This will be a cursory summary of my birding in January. I already summarized day one in my earlier post.
January 2 found me and Kiah targeting a couple lower level rarities. We started the day in the Copeland area of Hamilton where a Harris's Sparrow had been continuing ever since Rob Dobos had found it in November. There were lots of sparrows to look through, but eventually Kiah spotted the Harris's, which only stayed long enough to get a few record shots. This was my fourth time trying for this bird, and a home-county lifer for me.
We then headed to the Burlington waterfront to try to track down a Harlequin Duck that had been seen there recently; we dipped. Niagara was our next stop. Our target species was Black-legged Kittiwake (a couple had been hanging around there). Queenston Docks was reportedly the most reliable place to check, but a few hours of searching came up fruitless. We did turn up some Little Gulls and a Glaucous Gull; always nice.
Closer to the falls we saw several Iceland Gulls and at least one Lesser Black-backed Gull. Then we got a report that one of the Kittiwakes had been seen at the docks after we left, so we returned there and began scoping the hundred of Bonaparte's Gulls feeding out on the water. It took us over half an hour, but eventually I saw a larger gull with a dark black neck patch and a heavy black bill floating in the water below the swarms of Bonnies. Kiah got on it and it soon took wing, revealing a defined black "M" on its back/wings: the hallmark of a first winter Black-legged Kittiwake. We spent the next little while searching for and narrowly missing a group of Greater White-fronted Geese in the rural part of the county and finished our day off at the "flyby" at Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL), where thousands of gulls stream by every evening to spend the night on Lake Ontario. The spectacle began around 4:30 PM, and by the time the light had faded we estimated about 8000 Bonaparte's Gulls with twenty-four Little Gulls mixed in. Moreover, one of the very first birds that flew by was a Black-legged Kittiwake, maybe the same bird we had seen a couple hours earlier.
While we were birding in Niagara on the 2nd, our friend Nathan Hood had found an "armchair rarity". What I mean by this is that someone had posted a photo from Kingston on eBird labelled as a Lesser Scaup; that was on December 31, and Nathan had come across it on the 2nd. The photo was actually of a Tufted Duck, a primarily European species that has a small wintering population in Newfoundland. By the time we found out on the 2nd, we couldn't have made it to Kingston before sunset, but, after leaving in the wee hours of the morning on the 3rd, we showed up in Kingston at dawn. A few local birders were already there, but, despite quite a collection of ducks, there was no dark backed Athya with a plume on its crown. We ventured farther west down the coast of Lake Ontario…no dice. Kiah did spot a Double-crested Cormorant winging its way east, quite an uncommon sight in Kingston in the winter. We gave up on the Tufted Duck and headed up to Ottawa. Ottawa is a great place for Barrow's Goldeneye in the winter. We showed up at a spot where the species had been reliable, and were out of and back into the car in a few minutes, with Barrow's Goldeneye (a lovely male specimen) ticked off our list.
We then headed east of the city where we were joined by Alice Tremblay and Vince Fyson to look for Gray Partridge. Gray Partridge are an introduced species from Europe, and, like many game bird species, are quite difficult to track down. We drove roads and walked trails and scanned fields for hours, until—heeding Vince's shrewd advice that Partridges like to hang out on south facing slopes on cold, sunny days—Kiah spotted a group of grey and orange balls of feather hunkered down amongst some grass. We enjoyed good scope views of the four Gray Partridges for a bit, and then, to our surprise they started calling (listen to my poor recording here)! I was able to capture a recording, the first ever posted to eBird in Ontario.
Our last stop of the day was near Constance Bay where we saw a lovely (if very distant) Short-eared Owl hunting over a field just as the last light faded.
We spent the night in Ottawa and headed to Algonquin Provincial Park the next morning (January 4). Just east of the park, we stumbled upon a pair of very cooperative Red Crossbills; they remain our only two of the species this year.
In Algonquin, we met up with our friend Quinten Wiegersma, the resident naturalist at the park. Our most promising spot for Black-backed Woodpecker only produced a woodpecker of the Hairy variety, but we had nice looks at Canada Jay and White-winged Crossbills.
