(Note: the official species list is at the end of the post, so just hit that scroll bar if you don’t care about all the details!)

Before I begin, I will start with another request for donations! Please CLICK HERE to go to my donation page! This trip was all for the birds, so please help support Bird Studies Canada.

My performance with TCP’s Fiddler on the Roof orchestra wrapped up this past Sunday, leaving me free to think about when I would do my Baillie Birdathon trip. After agonizing for a couple of days over destinations and weather forecasts, I finally threw the camping gear in the car and headed out the door on Tuesday afternoon, pointing the car southwest. I was headed to a place I’d never been before: Point Pelee National Park, a birding mecca. What better place to try to see as many species as possible? Well, maybe Pelee Island, where I’ve spent a LOT of time birding…but staying on the mainland and not having to factor the ferry travel into the trip schedule made the destination choice a little easier.

My first stop was Wheatley Provincial Park, which would be my home base for the next two nights. It’s about half an hour from Point Pelee, which isn’t too bad. There were other, private campgrounds closer to the park where I could have stayed, but I really like Ontario’s provincial parks. They’re like Tim Horton’s. Always the same no matter where in the province you are. No wondering if the camp sites will be nice, or if the washrooms will be horrible. You know what you’re going to get, and that is important to me!

I arrived just before dinnertime, set up my tent, then drove into bustling downtown Wheatley to find some dinner. Picked up a sub at Subway and took it back to the park, and shared my picnic table with a very large, very fast wolf spider while I ate it. After I was done, I grabbed my binocs and headed toward the lake shore and the park’s only hiking trail. I decided to do sort of a “practice run” for the next day, and record how many bird species I would see! Over the course of an hour and a half (from 6 – 7:30pm) I was able to record 32 species. I won’t list them here, but notables were the pair of Great Egrets in the pond, a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk being harassed by several blackbirds, and the lovely Blackburnian Warbler that visited my camp site. After I got back to camp, I enjoyed a little camp fire for a while and then headed for bed nice and early to be well-rested for the next day.

The next morning, I woke up at 5am to a chorus of singing birds! Let’s get this show on the road!

Bird Nerd Breakfast

Sunrise was scheduled for 6:11am, so I officially started my 24-hour count period at 5:40am. I sat at my picnic table for an hour, listening and watching as I ate my oatmeal and drank my coffee. I picked up 18 species without having to move an inch. The first bird of the day was a Red-winged Blackbird. (I had been thinking the night before about what the first bird was most likely to be, and I couldn’t decide if it would be a Redwing, or a robin. Both had been singing since well before I got out of bed, but the Redwing was what I heard first when I started the count! Mr. Robin came in second. Third place was a cardinal!)

I was in the car and on my way to Point Pelee by 7am. Recorded four more species en route, bringing me to 22.

I arrived at Point Pelee around 7:30am. After parking the car and briefly checking out the Visitor’s Centre, I hit the Woodlands Trail to look for some birds! From 7:55am until 10:10am I wandered the trail, and found 19 species of birds. Notables included a Brown Thrasher, Scarlet Tanager, another Blackburnian Warbler, and a couple of Wild Turkeys that wandered by as I was watching a White-tailed Deer nibbling on some leaves. The woods were crawling with orioles! Black and orange everywhere you looked. I was a little disappointed at the general lack of warblers, though. Back at the Visitor’s Centre I saw a Killdeer and a Red-breasted Nuthatch, bringing my species total up to 43 so far.

I hopped on the tram to head for the Tip, arriving at about 10:30. While walking along the trail to the Tip, I saw a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Palm Warbler (among others) and took a long, hard look at a lone duck out on the water, which I determined to be a Lesser Scaup. Once I got to the actual Tip, I was treated to the sight of many gulls, terns and a few shorebirds. This is where my birding weakness lies! My ID skills on gulls and shorebirds are so weak. I stared at the birds for a long time, and was able to pick out Common Terns, Bonaparte’s Gulls, both Herring and Ring-Billed Gulls, a Solitary Sandpiper and a Caspian Tern. I missed a few potential species here, though, because I couldn’t positively ID them. Oh well! I think the strangest sight of the day happened out here at the Tip: I saw a tiny Ruby-throated Hummingbird buzzing around amongst the gulls, out over the water at the Tip! Not sure what it was doing there, but this is not the first time I’ve seen this kind of behaviour from a hummingbird. I recall seeing one doing this exact same thing at the end of Fish Point on Pelee Island.

