The Next Few Months

After graduating from my undergrad degree at the University of Waterloo I spent the majority of May birding throughout Ontario. The next 3 months will also be full of birds before I head back to school for another degree in Newfoundland (more on that in a future post!) I am now on my way to the Northwest Territories where I will be doing shorebird related work for 6 weeks!

The exact location is at the Kendall Island Bird Sanctuary:

Satellite view from the area:

For the 6 weeks I'll be joining 4 others to do nest searches, shorebird banding, among plenty of other tasks.

Some cool species that breed there are: 3 Jaeger species, Pacific & Red-throated Loons, King Eiders, Long-billed Dowitcher, Stilt Sandpiper, several other shorebird species, Snowy Owls, & Smith's Longspurs! Hopefully I'll have plenty of photos to share of all these species when I am back.

I'll be there until mid-July, so don't expect anymore blog posts. Although, Mira may feel inclined to make a post or two. After the NWT I'll be in Alberta/BC for 2 weeks, then 2 weeks of shorebird surveys on the James Bay coast - bringing me to mid/late August...

North Shore of Lake Superior - May 25 & 26

Saturday and Sunday were spent driving around the Ontario side of Lake Superior and checking in on all the communities along the way - much like the birding in Newfoundland. Unlike our northward part of the trip, it was warm and wasn't raining. So the birds weren't concentrated at the feeders.

One of our first stops was at Hurkett Cove Conservation Area. On this day there was a big birding event, with almost 100 birders converging on the area! It was the Pelee of the North!

We were told of the best spot for shorebirds and made the short walk out to the sandy spit. It's a beautiful spot where a Snowy Plover and possible Couch's Kingbird were once found nearby! This is amazing considering that it probably gets checked less than 20 times a year!

At the spit were Dunlin, Semipalmated & Least Sandpipers, Black-bellied & Semipalmated Plovers, and a Hudsonian Godwit and Greater Yellowlegs flew over.

Lapland Longspurs were hanging out with all the Dunlin and behaved just like shorebirds!

Neys Provincial Park was one of our many stops. A beautiful park where we some how missed Boreal Chickadee (a species we missed on the whole trip!)

Many tame Ruffed Grouse were in the park:

A few abandoned boats were at the rocky point, once used to move prisoners of war around the area for logging work:

A Least Chipmunk was munching on something near the boats:

American Redstarts were one of the most common species of warbler of the trip:

The lack of birds at Marathon was compensated with a beautiful blue sky and blue lake:

One of my favourite locations we visited was Pic River. This unusual camping and RV area is at the mouth of the Pic River and has many sandy dunes. The area seemed to attract many birds when we stopped here on the 21st. On the 26th it didn't have many birds. Our only Sanderling of the trip was here though:

Mike pointed out a bunch of Tiger Beetles, and I think we to find 3 species:

This first one is as of now unidentified! I thought it would be easy considering that it's relatively plain, and has a white border along the rear of the wing. Any Tiger Beetle experts out there?

Hairy-necked Tiger Beetle (Cicindela hirticollis) can be identified by the hairy-looking neck, and g-shaped marking on the shoulder:

Oblique-lined Tiger Beetle (Cicindela tranquebarica) - identified by the elongated line on the hind part of the shoulder:

Check out this Tiger Beetle guide for Ontario - there aren't many species so it's relatively easy to figure them out - even though I couldn't figure out that first one!

An obliging Spring Azure was nearby:

Day 2 in Rainy River - May 24

This was our second, and last day in the Rainy River area of Ontario. An area where several species of bird regularly breed, but are hard to find anywhere else in the province. Some specialty birds are Western Meadowlark, Marbled Godwit, Le Conte's Sparrow, Brewer's Blackbird, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, and others...

On this day we had several Western Meadowlarks singing on territory throughout the area:

After finding 1 Marbled Godwit the previous day, we were happy to find 6 more the next day.

Sandhill Cranes are relatively common throughout the area:

I was happy to get great looks of several Olive-sided Flycatchers, a species I had only heard before!

White-throated Sparrows were singing from every plot of woods:

In the afternoon on Friday we boated out to Windy Point Island, which is almost 2 km long and ranges between 200 and 10 meters wide. It is mostly a long sandy beach with marshy areas on either side. Yellow-headed Blackbirds, and our target bird, the Piping Plover have been known to breed on the island.

On the island, a small flock of shorebirds included Dunlin and Least Sandpiper:

These are all photos from that same point & shoot I mentioned in previous posts. I'm loving the results!

While I was photographing the Dunlin (above) Ken & Mike found a Piping Plover. Unfortunately, while I was walking over the bird managed to disappear. I was getting worried that I would miss it!

Luckily we re-found it not too far away and I enjoyed great looks at this endangered species:

It did a good job of camouflaging itself in the sand and rocks, can you find it:

On our way out of the Rainy River area we stopped by the sewage lagoons:

This spot, for whatever reason, attracts a lot of Wilson's Phalaropes. Our high count was over 140 birds! The females are more colourful than the males and are also polyandrous (i.e. 1 female may breed with several males), and the males incubate the eggs, meaning that the females begin their southbound migration earlier than the males, because the males must incubate and raise the chicks.

At the Emo sewage lagoons we were surprised to see 3 Soras running around in the open. All 3 let us get relatively close before making a mad dash to hide and then apparently seemed to forget what they were running away from, and continued walking around right out in the open. One bird actually made a short flight away from us, crashed into a bunch of reeds, and fell to the ground! Silly birds!

The highlight of the day was during our drive back into the boreal forest. On the highway near Atikokan we saw a lynx next to a random parking area. We quickly stopped, turned around and saw the cat slowly walk into the woods before we could get a photo. A fox was nearby barking loudly at the lynx. Apparently it had a den nearby and the lynx was not welcome!

Here's the fox half way between its summer and winter coats, with its evil eyes!