Hoards of Evening Grosbeaks (and maybe even a couple Pine Grosbeaks) seemed like a sure bet at the Visitor Centre feeders, but maybe it was too late in the day, because they were nowhere to be seen. We then followed a lead we had of a Northern Hawk-Owl. We didn't see it, but we did have some awesome looks at two bull Moose, a Ruffed Grouse, and a Beaver, and less awesome looks at the tail end of a woodpecker that was likely a Black-backed, though we never got identifiable views. We headed back to Hamilton that night.
January really was the month of rare birds found in late 2021 being refound in the New Year, almost as if they knew I was doing a big year and wanted to help me out. The first example of this phenomenon was a Black-throated Gray Warbler that was found in November in Pickering and resurfaced on January 4. Naturally, I was at Frenchman's Bay, the place where it had been refound, the next morning. Kiah had committed to organizing a Christmas Bird Count on the Bruce, so was out of commission for the day. Brendan Muggeridge joined me instead. I sieved through Black-capped Chickadees for about an hour looking for a different black-throated passerine before I got a message alerting me that the warbler had been refound a fifteen minute walk away. In five minutes, I was there, but the warbler had disappeared. Last time it disappeared bad been on November 30, and its absence had lasted over a month; I hoped this was not part of a pattern. Thankfully, though strangely very skulky, the bird did not remain entirely invisible for long, and I was able to get some brief views and crummy record shots.
Before I left, I also connected with a Snow Goose in amongst the Canada Geese in the bay and a Gray Catbird that had forgotten to migrate south in the dense brambles nearby.
In a brilliant stroke of luck, just before we left the Warbler, part two of the 2021-rarities-resurfacing-phenomenon struck: the Razorbills that had consistently been seen in NOTL in December and disappeared just before the New Year had been refound! We zipped down to the opposite side of Lake Ontario, where Ryan Griffiths quickly put us on one of the odd half penguin/half duck looking jobs floating not too far out (though you can't tell from my photos).
We poked around for the Greater White-fronted Geese that had been seen off and on in the Welland area, but not even the standing-on-roof-of-car tactic could magic us our target bird. We did, however, see a very lovely dark morph Rough-legged Hawk, which was a year bird for me.
The original plan had been to head up north on January 6, but, since Kiah had been busy, we delayed the trip a day so that he could pick up the warbler and Razorbill. While he was taking care of that, I set out to look for a Ross's Goose that had been seen in Hamilton. I had to change my plans, however, when Luke Berg reported that he had found a Tufted Duck in Frenchman's Bay (yes, the very same place where I had seen the Black-throated Gray the previous day). When someone finds a rare bird while looking for a different rare bird that has been previously reported, it's known as the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect. This phenomenon got its name because of a picnic table rest stop in Patagonia, Arizona, where a domino effect of rarities turned up years ago. While dead-of-winter Pickering doesn't boast the balmy temperatures as Arizona, I didn't care; I was over the moon to lay eyes on the same species (notably not the same individual) that had eluded us in Kingston.
On the way back, I stopped in Toronto to see a young male Harlequin Duck that was hanging out at Marilyn Bell Park. I connected successfully with the handsome duck, and headed back to Hamilton to rest up before leaving for the north the next morning.
Before taking a nap, I tasked one of my friends with phoning me if anything rare was found.
***
A few hours later, I blinked awake to the jarring sound of my ringtone. It was Quinten Wiegersma's sixteenth attempt to reach me; I had slept through fifteen other calls. The Glaucous-winged Gull that had been seen in November and early December last year in Barrie had been refound in Hamilton…a five minute drive from my house! I was in the car in a matter of seconds, but there was very little light left in the sky. I phoned Jon Pleizier who was on site where the gull had been seen, and he informed me that the bird had just flown. I was less than pleased with myself; if I had woken up to one of Quinten's first fifteen calls, I likely would have gotten there in time to see the bird, but my fatigue must have been truly profound in order to sleep through them all. Kiah had connected with the Razorbills, Tufted Duck, Black-throated Gray Warbler, and Harlequin Duck…and had also been napping when the gull showed up. I spent that night trying to get an understanding of the Hamilton gulls' winter patterns in order to maximize our chances of the bird the following day. I went to bed that night angry but determined.