After returning to the Visitor’s Centre at about 11:40am, my species total was up to 58. I hung around the Centre to eat some lunch and wait for the afternoon guided hike to start. The hike started at 1pm, and would take us around the Woodlands Trail again, the same trail I hiked in the morning. I was a little worried that maybe I should have done a different trail in the morning instead of hiking the same one twice, but as it turns out, it was alright! In the heat of the afternoon, there were many, many warblers in the woods. Highlights of the early afternoon were a Blue-winged Warbler, a Worm-eating Warbler and a Yellow-throated Vireo, all of which were birds I had never seen before. I also caught sight of a flying squirrel high up in a tree, which is a little unusual since it was bright daytime. There had been reports of a Prothonotary Warbler hanging out on this trail, but we didn’t find it.

Back at the Visitor’s Centre by 3:30, my species count was 76. I had been hearing reports of a very rare Kirtland’s Warbler near the entrance to the Northwest Beach parking lot, so I decided to get in the car and head up that way to see if it was still there. Arriving at the parking lot entrance, I found a HUGE crowd of birders all trying to catch a glimpse of this little bird! I stood with them for about twenty minutes, and we saw many OTHER birds, but there was no sign of the Kirtland’s. I was tired and hungry so I gave up, left the park around 4pm in search of somewhere to get some dinner.

After refuelling with a delicious dinner of fried perch at “Paula’s Fish Place” just down the road, I came back to the park and started on the Marsh Boardwalk trail around 5:20pm. The reeds were swarming with Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Yellowthroats, but here I was only able to pick up four “new” species for my list. It was lots of fun watching a small flock of Black Terns flying around over the water! Lots of frogs and turtles, too. I was done by about 6:10pm, my species count sitting at 81.

I was scheduled to attend the “twilight hike” at the Delaurier Trail, which was supposed to start at 7pm. I headed straight for the parking lot and relaxed in my car for a little while, since I was pretty tired from walking all day! While I waited, I pulled out the camera and took the ONLY photos I took all day (other than the breakfast photo) of some super-cute Chipping Sparrows that were foraging in the parking lot quite close to the car.

Chipping Sparrow

I was looking forward to this evening hike, since I was hoping to get into some slightly different habitat than the forest-type places I’d been in for most of the day. Maybe find some grassland/savannah birds, and there was a chance of seeing a Yellow-breasted Chat! However, we started along the trail, and things were very quiet, so the guide decided to change locations and take us up to the Northwest Beach parking lot to look for that Kirtland’s Warbler. We all piled into cars and headed up the road. I was disappointed at missing out on the grassland habitat but…WE FOUND THE KIRTLAND’S WARBLER!!! So that was pretty cool. We also saw LOTS of other types of warblers while we were there (unfortunately nothing “new” for my list though, other than the Kirtland’s and a lone Tennessee Warbler.) Eventually we headed back to the Deslaurier Trail parking lot, where we found a Common Nighthawk flying overhead. Then, around 9pm, we were able to see the courtship display of some American Woodcock! I’ve seen Woodcock before, but I’ve never actually seen their display. They are just the cutest things. To look at them, you’d wonder how they can even fly at all.

It was the end of the day, and I was EXHAUSTED. Species count: 86. Maybe I could have had 100 if I’d tried harder to visit more diverse habitats, who knows? But I was still pretty happy with my birds. I left Point Pelee and headed back to Wheatley, and I only made one wrong turn in the darkness, hahah.

I had been thinking about maybe doing some owl-prowling during the night, but I decided against it. The park’s only hiking trail didn’t seem like it was in an area where I’d have a good chance of success, and I didn’t want to just wander around the campgrounds in the dark. Also, I was really tired. Like, really really tired. But as it turned out, the owl came to me! As I was getting ready for bed, I heard an Eastern Screech Owl calling not too far away. Their call is fairly easy to imitate, so I had a nice little chat with the owl before falling into my sleeping bag for the night.

So, final species tally: 87. Here is the full list, in the order in which I saw/heard them!

