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Since returning from my recent tour of Colombia's central Andes in March I have been getting back into the birding scene locally in southern Ontario. The last few weeks have been especially birdy and a wide range of species have been reported across the province. April and May is the most wonderful time of the year, indeed.  Bufflehead - Tommy Thompson Park, City of Toronto, Ontario One of the most exciting aspects of birding for me personally (and, I would argue, for a high percentage of birders) is the chance to see a rare bird. The spring rarity season gets going sometime in early to mid April and continues until early June. And due to the large influx of new birders over the last few years, more and more rare birds are reported each year. I've been fortunate to find several of these rarities this spring, while I have also chased additional rarities found by others.  Tufted Duck - Erieau pier, Chatham-Kent, Ontario In early April I had the opportunity to chase two rarities in Hamilton, both of which I had never seen locally before. The first was a Barnacle Goose found by Sarah Koeppe just east of the city. This is an Eurasian species that has appeared more and more frequently in the northeast, and Ontario now sees several records each year. Most of these are birds traveling with large Canada Geese flocks in eastern Ontario, but the occasional individual ends up further west, like this one in Hamilton. The bird was a little distant for good photos, but you take what you can get! While there has been a trend in recent years for Ontario's Barnacle Geese records to be accepted as wild birds, there is always the chance that this one originated in captivity, especially since it wasn't traveling with a large flock of migrant Canada Geese. We will see what the Ontario Bird Records Committee decides when they vote on this record.  Barnacle Goose - City of Hamilton, Ontario The second Hamilton rarity was a Loggerhead Shrike found by Ezra Campanelli about ten days later, only a few kilometres from the Barnacle Goose's location. I managed good scope views of this bird but it ducked back down into the long grass before I could manage a photo. Still, a great bird to see in my area! Loggerhead Shrikes breed in a couple of places in southern Ontario, including the Napanee Plain and Carden Alvar, but the population is only a few dozen pairs. Very occasionally one is seen elsewhere in southern Ontario during the migration season. Switching gears from rare birds for a moment. Early spring is such a dynamic time of year and there is so much new life in the natural world with each passing day. One of my favourite spectacles is the mass breeding events of our local salamander species. It had been a few years since I had seen this, mainly because I have been out of the country on birding trips during March, but this year Laura and I made it out to the ponds for a night in early April. We made it a date night - a lovely dinner at an excellent restaurant in Cambridge, followed by a change of clothes and a night out at the ponds!  It was a cool evening with temperatures in the single digits and projected to reach close to the freezing mark, but salamander activity in the ponds was still high shortly after sunset.  Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) - Waterloo Region, Ontario As we slowly waded in the shallows of a vernal pond near Cambridge, our flashlights periodically caught the striking pattern of a Spotted Salamander lying motionless on the bottom. During warm nights their activity is much higher, with the salamanders moving frenetically as the males eagerly attempt to woo a female. Sometimes, "mating balls" of multiple males and a single female can be observed; a hypnotic dance in the watery depths.  Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) - Waterloo Region, Ontario American Woodcocks performed their iconic displays overhead as Laura and I moved between ponds. We kept finding Spotted Salamanders and located a few Blue-spotted Salamanders as well; they were heavily outnumbered by the Spotted Salamanders. Also of note were several Eastern Newts patrolling the ponds. These semi-aquatic salamanders often feast on the eggs of Spotted and Blue-spotted Salamanders, of which there were many clusters that had been laid on vegetation below the water's surface. Laura apprehended one of the newts for a few photos before releasing it back into the icy water.  Eastern Newt (Notophthalmus viridescent) - Waterloo Region, Ontario The final highlight was a Four-toed Salamander that I found resting on some leaves floating on the water's surface. This is a sphagnum moss specialist; in April, females lay their eggs deep inside a cluster of sphagnum lining a wetland. Presumably, this individual was on its way to do just that, though the middle of this vernal pond was a strange location to see a Four-toed. I typically think of them as a largely terrestrial species.  