My most recent post covered up to January 11 of my Big Year; it is now April 19…yikes! So here we go: the most expansive and cursory blogpost I've written yet.
From January 12 to 18 I visited Tommy Thompson Park in Toronto four times to look for the long-staying, rarely seen Burrowing owl, sometimes during the day and sometimes around dusk, hoping to see it fly from its perch and begin hunting. I struck out every time but on one painful occasion, the bird was seen later that day, a few hours after I left. That stung.
On January 16 I went to Port Dover's Silver Lake to look for a Ross's Goose that had been seen there. I did not see it, but I did see my first-of-year Sandhill Crane standing on the frozen lake. Quite a strange sight!
Later that day I went to look for a Slaty-backed Gull that had been reported sitting on the New York side on the Niagara River just above the Falls. I was hoping it would make its way over into Canada. Not only did I not see it on our side of the border; I didn't see it at all. I did however scope out a Snowy Owl perched on a rocky shoal in the middle of the rushing waters of the river a stone's throw away from the Falls. It was a certainly a day of seeing cool birds in weird places.
On my way to Niagara Falls, co-Big-Year-birder Kiah Jasper called me to inform me that a possible Gyrfalcon had been seen near his place on the Bruce peninsula. I should have turned my car around and driven there immediately, but the folly of deciding against this didn't dawn on me fully until Kiah texted me to say he had refound the bird and sent me a full-frame image of a gorgeous white morph Gyr on a hydro pole. Kiah was up a very significant bird on me. It's April 19, and this has't changed.
Obviously, I went to the Bruce the next morning and searched for the falcon for many hours over several hundred kilometres. Kiah graciously helped me look. We repeated this process the next day. No dice either time, but we did see a handful of cool birds including many Northern Shrikes, Rough-legged Hawks, Snow Buntings, and Snowy Owls.
On January 19, Kiah, Nathan Hood, and I went to Niagara again to look for the Slaty-backed Gull. We did not get our target bird, but we did have a great day of gulling. On Dock Road in Thorold, we were able to study hundreds of (mostly Herring) gulls that were standing on the frozen locks in prime light. No rarities were among them, but we managed to pick out two "Thayer's" and four "Kumlien's" Iceland Gulls, one Lesser Black-backed Gull, and two Glaucous Gulls. Non-birders understandably find it difficult to appreciate how much joy 'seagulls' can bring to someone such as myself, but the ID challenge they provide and subtle plumage details they exhibit make gulling very enjoyable for me.
The next day, Kiah and I headed up to Ottawa in the wee hours of the morning to try to stake out a few difficult owl species. At dawn, we struck out on Great Gray Owl, but we got incredible looks at a continuing Northern Hawk-Owl later in the morning. We spent the late morning and afternoon looking for two species Kiah had on me. We drove around berry-rich neighbourhoods looking for Bohemian Waxwings and along country roads looking for a Gyrfalcon. No dice on both, though we did see Cedar Waxwings and a few Snowy Owls. We tried once more for the Great Gray Owl in the evening, and, while we didn't see it, we did have a face-to-face encounter with a pair of very obliging Barred Owls, a less great (size-wise) but equally grey owl that has been very abundant in Ottawa recently.
I took a few days of R&R until January 27, but I did pick up some easy year birds such as Black-crowned Night-Heron, Black Scoter, and Lapland Longspur around the Hamilton area, occasionally venturing as far as Niagara.
On January 27, I got a bit too carried away with the second 'R' in R&R. I slept in until 11:00 AM and awoke to the news that, over in Thorold, Ryan Griffiths had spotted the Slaty-backed Gull that had been hanging out on the New York side of the river. I raced there from Waterloo but the only slaty-backed Gull I could pick out of a couple hundred Herrings also had yellow legs (among other telling featires), making it a Lesser Black-backed Gull. Lesser Backs are one of my favourite species of Ontario birds, but, in this context, it was a huge disappointment.
The next morning, Kiah and I were at Lock 4 on the Welland Canal hoping the Slaty would return. And return it did! The very first gull I scanned into with my scope was it. I breathed a deep sigh of the relief. I had made a shameful mistake that was so close to costing me a very rare bird. I had gotten away scot-free…this time.
