January 7, 2022
The sun was still tucked well back behind the horizon, making my scanning of the sleeping gulls on Bayfront Park's many piers and wharfs an essentially nocturnal enterprise. There was, however, just enough light to tell that they all had black wingtips, ruling out my target bird: the Glaucous-winged Gull I had napped through yesterday evening. Alvan Buckley, finder of the western mega-rarity, had explained to me his theory that, during the winter in Hamilton, gulls spend their nights in the east end of Hamilton harbour or beyond, then fly by Bayfront Park in numbers at first light on their way to the Brantford dump about thirty-five kilometres to the southwest. I was at Bayfront to hopefully pick out the Glaucous-winged Gull on its garbage-bound journey, but I figured I'd check the roosting gulls that had spent the night more locally just in case my target was a nonconformist. Soon, I was joined by Kiah Jasper, William Konze, Rob Dobos, and Alvan, and, as the sun rose, gulls began cruising in from the east before making a couple lazy circles over our heads and beelining toward Brantford. The numbers became overwhelming at times, and, even with so many peeled eyes, I couldn't have confidently said we didn't miss it, but we did pick out four Glaucous Gulls and two Iceland Gulls, all of which piqued my excitement for a second merely by the lack of jet black on the tips of their wings. As the flyby numbers dwindled, William, Kiah, and I decided to pack up and head to Brantford, but not before Alvan pointed out a couple fun birds at Bayfront that I probably would have enjoyed more if my mind wasn't occupied by our big target. One was a Redhead × Ring-necked Duck hybrid that had been spending the winter in the area: a hybrid lifer for me. The other was a candidate Cackling Goose, but Canada × Cackling couldn't quite be ruled out so I decided I'd wait for a better one for my year list. A text came in from Rob who had migrated to the High Level Bridge to watch the movement of gulls: he had seen a good candidate for the Glaucous-winged go over, but had not gotten good enough looks to confirm the ID. As Lana Del Ray says, hope is a dangerous thing for a birder like me to have (those are the lyrics, right?), and mine had just been rudely renewed.
Between courses at the garbage buffet that is the Brantford Dump, gulls spend their time at Mohawk Lake or on the Grand River. William and I staked out at Mohawk Lake while Kiah got as close to the landfill as possible to try to pick out the Holy Grail from the flocks of gulls that would occasionally lift into the air above the berm that obscured them on the ground. In the forty minutes that we spent at Mohawk, a few groups of gulls came in and landed on the ice, clumsily skating across the slippery surface as they touched down, but none contained the Glaucous-winged Gull.
Kiah had just given up and joined us at Mohawk when a notification came in from the Lamonds (leave it to them to find a rare bird in Brantford) that the Glaucous-winged Gull had just flown into where they were posted by the Grand River. [This sentence has been redacted to avoid legal incrimination.] I screeched into the parking lot where Scarfe Avenue abuts the river and ran up to where a group of birders had gathered. A seasoned birder understands the behaviour of fellow birders just as well as he does that of birds, and a quick read of the group standing along the paved pathway, scopes aimed and smiles bright, implied that Glaucous-winged Gull was still there.
O, what a glorious sight it was to see…despite being thoroughly ugly! I had seen the same individual a couple months prior on the beaches of Lake Simcoe in Barrie, and, sure enough, it was still a grey seagull, uniformly coloured and slightly larger than the nearby Herring Gulls with a black bill and dark pink legs. It was only the second record for the species in Ontario, the first being a much more handsome adult specimen that had been found in Sault Ste. Marie in December 2020. My sigh of relief was earth-shattering. I had resurrected myself from a self-inflicted, nearly costly mistake; I vowed it would be my last during the big year.
The three of us swung by William's place in Guelph to make some final preparations for our northern trip, then promptly set out in William's Subaru towards Terrace Bay, almost thirteen hours to the northwest, where the Spotted Towhee was coming to a feeder. Thirteen hours, that is, if the weather is accommodating and your car doesn't have it out for you. Naturally, the weather was entirely unaccommodating and the Subaru was hellbent on kneecapping our trip. Just as we passed through Espanola, the lights behind the steering wheel lit up like a Christmas tree.