Four-toed Salamander (Hemidactylium scutatum) A few days after our salamander escapades, I hit the road and drove down to the Rondeau area to look for another rare bird - this time, a Tufted Duck. Much like the Barnacle Goose from earlier in this post, the Tufted Duck is also a vagrant from Eurasia. This species seems to appear on the east coast of North America rather frequently and there are usually one or two records a year in southern Ontario. This one was discovered at the Erieau pier/marina by Garry Sadler and it hung around for quite a while, allowing many birders to see this rarity.  Tufted Duck - Erieau pier, Chatham-Kent, Ontario While I had seen Tufted Ducks a few times previously in the province I had never managed a really good photo of one, and so that was my goal on this sunny, cold early April day. I ran into several young birders; Markus Legzdins and Alex Skevington, and together we found the Tufted Duck loosely associating with some Lesser Scaup. The sun was at the right angle and the birds were not too distant, allowing me a chance at the photos I had envisioned.  Tufted Duck and Lesser Scaup - Erieau pier, Chatham-Kent, Ontario For me, the "money shot" was when it quickly flapped its wings after a few successful dives for mollusc prey.  Tufted Duck - Erieau pier, Chatham-Kent, Ontario I will finish this post with some highlights from a two-day private tour I led for a birder, Chung Cheong, from Singapore who was in southern Ontario for work and had a few extra days free for some birding. On our first day, I picked him up from his hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake and we had an excellently productive day of birding in Niagara and Hamilton before I dropped him off at his hotel. The day began with a few unusual sightings - first, a leucitic American Robin that flew across the road in front of the car (it took me a second to figure out what the robin-sized, frosty bird was!), and then, a rare Forster's Tern flying along the Niagara River near the Queenston docks. This is a regular rarity in Niagara with usually a couple of records each spring.  American Robin (leucistic) - Niagara-on-the-Lake, Niagara Region, Ontario Owls are usually high on people's wish lists, and it was no different for Chung Cheong. Given the time of year most species had already flown north, but one that we had good chances at was the Great Horned Owl. I had a nest with young staked out and they performed beautifully for us.  Great Horned Owl - Niagara Region, Ontario The Grimsby Lagoons produced many new birds for the day including a locally rare Common Gallinule and some Eastern Meadowlarks. We finished the day at Valley Inn in Burlington where good photographic opportunities abounded. A first-of-season Osprey carrying a Yellow Perch was a nice way to finish off the day.  Dark-eyed Junco - Burlington, Halton Region, Ontario For our second day together, Chung Cheong and I focused on some sites within the City of Toronto. The morning was calm and sunny; gorgeous conditions for a long walk out on Tommy Thompson Park.  Tree Swallow - Tommy Thompson Park, City of Toronto, Ontario As we approached Cell 1, we noticed several Wood Ducks floating around and so we repositioned ourselves so that the sun was at our backs. This was one of Chung Cheong's big photographic targets and so we locked in on the ducks.  Wood Ducks - Tommy Thompson Park, City of Toronto, Ontario I noticed a smallish cormorant perched on some woody debris and snapped a few photos. Something about this cormorant seemed off for Double-crested Cormorant (our only species locally), and I considered the possibility of Neotropic Cormorant, a rarity in southern Ontario. I wasn't sure at the time and didn't look at the photos closely enough, though in the back of my mind I knew I needed to revisit the photos later on a computer screen. We were distracted by all the ducks and the cormorant was forgotten.  Blue-winged Teals - Tommy Thompson Park, City of Toronto, Ontario The rest of our birding was great - we found over 50 bird species at Tommy Thompson including a Northern Harrier and many other spring migrants like Savannah Sparrow, Horned Grebe and Red-necked Grebe. We also stopped by High Park and Colonel Samuel Smith Park, adding several lifers to Chung Cheong's list. I dropped him off at Toronto's Pearson International Airport after a very successful two days of birding.  Northern Harrier - Tommy Thompson Park, City of Toronto, Ontario Two days later, I saw a message on Discord (the messaging app we use to report rare birds in Ontario) from Nate Klassen about a Neotropic Cormorant that he had just found at Tommy Thompson Park. Suddenly the thought of the suspicious small cormorant came back to me, and I rushed to my computer to upload the photos. Sure enough, upon closer inspection it was the same bird, an immature Neotropic Cormorant. Full credit to Nate for finding this bird independently and identifying it correctly in the field. It was a good lession in humility as a birder and to closely scrutinize every bird at the time. As someone who has been an experienced birder for quite a while, I often say that the difference between a new birder and an experienced birder is that the experienced birder has misidentified more birds. The Neotropic Cormorant was a new bird species for Tommy Thompson's all time list, number 324 all-time. Fortunately, the cormorant hung around for a couple of weeks, allowing many other birders to see it and add it to their lists, so there was no harm/no foul for my blunder.  Neotropic Cormorant - Tommy Thompson Park, City of Toronto, Ontario