I didn't do much birding until January 5. The evening before, A Great Cormorant had been seen on the Niagara River just across the way from Fort Erie, Ontario. It was reseen the next day, still on the New York side, so I found myself standing at Ontario riverside parks scoping two-kilometre-distant shimmering blobs, corresponding with contacts in the US to try to determine which blob was a Great Cormorant. I never got definitive looks at my target bird.
There is no official set of rules for Ontario big years, so most Ontario big year birders subscribe to the American Birding Association's (ABA's) big year and recording rules. They state that, in order to count a bird, it must be within the prescribed counting area when one encounters it. By my reckoning, it's not so simple in Ontario. Bear with me while I get technical. The Ontario Bird Records Committee (OBRC) and the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas count pelagic rares flying out over the water at Netitishi Point on James Bay and Common Eiders loafing off the shores of Hudson Bay despite these bodies of water belonging, in their entirety, to Nunavut. The National Standards for the Survey of Canada Lands accords that, in Ontario, the Ontario-Nunavut border is the water's edge regardless of high or low tide, barring non-extreme (freshet, storm) conditions. So, if two leading bird authorities in Ontario count birds technically outside of the province, then I feel comfortable counting birds that I see flying over or loafing on the water, as long as I am in Ontario when I see them. I will not count birds that are on or over US/Quebec/Manitoba/Nunavut land (a.k.a. Black Vultures sitting on a church roof in New York), but if, while I'm in Ontario, I see a Great Cormorant swimming in the Niagara River or a Gannet flying over James Bay, I will count it.
On February 7, I went back to Fort Erie and stood at Instinct Park for almost four hours waiting for the cormorant to fly by. It never did. I did, however, see four Pied-billed Grebes, a Surf Scoter, and many Tundra Swans among a total of twenty-eight species.
On February 5, an Eared Grebe was photographed on Georgian Bay and posted on eBird as a 'grebe sp.' Other birders didn't come across the checklist until February 9, and Kiah and I raced out to Grey County to try to refind a bird we assumed would be gone. Kiah beat me there and, shockingly, refound the grebe, which was diving frequently on the choppy water or the Bay. I arrived less than an hour later and managed to get good looks and less good photos of the uncommon western visitor.
On February 12, William Konze, Chrisha Gnanamuthu, and I went to the southwest to look for Golden Eagles, another bird Kiah had on me. We very quickly found two in southwest Middlesex, and, in shortly after, had two more. A truly epic bird in every way.
We spent the rest of the day looking for some common overwintering species, and I picked up a couple more year birds. We then went to the Melbourne area to look for Short-eared Owls. I had seen one in Ottawa in January, but I had only gotten barely identifiable record shots. It took us a while to track down the shorties in Melbourne, but, finally, we spotted a distant one just as the last light was fading. Soon, it ventured closer to where we were staked out, and, eventually, at least four Short-eareds were hunting and interacting all around us. I managed to get a better record shot (though still a very poor image), but the birds were very vocal and I was able to record them barking away at each other (listen here).
On February 16, a Townsend's Solitaire showed up in a birder's backyard in Simcoe county so I zipped up there ASAP. The bird was waiting for me, sitting statue-like (as they often do) on a low-hanging branch. It soon relocated to a Crabapple tree to feed. I thanked my lucky stars, as I had been ruefully contemplating heading up to Thunder Bay to pick up another Townsend's Solitaire that had been visiting a back yard there. Driving eleven hours to see a semi-rare bird that I've already seen before (even if it's a very lovely species) is the last thing I want to do, but big years sometimes demand that you do unappealing things, and I have no doubt I will have to do something like this later in the year. The Solitaire was year bird 136.
That covers everything up until we left for an ambitious trip to Northern Ontario. That adventure deserves its own post, which I'll try to write up sooner rather than later, but I don't blame you if you've lost all faith in me. Below are a few photos I couldn't find a home for in the main body of the post.
By the way, I'm excited to let you all know that I'm leading an all day "big day" style hike with Kiah on Sunday, May 29 for the Huron Fringe Birding Festivals. I think it's pretty safe to say that we'll see upwards of 100 species, including some fun localized breeding species (good chance of Golden-winged Warbler, Upland Sandpiper, Sedge Wren, etc.). Register here!
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