We pulled over and, after an unhelpful call with CAA and some demoralizing chats with friends who know a thing or two about cars, we backtracked to Espanola and checked ourselves into a motel. The plan was to bring the vehicle to a mechanic in the AM. Thankfully, Kiah talked to a friend of his parents who owns the same model of Subie who claimed that the problem we were encountering was merely a glitch. His dash lights go on all the time but he has been instructed by his mechanic that he merely has to disconnect and reconnect the cable from the negative terminal to reset it. We promptly followed his directions and sure enough, when we turned the car on, the lights were gone. Whether or not we should press on tonight for the remaining seven hours despite a snowstorm coming in from the northwest was still in question. On the one hand, if we waited until tomorrow, it would hurt the efficiency of the trip and the roads stood a chance of being closed tomorrow because of drifting, so we might not get there at all; on the other, driving during a snowstorm could be dangerous. We decided to continue on our way and play it by ear, provided that I took on the role of driver. About halfway through this second leg of the trip, we encountered the massive snow front. Flurries turned into a veritable airborne avalanche barreling into our windshield. Dividing lines vanished, and I could only make out a few yards of the roadside to my right and the occasional headlights of other brave (or stupid) travellers. At one point, we passed a transport truck that had gone into the ditch, but other vehicles had stopped to help so we passed it by. Say what you will about the hazardous nature of these conditions, at least it kept me awake! The treacherous elements did, however, augment, both seemingly and in actuality, our travel time exponentially.
January 8
At long last, about a half hour before sunup, we arrived in Terrace Bay, at which point we pulled over into a rest stop and took a nap. Around 9:00 AM, we were kindly escorted to the Spotted Towhee stakeout by one half of the couple who was hosting the western vagrant at their feeders. The homeowners were as sterling in their hospitality to us as they were to the Towhee, a male bird that showed up a few minutes after we arrived. He and the many Common Redpolls, Black-capped Chickadees, Blue Jays, and Pine Grosbeaks that joined him had no shortage of seed and suet to gorge themselves on.
We soon said goodbye to our hosts and began our drive to Thunder Bay. We planned to take a page out of the Glaucous-winged Gull's book and visit the local landfill. On our way, we visited some feeders in Dorion. Large flocks of Pine and (year bird) Evening Grosbeaks were visiting the yard. Mixed groups of the two species would take turns perching up in the trees like so many gold and crimson Christmas ornaments, whistling and trilling their high pitched calls, while others of their number converged on the feeders to feast. We are truly lucky to have such gorgeous birds in our province. You may be surprised to learn that the homeowner's property is visited by a Gray Fox every night. Yep, Pelee Island is not the Gray Fox's last stronghold in the province; there is a population (apparently a growing one) in Northwestern Ontario!
The gull numbers were a little lower than expected at the Thunder Bay landfill, but what it lacked in gulls in made up for in eagles. We estimated there were around 400 eagles at the dump and in the surround trees. I may have mentioned this in my 2020 blog post that covered my trip to the Thunder Bay landfill, but there's something poetic about our iconic symbol of freedom chowing down on trash. One of said winged contradictions had a pigment aberration (leucism?) that made its plumage blonde. Pretty neat to see. There had apparently been a Golden Eagle that had been hanging out in the vicinity of the dump recently, but we couldn't spot it.
January 9
We spent the night in a hotel in Nipigon. The occasional blinking dash light (we hoped still just an electrical glitch) had renewed a creeping fear of future car problems, and our fears were manifested the next morning when the Subie would not start. We spent a solid hour trying to find another driver who could give us a boost, and, finally, I hailed a passerby who pulled into the motel parking lot and successfully jumpstarted the car. We decided not to turn it off for the rest of the day and headed east.
We were planning to take Highway 11 to the Cochrane and Timiskaming districts to continue our search for vagrants and northern specialties. Near Jellicoe, we stopped at a small burn along the way that I had located on the Ontario MNR forest fire map. Kiah and I snowshoed in to explore it while William kindly offered to wait with the car so that we didn't have to turn it off (we were out of service and had not encountered anyone on the logging road that took us to the burn). Woodpeckers gravitate toward these forest fire sites because the beetle larvae that they eat favour freshly burned areas. Exploring burns is one of the easiest ways to find the sometimes elusive northern species of woodpeckers. We were hoping for an American Three-toed Woodpecker, but we happily settled for a pair of the more common Black-backed Woodpeckers.
We were hoping to see a Northern Hawk-Owl on one of the Black Spruces or Tamaracks that stretched back for acres on either side of the highway, but we found it impossible to focus on our surroundings after we received a fateful piece of news. It's the exact sort of the thing a big year birder fears while stuck on a trip up north. The Burrowing Owl that had been seen in Toronto (though not by us) in December had been refound…of course we were eight hours away fro the GTA. We decided we would forestall our plans of looking for other northern specialties and focus on the Varied Thrush that had been coming to a feeder in Elk Lake the next morning, after which we'd beeline to Toronto. A tiny defect that had appeared on our windshield had expanded into a crack the length of my forearm. In Hearst, while filling gas, I left William's gas cap on top of his roof and we drove away before realizing no one had put it back on.