1. Red-winged Blackbird
2. American Robin
3. Northern Cardinal
4. Black-capped Chickadee
5. European Starling
6. Common Grackle
7. Wild Turkey
8. American Crow
9. Least Flycatcher
10. Great Crested Flycatcher
11. Blue Jay
12. Veery
13. Northern Waterthrush
14. Ovenbird
15. Downy Woodpecker
16. Canada Goose
17. Tree Swallow
18. Mourning Dove
19. Baltimore Oriole
20. Eastern Kingbird
21. Yellow Warbler
22. Chipping Sparrow
23. Red-eyed Vireo
24. Brown Thrasher
25. Orchard Oriole
26. Scarlet Tanager
27. Nashville Warbler
28. White-crowned Sparrow
29. Black-throated Blue Warbler
30. Gray Catbird
31. Rose-breasted Grosbeak
32. Eastern Wood Pewee
33. Lincoln’s Sparrow
34. Great Blue Heron
35. Traill’s Flycatcher
36. House Wren
37. Pine Siskin
38. Pine Warbler
39. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
40. American Redstart
41. Blackburnian Warbler
42. Killdeer
43. Red-breasted Nuthatch
44. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
45. Warbling Vireo
46. Palm Warbler
47. Lesser Scaup
48. Double-crested Cormorant
49. Herring Gull
50. Ring-billed Gull
51. Common Tern
52. Bonaparte’s Gull
53. Solitary Sandpiper
54. Ruby-throated Hummingbird
55. Barn Swallow
56. Caspian Tern
57. Yellow-shafted Flicker
58. American Goldfinch
59. Cooper’s Hawk
60. House Finch
61. Blue-winged Warbler
62. Black & White Warbler
63. Chestnut-sided Warbler
64. Northern Parula
65. Cape May Warbler
66. Yellow-rumped (Myrtle) Warbler
67. Common Yellowthroat
68. Magnolia Warbler
69. Worm-eating Warbler
70. Carolina Wren
71. Black-throated Green Warbler
72. Yellow-throated Vireo
73. Blue-headed Vireo
74. Red-bellied Woodpecker
75. Northern Harrier
76. Red-tailed Hawk
77. Eastern Towhee
78. Swamp Sparrow
79. Bank Swallow
80. Black Tern
81. Mallard
82. Eastern Bluebird
83. Kirtland’s Warbler
84. Tennessee Warbler
85. Common Nighthawk
86. American Woodcock
87. Eastern Screech Owl

Birds I am surprised I did NOT see: Brown-headed Cowbird, Song Sparrow, House Sparrow

Birds I am disappointed I didn’t see, but not surprised: Cerulean Warbler (there had been reports of one near the Visitor’s Centre), Prothonotary Warbler, Red-headed Woodpecker (also had been several near the VC in previous days)

Things I learned:

• I really quite enjoy camping alone.
• I don’t fit in with most of the types of “serious” birders I saw at the park. (At least I have a Tilley hat, although even my Tilley is weird, since it’s one of the brown hemp ones instead of the typical beige.)
• Point Pelee is super awesome but you couldn’t PAY me to go there on a weekend during migration. As it was, during the week, the people very nearly outnumbered the birds.
• I’m really glad I’m not a bird and/or nature photographer, because those massive lenses and tripods look really heavy. Some people had CARTS they were pushing around the trails, to carry all their gear!
• I can find and identify songbirds really well. In fact, I think I annoyed the evening hike’s guide a little bit by finding, ID’ing and pointing out all the warblers for the group faster than he was. Oops.
• Having said that, I am completely hopeless at anything that’s not a songbird. I need to get better.

Overall: that was a super fun trip but I’ve never birded so hard for such an extended period of time before! I’ll be very happy to go back to my casual, non-list-keeping style of birding.

Thanks for reading, and once again here’s a link to my donation page!

Second weekend of spring banding is done! Saturday was an interesting day, we did an officially-sponsored public banding demonstration. I think around 20 people showed up, but we caught only 12 or 13 birds, and about half of those came BEFORE the people showed up for the demonstration.

Yellow Warbler, being shown to the people gathered for the demonstration.

Despite not catching many birds, I still managed to get two new species for my “birds banded” list: a Lincoln’s Sparrow, and Brown-Headed Cowbird.

Lincoln’s Sparrow

I had to leave a little early to head to New Hamburg, since I was already late for the 9am rehearsal for Fiddler!

Sunday was another lovely-weather day, which didn’t bode well for catching migrants. I arrived just a tiny bit too late to go on the net-opening round, so I listened to the birds in the pre-dawn as I sat at the table and waited. Loved the sound of wild turkeys gobblin’ it up somewhere in the distance, and admired the small herd of deer that passed close by. Lots of birds were singing, but I was actually able to identify all the songs I heard, which means that none of the singers were migrating warblers!

Once the nets were open, each round brought in just a few birds. We caught a White-Crowned Sparrow, which was another new bird for my species list, so that’s nice. Near the end of the morning, we witnessed the most adorably cute bit of Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher drama: we caught a female in the net, and what was obviously her mate was hanging around having a little freakout in the nearby trees. Totally heartbreaking! But they were happily reunited later on, the female with a nice new bit of bling. We also heard an Orchard Oriole singing (and some other folks spotted him, and got some nice photos) as well as a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. There was also an Eastern Kingbird hanging around. Nice to see them back for the spring!

