My friend Kiah Jasper is doing a 2021 Ontario big year. Go check out his blog!
To any sane person, a trip to the Far North during the dead of winter to find large concentrations of gulls in landfills would sound like the furthest possible thing from a good time. For two obsessive birders intoxicated with the prospect of rarities and northern specialties, a trip like this is our idea of an ideal Christmas break. With news of the first officially accepted Ontario record of Glaucous-winged Gull in Sault Ste. Marie and with the handful of Slaty-backed Gulls popping up around the province, the trip became even more tantalizing. Given how under-birded northwest Ontario is and how productive it is for rarities and highly coveted northern species, it seemed like the most promising possible in-province trip we could manage during the least exciting time of year for birds. Of course, safety for ourselves and the communities we were visiting was top priority, so we decided to sleep in our car, only get food from drive-throughs, and to take every precaution (gloves, Lysol wipes, etc.) at gas stations.
Nathan Hood and I set out in the early hours of December 27 with the goal of seeing fifty-five species north of Simcoe/Kawartha Lakes counties. I also wanted to add two species to my year list, but I knew this would be tough, because, outside of the returning Black-billed Magpie in Algoma (which we didn't have time to look for) and Boreal Chickadee, there were not any expected or semi-expected species that I didn’t already have for 2020—it would have to be a rarity. We explored a couple northern townsites along our route, checking feeders and railbeads. Northern feeders seem to get a disproportionate number of rarities. Needless to say, our hopes were high, but all we could turn up was a Northern Shrike, some Pine Grosbeaks, seventeen Evening Grosbeaks, and two Northern Cardinals. Cardinals irrupted in the northwest in the latter part of 2020 (there was a record as far west as Alberta), so we weren’t shocked to come across a couple. The Glaucous-winged Gull had been seen at two locations (but only twice in total) in Sault Ste. Marie. The only publicly accessible one was the Sault Locks on Whitefish Island. We also learned that the Station Mall parking lot often hosted large concentrations of gulls. The mall was our first stop in the Soo, and we found a curious collection of birds gathered right in the middle of the lot. There were large numbers of Herring Gulls, Rock Pigeons, and Mallards with three Glaucous Gulls and some American Black Ducks mixed in. We also spotted a suspiciously large, uniquely plumaged Herring Gull that had us toying with the possibility of immature Slaty-backed for a bit (photos below); sadly, it was not.
We then made our way to Whitefish Island. We came across a flock of around 400 Bohemian Waxwings (with one Cedar Mixed in) that were going back and forth between berry-laden trees on the island and the mainland. It was quite a site! We found the two female Harlequin Ducks that were continuing in the rapids, but sadly missed the Black Scoters that had also been seen in the area. We found another two Northern Cardinals hanging out on the island. No Glaucous-winged, unfortunately. By the end of the day, we had racked up a solid twenty-six species. Our hotel was the very affordably priced Walmart parking lot. Nathan’s thermal sleeping bag provided him with enough warmth for an uninterrupted sleep, but I had to wake up to blast the heat a couple times (this remained the case throughout the trip, but I survived).
