Birdathon Report – Saturday, May 23, 2009
I vaguely remember the alarm going off. It was 3:00 am on Saturday, May 23. Someone was talking about the stock market in German-accented English – I guess that’s what’s on the CBC that early in the morning.
I got up quietly so as not to wake Holly, got dressed and drove through the quiet city streets (well, quiet except for all the people I passed who were coming home from the bars). Crossing the interprovincial bridge I turned onto Autoroute 50, and headed east towards Masson and the large marshes along the shore of the Ottawa River there . It was about 4:00 am when I arrived at Marais des Laiches Est. The night was cool and calm – perfect for listening. Soon the night birds began to sing - Virginia Rail, Sora and Marsh Wren called in the cat-tails, Wilson's Snipe winnowed overhead and American Woodcock “peented” from the nearby wet fields.
From there I drove up to the Lac La Blanche area north of Buckingham. Birds are most active and vocal around dawn, so its important to find a place with a lot of habitat diversity for dawn chorus. With a mix of deciduous and coniferous forests, fields and wetlands, this area is a superb spot for finding a lot of birds in a short period of time.
As the sun rose and bird activity increased, I
spent about two hours birding along the wooded cottage roads on the north
side of the lake. Hooded Merganser,
Common Merganser, Common Loon, Blue-headed Vireo, Brown Creeper, Winter
Wren, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Hermit Thrush and Pine Siskin were all
species I got here and nowhere else later in the day.
Lac La Blanche
Warblers are a favourite group of birds amongst birders – the males are very colourful and vocal in the spring. Within a couple of hours I racked up 17 species of them, including the hard to find Northern Parula, Mourning Warbler and Canada Warbler.
I headed back south and picked up some open country birds like American Kestrel, Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Meadowlark and Bobolink in the fields and pastures north of Buckingham. Returning to the Masson marshes, I visited Marais aux Grenouillettes where I added Black Tern at their nesting colony in the marsh, a late juvenile Bald Eagle and one of the best birds of the day - a really nice Yellow-bellied Flycatcher.
I crossed the Ottawa River on the Masson-Cumberland ferry and headed south towards the Larose Forest. An unplanned detour to the Giroux Road quarry ponds was productive - there wasn't much on the ponds but I had a pair of Northern Harriers over the adjacent fields and another very lucky find - a pair of Gray Partridge in the ditch just east of the ponds. Introduced to Ontario from Hungary in the 1930’s this species is now declining around Ottawa and is especially hard to find in spring and summer.
At the Larose Forest east of Limoges, I had a small flock of striking black, yellow and white Evening Grosbeaks feeding with an equally striking pair of male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks at the feeders on the western edge of the forest. I made a few stops along the main road through the forest, but only added Alder Flycatcher to my list. Bertrand Road on the eastern edge of the forest is the only reliable place in Ottawa where Cape May Warbler breeds and I managed to track down a pair along with migrant Wilson's and Tennessee warblers that were just passing through.
I continued east towards Alfred, stopping at a
Christmas tree plantation on Worley Road near Riceville – a reliable spot
for the hard-to-find Clay-colored Sparrow.
After getting the sparrow I drove on to the Alfred Lagoons.
Yellow Warbler
These former sewage lagoons have been turned into wildlife habitat by the municipality and have a reputation amongst birders as a hotspot for ducks and other waterbirds. As usual, the Lagoons didn’t disappoint – ducks included Northern Pintail, Gadwall, Northern Shoveler, Green-winged Teal, Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Duck, Ruddy Duck, American Coot and Common Moorhen. The best birds here were 15 late lingering Snow Geese and an adult-plumaged Bonaparte's Gull. I left Alfred at about 12:30 p.m.
