more then 1-2 at a time in the county! Also in the area, 15+ Greater Black-backed's, 1 Glaucous Gull, and a Green-winged Teal (found by Paul Carter previous day).

After the Marina, I headed to Canatara for a walk around. Surprisingly, it was very quiet in the park, not very much to be seen or heard, but one of the few birds I did see, was a White-throated Sparrow, which is a fairly good bird for this time of year!

This little guy was just sitting and staring, so I figured it'd be a shame not to take a picture!

So after that, I decided to head downriver till Couruna, seeing what was in the river, then headed to Perch Creek. In this time, I found 12 Hooded Mergansers, at they are Shell Docks as most years. At one place, there was a tree, with a Red-tailed Hawk sitting no more then 2m away from a big female Cooper's Hawk! Was very surprised that they were so close to each other, was also very surprised that there was a flock of 300+ Mourning Doves!, no more then 100m away on the road, which is a crazy big flock of this species! Also between the two locations, found a group of 3 Red-tailed Hawks circling together! Here is a crappy pic that you can hardly tell their hawks:

 

As I said, very crappy pic.

In between Perch Creek and home, I added a couple more birds for the day, including: Golden-crowned Kinglet, Hairy Woodpecker, another Red-tailed, Am. Kestrel, and Merlin, more Snow Bunting and Horned Larks, and, a single Lapland Longspur.

So, by the time I got home, I was up to a grand total of 40 species for the day! But, my day wasn't quite over yet, once it got dark my dad and I went outside and played Eastern Screech-Owl call-back, and got 4 to respond! That's #41!

So day 1, off to a great start in my opinion. Hopefully I can keep the luck!

Good Birding!    

  

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!