The next day we were up bright and early. On our way to Thunder Bay, we explored some townsites and landfills. Employees at the open landfills were pretty happy to let us explore when we told them we were looking for birds. For anyone interested in planning a similar trip, I’d suggest bringing a reflective vest in case you’re asked to wear it at landfill sites. More importantly, if you are looking for large concentrations of gulls, don’t go in the winter, or at least not as late as we did. Edit: Carter Dorscht informed me that he had around 350 gulls at the Wawa dump on January 3. We had none, but we were there in the morning and Carter went after noon. Gull numbers at inland landfills might be higher the more open big water there is nearby. We did see eBird checklists from dumps in the winter that had some gulls on them, but even these numbers were poor, and every dump we visited—bar one (we’ll get to that later)—was gull-less. Where there was exposed garbage, however, there were invariably large numbers of Common Ravens and Bald Eagles. We also found some seasonal rarities (a Swamp Sparrow and two Red-winged Blackbirds) hopping around in the waste at the White River landfill. Our first real taste of Lake Superior was the Marathon Harbour where we scoped out three species of ducks including an eBird “filter-tripping” Greater Scaup and two female-type Bufflehead to add to our list of unexceptional “rarities”. The Marathon Dump was closed, but there was an unmaintained road that ran broadside of it and gave us something of a lofty vantage. We assumed our Honda Pilot could handle it, but how wrong we were! We quickly drifted a bit too far to the right and got hopelessly stuck about a hundred metres down the road. We tried to work our way out, but it was a lost cause. While waiting for CAA (luckily there was cell service), we did some birding. The dump did not host any gulls we could see, but we enjoyed some White-winged Crossbills in the surrounding trees. Pshing brought in some chickadees, including two Boreal Chickadees. Year bird #312! The din also attracted three Canada Jays: always a treat. What was more gratifying, however, was seeing our ride get towed out of the bind we had gotten ourselves into. Sweet, sweet pavement once more! By that time, the sun was down, but it had been a semi-productive day with eight additions to our trip list, putting us at thirty-four species in total. We rolled into Thunder Bay after 8:00.
I had never been to Thunder Bay district, and certainly never birded it, so it was nice to colour in the county on my eBird map, leaving me with only three (Kenora, Manitoulin, and Rainy River) of Ontario’s fifty counties unbirded. We dedicated the first part of the next morning to looking for Great Grey Owls. Northwest Ontario is arguably the best place to see them in the province. We drove backroads, scanning the perimeters of clearings. Great Greys usually perch about halfway between the ground and the canopy, on short trees or broken trunks. Less disturbed areas (the back-er the backroad the better) are best. I eventually spotted one actively hunting at the edge of a clearing. Nathan and I spent almost two hours quietly observing and photographing it from the edge of the road. Unprompted, the owl, which at first was right at the back of the clearing, slowly made its way up to us and eventually landed on the telephone pole right by the road. We fear the bird might have come to investigate us due to a history of being baited by photographers, but it did take its time to come to the roadside, so hopefully this was not the case. Canada Jays, a Hairy Woodpecker, and even a raven eventually got wind of the Great Grey and began harassing it, so it soon gave in and flew deep into the forest.
Our next stop was the hotly-anticipated Thunder Bay landfill. We had it on good authority there would actually be gulls there, and gulls there were! The numbers weren’t staggering, but a healthy serving of around 300 Herrings were present, as well as two Glaucous Gulls and two Iceland Gulls, one of which was the “Thayer’s” subspecies (nice find by Nathan!). In 2017, Thayer’s Gull—which was, up until that point, a unique species—was lumped into Iceland Gull. Adult Thayer’s Gulls are, however, far more visually similar to Herring Gulls than they are to “Kumlien’s” Iceland gulls (the other Iceland subspecies we get). When it comes to separating the two, I'm not the best man for the job, but I’ll link to an excellent resource here.
Note on lumps and splits in regard to “big years”: Any species that is considered its own species when one sees it counts as an addable species when one is doing a big year. For example, if I see Golden-winged and Blue-winged Warbler in Ontario in 2022, but later that year they get lumped together, I can still count both species, so long as I saw them before the lump. However, if I were to see, say, a “Eurasian" Green-winged Teal, but later it gets split into a distinct species, I could not, in hindsight, count it as a separate species for the big year list, though I think most people, including myself, would count it for provincial, county, and life lists.
The landfill also hosted an astonishing 150 plus Bald Eagles and piles of ravens, crows, and starlings. The rest of the day was not particularly productive. We drove to Dorion, visiting some more gull-less dumps. We saw the famed Sleeping Giant Provincial Park from the car, which was a cool sight. We found some Common Redpolls at a feeder in the town—a new bird for the trip. Back in Thunder Bay, we drove to Mission Island and did some exploring. The most exciting sightings here were some very cooperative White-tailed Deer. Our trip total had reached thirty-eight species, still well short of our goal of fifty-five. So ended day three.