January 10
We checked into the only motel in Elk Lake that evening. William got up in the middle of the night to warm up the engine to avoid the problem we had run into the previous morning. Despite this, the battery was dead at 7:00 AM the next morning. We felt bad having to rouse the motel owner in the wee hours to give us a boost, but she was happy to help.
We staked ourselves out in the neighbourhood the Varied Thrush had been visiting. There were two houses next door to each other, both of which had feeders that the Thrush had been frequenting. I stationed myself at one, and Kiah and William at the other a little ways down. The cold was bitter and penetrating and made minutes feel like hours…except to my feet, which couldn't feel anything at all! A lingering Rusty Blackbird and Common Grackle completed a nice little rare bird trio, of which the Thrush was by far our most coveted. Both blackbirds showed up at the feeder I was watching, so I hailed William and Kiah. They jogged over to see them and got brief looks. They told me that a Bohemian Waxwing had flown over where they had been stationed. I had not heard it, probably because my head was suffocated by a hat and two hoods, such were the frigid temperatures. On Kiah's way back to "home position", he saw the tail end of the Varied Thrush, which had picked the worst time (for us, anyway) to visit the feeder that Kiah and William had just been keeping an eye on, fly from the feeder and disappear into the nearby woodlot. As he called us over, he thought he saw something that looked Thrushy vanish under the porch. We scrutinized the woodlot as much as possible and peered futilely into the blackness under the porch, willing the Thrush to reappear. We got permission from one of the neighbours to look from their backyard. In an unfortunate series of events, I ended up very briefly seeing the Thrush twice and William completely missed it, but we were all eager to get back to Toronto to search for the Burrowing Owl, which had apparently been seen again, so we headed south.
As had been the case with all the Burrowing Owl info that had been circulated over the last month, the reports from the day were one big, convoluted broken telephone. Maybe the bird had been seen today, maybe it hadn't; we couldn't get a definite answer. When we got to Tommy Thompson Park, we ran out to cell one and found many birders, but, sadly, no Burrowing Owl, despite concerted efforts. Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised; it was, after all, not much bigger than a Saw-whet Owl and there was so much habitat it could be in. William did, however, find a House Wren, very rare for January.
January 11
The next day's weather didn't seem promising for Burrowing Owl searching, so Kiah and I headed down to the southwestern counties of Essex and Chatham-Kent to try to pick up a few year birds. Hoping to spot the Greater White-fronted Goose that had been continuing at Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary, we combed through a large flock of Canada Geese that annoyingly kept waxing and waning as birds left and arrived. Finally, Kiah picked it out, and we enjoyed some solid scope views.
We spent the next little while driving the fields north of Point Pelee looking for Ring-necked Pheasant. Pheasants were introduced for hunting and have since developed naturalized populations in the province, but, recently, Pheasants have become more difficult to come by, and it is getting increasingly difficult to determine the provenance of their populations; the big question on any lister's or big year birder's mind is: are they countable? The Pheasants in the fields north of PPNP are part of a long established historical population and are widely considered countable. Kiah and I unfortunately never laid eyes on one that day, and all I got out of our search was a scare. I had put my Bluetooth speaker on the roof of my car to try some playback for the birds, and, after a few attempts, I drove off without realizing it was still on the roof. Ten minutes later, I remembered that I had left it up there but thankfully it had somehow stayed on the roof. Phew!
Leamington local Jeremy Bensette, who holds the Ontario big year record, saw that we were in the area and invited us over for lunch. His house is located just north of PPNP and overlooks the lake—an excellent spot to observe active migration. I believe he said he's already wracked up a yard list of over 200 in the short time he's lived there. He had been so helpful in giving big year advice already, but it was also nice to touch base with him after getting into the swing of the big year a bit to get a seasoned perspective on our progress and plans moving forward. I cannot emphasize enough how thankful I am that Jeremy and other big year birders like Josh Vandermeulen and Geoff Carpentier lent me their wisdom to help maximize my chances of breaking their records. That's what I love about the birding community: the competitive aspects are (usually) very wholesome and friendly, and birders are always willing to use their experience to help anyone who needs it.
That seems like a nice positive place to end off. We spent the rest of the day targeting a few goodies in the Chatham-Kent: an overwintering Nelson's Sparrow at Keith McLean that we could not find, and Tufted Titmice in Rondeau, which we found pretty easily. I'm going to try to whip together a very brief summary post of the Jan 12 to February 18 happenings, which were meagre, and then write up a more detailed summary of an awesome northern trip we did at the end of February. Happy birding!