Things I learned: I despair of ever being able to actually learn to age these birds. Especially sparrows. It’s so hard. And Red-Winged Blackbirds can bite hard enough to draw blood. Also, getting up at 4:45am on Saturday and Sunday while still trying to live a normal life during the rest of the week (and weekend) which includes the run-up to production week for a major show is hard. Next weekend (which is actually show weekend) should be…interesting. Heh.

After we closed up the empty nets for the morning, we got down to the serious business of the day: beer sampling.

The morning’s beer selection.

I brought some Garbage Pail Ale from Mount Breithaupt Brewery for people to try, and they seemed to like it. Hopefully some of Banquo’s Pilsner is properly carbonated by next weekend. Hopefully the weather is a bit better for bird-catching next weekend too!

I was super excited to head out this morning for my first day of spring bird banding! Well, I wasn’t super excited when my alarm clock went off well before dawn, but once I woke up, things were a little better.

This season I am joining Kevin Grundy (and others) to do some banding on the weekends at the rare Charitable Research Reserve in Blair, near Cambridge. It’s good to be able to be living at home and still do some banding, even if it’s only on the weekends. The weather was co-operating, and it was going to be a lovely day! They had been out yesterday, but I was unable to join them because I was busy with the Bloomin’ Earth show in downtown Kitchener. We didn’t catch very many birds today, but I got to band some American Goldfinches and a couple of Song Sparrows. They had banded an American Woodcock just before I got there! I guess I was a bit too slow.

House Wren

Frosty Morning

Tools

Swamp Sparrow

Ladybug Plays A Game

I’m looking forward to next weekend. Assuming the weather is okay, we’re going to be doing a rare-sponsored bird banding demonstration, so that should be pretty neat.

So we all know I’m a big Bird Nerd. Well, this year I’ve decided to try to use some of those birding skills to actually raise money to benefit some bird conservation organizations. I’m participating in the 2013 Baillie Birdathon!

Support me in the 2013 Baillie Birdathon!

Clicking that lovely photo above will take you to my personal donation page at the Bird Studies Canada website, where you can pledge money online. You can pledge a single amount, or you can pledge per-species! (If you want to pledge per-species, please contact me directly – you can still donate online in this case, but your donation will have to be made AFTER I complete the Birdathon in May.)  If you don’t want to donate online, just contact me and you can donate directly! You can email me at ecmoffat at gmail dot com. All donations of $10 or more will receive a charitable donation receipt for income tax purposes.

What is the Baillie Birdathon?

Bird Studies Canada’s (BSC’s) Baillie BIRDATHON is the oldest sponsored bird count in North America. It’s also a great excuse to spend a day birding!

Where does the money go?

Raising money for the Baillie BIRDATHON is a great way to have fun while supporting bird conservation across Canada. The funds raised go to:

• Bird Studies Canada, to support the many programs that advance the understanding, appreciation, and conservation of wild birds and their habitats.
• Local conservation organizations. BIRDATHON participants can designate groups such as naturalists’ clubs or Canadian Migration Monitoring Network stations to receive a share of the revenue. In my case, I will be directing this portion of my funds raised to the Haldimand Bird Observatory.
• The Baillie Fund, which provides funds for conservation projects, with priority to those involving volunteer naturalists. Since its inception in 1976, the Baillie Fund has awarded grants to approximately 500 bird conservation and research projects in Canada.
• Students at Canadian universities who apply for the annual $1,000 James L. Baillie Student Research Award.

Going to write this up real quick…yesterday afternoon I headed back to Rock Point to (hopefully) take part in some Northern Saw Whet Owl banding. Unfortunately the weather conditions were quite windy all night, and we spent every net round picking millions of leaves out of the nets instead of owls. We did catch ONE little owl, but it was a recapture, so I didn’t get to band one. But I was still happy to be able to handle the bird and see it up close in all its super-cuteness! They really are adorable. Pictures!

Northern Saw Whet Owl, looking so pretty!

Northern Saw Whet Owl, looking SO CUTE!!!!

They’re so soft and fluffy. Except for the talons, they’re pretty pointy. I’ve got some new holes in my thumb that weren’t there before!

I hung around for part of the morning banding session and managed to snag two new species for my list, a Slate Coloured Junco and a Brown Creeper. Here they are!

Brown Creeper

Slate Coloured Junco

And now, because I basically haven’t slept in ~30 hours and have done a ridiculous amount of driving in that time, I’m going to bed.