The penultimate day of our trip consisted of driving to Timmins and birding along the way in various communities. I’d tell you about the landfills we visited…if there was anything to tell. They were all 100% gull-less, but we had plenty of ravens, crows, and starlings to show for our efforts. The towns and roadsides were more productive. A straggler Common Grackle was coming to a feeder in Beardmore.
The habitat along Highway 11 is excellent for Northern Hawk Owls: stands of needle-like conifers as far as the eye can see with patchy bogs here and there. Bent upon finding this challenging northern species, we mistook bunches of cones and needles at the tops of Tamaracks for owls more than once, but finally I spotted a real Northern Hawk Owl on the south side of the highway. Hawk Owls irrupted last winter, so this one was actually my tenth for the year and Nathan’s ninth.
The next bit of excitement came soon after when Nathan spotted an American Pine Marten loping across the road. Our next addition to the trip’s bird list was Ruffed Grouse; three of them were sitting in a tree beside the highway. After going back to confirm that a growth at the top of a tree trunk was indeed a growth and not an American Three-toed Woodpecker, I commented on how wildly unlikely it would be if we saw Ontario’s toughest ’pecker from our car. Minutes later, I spotted a small, stumpy billed woodpecker flying along the highway. We followed it until it disappeared in the forest beside the road, but not before I snapped some crummy photos out the window. I assumed it would just be a Downy, but, much to our delight, the uniform mottled dark on the undersides of the wings revealed it was a picoides (Black-backed or American Three-toed) woodpecker, and the stumpy bill and petite structure, sadly not visible in my poor photos, narrowed it down to the latter.
In Mattice, Nathan spotted some redpolls in a backyard tree, one of which was a Hoary Redpoll. We didn’t manage photos, as we didn’t want to spook the residents by pointing our optics almost directly at their house. Later, while exploring the Hearst townsite, a strange, broad-winged passerine that didn’t quite look like any expected, similarly-sized species flew in front of our car and into a fenced off backyard out of sight. Presumably the same bird popped up again soon after and flew away, but we could not relocate it. Needless to say, Eurasian finches were on my mind for the rest of the day’s journey. The last birds we saw before arriving in Timmins were two Ruffed Grouse in a tree just outside of Hearst and a filter-tripping (we thought this was quite funny) Mallard sitting on the ice in Kapuskasing. Just before arriving in Timmins, we had a close call with a cow moose. She was chilling on the side of the road, feet away from our car, and we didn’t notice her until the last minute. It’s wild that she stood her ground, given that our car just about took the hair off her nose. We circled back, but she got spooked and lumbered into the forest. A scary but cool way to end off the fourth day. We had gained another four species, putting us at forty-two for the trip.
Our final day (New Year’s Day as it turned out) saw us heading back south. We looked for the returning Eurasian Collared-Doves (look it up on eBird; it’s real!) in Earlton to no avail. We added another mammal to our trip’s list with a North American River Otter that Nathan spotted. It was fishing in a lake using a small opening in the ice. More landfills we really thought would have gulls came up, once again, gull-less.
“Welcome to Simcoe County” the sign read, and, just like that, we were out of the North…with only forty-two bird species to our names, well shy of our fifty-five goal. We’re still recovering from that crushing defeat. We needed to nurse our wounds with some last minute 2020 birding, and we figured it was high time for gulls! Back in southern Ontario, we visited the Barrie Marina. Gulls! Piles of Ring-billed and Herring Gulls were having a feeding frenzy, fishing massive schools of shiner. It was fun to watch their acrobatics. This, for me, was more exciting than the seasonally uncommon Double-crested Cormorant, American Coot, and Red-necked Grebe (one of each) that were present at the docks. A Great Black-backed Gull and first cycle Kumlien’s Iceland rounded out the trip, and we made it home in time to welcome in the new year. We may not have reached our projected goal of fifty-five species in the North, and I may have added only one bird to my year list, but it was a hugely rewarding trip, and I have no regrets…though the mystery passerine from Hearst will haunt me.
I know it’s belated but: Happy New Year everybody!