I spent the next few hours visiting several of eastern Ontario’s finer sewage lagoons. For those not in the know, sewage lagoons are great spots to find ducks and shorebirds due to their, um, “nutrient-rich” environment. The best of the lot was the St. Albert Lagoons, were one of the cells was drawn right down to form a large mudflat that shorebirds love. It had 200+ Least Sandpipers, 30 Semipalmated Plovers and 10 Dunlin. After some lengthy searching here I also found 2 Short-billed Dowitchers, 1 Semipalmated Sandpiper and 1 White-rumped Sandpiper in the mix.
A visit to the Embrun Sewage Lagoons added a
juvenile Tundra Swan that had been hanging around for a few weeks, as well
as a pair of Wilson’s Phalaropes.
These shorebirds are one of the few species of birds where the
females plumage is brighter than the males.
Female Wilson’s Phalarope, Embrun Lagoons
It was about 3:30 and I had to decide what to do with the remaining 5 hours of daylight. Although it entailed a lot of driving, I decided to try and fill in the holes in my list by picking up some of the harder to find birds that I had staked out over the last couple of weeks in Ottawa and West Carleton.
My plan worked out well through a combination of strategy and luck - in that most of my stake-outs were found very quickly which saved enough time for me to visit a lot of sites. At the Mer Bleue Bog, in the heat of the afternoon, neither the resident Lincoln's Sparrows nor Palm Warblers were singing, but unbelievably an Orange-crowned Warbler (a rare migrant) was, just of the east end of the boardwalk. In the grassy fields south of the Airport I quickly found Grasshopper and Vesper sparrows. One of the downtown Peregrines was sitting cooperatively on the ledge near their nest on the Crown Plaza Hotel and the Cliff Swallows were at their colony under the eaves of an old Domtar building on Victoria Island.
My next stop was Britannia Conservation Area where I hoped to pick up a number of missing species. I was again extremely lucky - I found most of the birds I was looking for - Pileated Wooodpecker, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Ruby-throated Hummingbird and Black-crowned Night-Heron very quickly. An unexpected bonus was a beautiful male Golden-winged Warbler singing in a tree just above where I parked my car – a rare sight in migration for Ottawa and my 23rd species of warbler for the day!
Now the driving started in earnest - I had only 2
hours to cover a lot of distance - but fortunately it paid off. I added Purple Martin at the Nepean Yacht
Club, Common Tern at Shirley's Bay boat launch, and Blue-winged Teal on
March Valley Road.
Wild Turkey, Marchurst Road
I waved at the Osprey on its nest on Riddell Drive, got the Red-headed Woodpecker at Constance Bay and the Eastern Towhee on the Carp Ridge. I lucked into a Wild Turkey on Marchurst Rd. and refound a Northern Rough-winged Swallow at the Huntmar Drive bridge.
As the light was fading I arrived at Burnside Pit, a large flooded gravel pit on Moodie Drive that can be a great spot for waterfowl. There was a good assortment of ducks, but nothing I didn't already have on my list.
It was getting dark, but that just meant another
chance for night birds! I drove down
to Kettles Road east of Richmond and added Whip-poor-will. The last bird of the day was a
"reliable" Barred Owl on Bleeks Road east of Munster that finally
responded after about 20 minutes to my unconvincing impression at about
10:00 pm. Tired but happy with the
day’s effort, I headed home.
Sunset near Richmond
As usual there were some missed species that I would have expected to get - notably Red-tailed Hawk, Great Horned Owl, Great Black-backed Gull, Black-billed Cuckoo and Green Heron, but that always happens on a big day.
And now the part those of you who sponsored me by the species are
waiting for – how many did I get? When I
got home and added up the total I couldn't believe it -
152 species! This is by far my best one day total, well
above my previous one day high of 145.
Thanks to you, I also managed to raise about $800 for Bird Studies
Canada and the Innis Point Bird Observatory through my birdathon sponsorships. The money will go to bird conservation
projects including monitoring and habitat conservation. A complete list of the birds I saw and heard
is attached.
Thanks once again for sponsoring me!
David
Birdathon List, May 23, 2009