This is it. Final post. Time to wrap up! I write this from my office at home, having returned to Kitchener for good yesterday afternoon. It’s been an amazing summer! I learned so much. Mist netting, net extraction, bird handling and banding, bird ID and age/sex determination (fall warblers are still hard!), trailer living, owl prowling! I want to give a big thanks to everyone at the Rock Point Bird Banding Station for having me around and teaching me all they knew. I’ll be back there again sometime, even if it’s just for a short visit. Soon, hopefully…they’ll be banding Saw Whet Owls later in October and I want to get in on some of that action!

So where does a Bird Nerd go from here? For now, I need to change focus and work hard on the pre-Art-Walk and pre-Christmas-on-Etsy prep for my glass art business. I have lots of lost time to make up for! I’ve also got some theatre projects in the works that will keep me VERY busy between now and February. But in the Spring, hopefully I will be doing a bit of banding closer to home. This blog will be pretty quiet until then, but I expect I’ll take it up again later on, even if it’s just to post the occasional picture.

Thanks for following my Bird Nerd Adventures! It’s been fun.

Field guide? Pfft, I don’t need no stupid field guide.
(Unless it’s a shorebird. Or a gull. Or…a wader, or a duck. Or a hawk? Or… )

Sharp Shinned Hawk (juvenile male) staring down the camera!

Well!! For  a super crazy slow day (we banded a mere 14 birds today, and I did only 2 of them myself) we had one bird that was pretty exciting! I’m bummed that I missed out on extracting this guy from the net because I’d really like to see and/or try it myself, but I got to band him! That was pretty great. Any day where I can hold a hawk AND a hummingbird in the same morning is a good day.

I think he’s part of the reason it was so quiet in the netting area today, actually. We saw him (or maybe some of his buddies) hanging around pretty much all morning, both before and after we banded him.

Been busy lately! So busy I haven’t had a lot of time to take pictures, but here are a few…

Wood Thrush

Red Breasted Nuthatch

White Throated Sparrow (Tan Morph)

Today in particular was quite busy, we banded 89 birds which is a new daily record for the season. We’ve been seeing Yellow-Rumped Warblers and a couple of White Throated Sparrows (like the one pictured above) which are sort of harbingers of the end of the season. Soon we’ll be seeing juncos and kinglets? I hope so, because I love juncos and kinglets.

We had a family come visit the station yesterday with a little girl who really liked the birds! Every time we showed her a little birdie she grinned and said, “More!”

…fall warblers are hard!

Had a few little birdies today that caused much debate and page-flipping in books! It’s so nice to have the luxury of holding the bird and being able to examine it from every angle. Some of these guys would be pretty impossible to identify with only a fleeting glimpse through binoculars! But of course we have to ID every bird with 100% certainty before we can band it, AND determine its age and sex! Anyway, we had 47 birds today. Lots and lots of Red-Eyed Vireos. Have I mentioned that I have grown to hate those things? I mean, I don’t REALLY hate them, but I sure hate taking them out of the net. They bite, they fight, and they spend so much time trying to eat your face that they end up with lots of net in their mouths, and inevitably get tongue-tied, which sucks. For some reason this doesn’t happen with chickadees, even though they are nasty biters too.

My back was doing better this morning than I’d expected, which was great. But as I write this, I’m lying on my bed feeling pretty sore. Hopefully I feel ok tomorrow morning too, and then I’m hoping I can get Saturday off without leaving them short. We’ll see. To cheer myself up, here’s a chickadee picture, because I like chickadees and I haven’t posted one for a while. Also a pretty green praying mantis that paid us a visit.

Black-Capped Chickadee. So cute!

Praying Mantis. So pretty!

Yesterday’s banding was cancelled due to the threat of impending doom (rainy weather) which didn’t actually materialize until pretty much after we would have closed the nets anyway. So that’s too bad that we wasted the morning, but I decided that instead of sitting around at the trailer, I’d hop in the car and head for Niagara Falls. And because I’m a big bird nerd, a visit to the Falls inevitably means a visit to the Aviary! Their “small bird room” is one of my favourite places. I sat in there for quite a while, and because it was a weekday, there were not many people coming through. There were even stretches of time where I was the only person in there. So nice! Here are some pics of a few birds at the Aviary…

African Grey Parrot, having a good time preening.

Some sort of little finchy-type bird. He was pulling at the string tied around the plant stem, and being super cute!

Scarlet Ibis? I think?

I have no idea what kind of bird this is, but he is really really pretty!

So today’s banding was a very wet morning following yesterday’s rain. I managed to start my day with a really hard fall on the slippery boardwalk. I’m not permanently damaged, but I’ve spent the rest of the day hobbling around with a really sore back, and I’m not looking forward to tomorrow morning. As for the birds, we had 37 (an average day) but I managed to get one new birdie for my species-banded list: a Nashville Warbler.

And now I am going to take my poor battered and bruised body to bed!