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Last week, I drove down Highway 401 from where I reside in Hamilton to Ontario's Carolinian Zone in the far south of the province. Despite the extensive deforestation in this region, the small pockets of remaining forest, wetland and grassland contain some of the highest biodiversity in the province. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I have been starting to delve into the world of Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and this trip would provide me with an opportunity to search for a handful of species that I had never seen before. I also had high hopes for a night of moth trapping somewhere in the Ojibway Prairie. The total length of my trip was just a bit longer than 24 hours, but I made the most of it and came away with some exciting discoveries.  Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) - Ojibway Prairie Complex, Essex County, Ontairo The months of May, June, and July are always the busiest for me, and 2024 was no exception. As someone who earns their living as a field biologist, it makes intuitive sense that field work is most readily available during these spring and summer months. Birds are nesting, frogs are calling, snakes are active, and a dizzying diversity of vascular plants and insects can be readily found. My work incorporates all of these taxa, and as such, I have had a very busy few months of fieldwork. At one point I worked for 57 consecutive days, a personal best.  American Black Duck - Mount Uniacke, Hants County, Nova Scotia As the calendar flipped to August I was ready for a mini vacation. Don't get me wrong, I love the type of work that I do, but I was looking forward to a bit of a break as well as some naturalizing opportunities on my own time. Laura and I planned to do a quick five day trip at the start of August to Nova Scotia where her parents live. I used to visit Nova Scotia with Laura every summer and every Christmas season, but I haven't been out there during the summer months since 2017.  American Toad - Mount Uniacke Estate, Hants County, Nova Scotia As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I split my time this spring between Pelee Island and various birding hotspots on the north shore of Lake Erie (Point Pelee, Rondeau, Long Point). Pelee Island holds a special place in my heart as I went on several childhood camping trips there with my grandparents, and these trips were instrumental in fostering my love of snakes. After going over twelve years between visits to Pelee Island, I finally returned in the spring of 2022. Normally I spend most of May at Point Pelee, but I was becoming a little disillusioned with how busy the park had become during the Festival of Birds, and I was hoping to escape the crowds and really focus on the birds. I have returned in the two springs since. This year I spent five nights on the island. Not nearly enough time mind you, but it was great to get away for a few days.  Pelee Island sunset May is the most wonderful time of year here in the Great Lakes region, if you are a birder, that is. The first three weeks of May are when the largest quantities of Neotropical migrant birds appear in Ontario, eager to reach their breeding grounds to create the next generation of their species, after spending the previous half-year at their winter homes in the Caribbean, Central America, the Andes and the Amazon basin. As I write this it is May 20. We are a touch past the peak of spring migration, but many millions of birds are still winging their way north each night, and will continue to do so for several more weeks. Spring migration can continue to June 10 or even later, with the stragglers including things like cuckoos, flycatchers, and several warbler species like Blackburnian, Magnolia, Blackpoll and Wilson's to name a few.  Magnolia Warbler - Point Pelee National Park It has been a little while since my last update, but I can assure you that I am alive and well! I had a busy winter of travel interspersed with some quality time back home in Hamilton, Ontario. For the month of February, my wife Laura and I ventured to northern Peru. We rented a vehicle for the first 17 days and completed a big loop in the northwest, followed by a flight to Iquitos where we spent around 10 days in the Amazon at three separate lodges. The trip was amazing with innumerable highlights, and I have been posting daily blog posts on my travel blog.  Royal Sunangel Since my latest post, I have done a little bit of wandering here and there in search of birds. Though - to be fair - I haven't done much actual birdwatching. Instead, I have been on a few rare bird twitches. In recent weeks, I have taken advantage of the poor weather and lack of sunlight by staying inside and chipping away at the to-do list. I just haven't had much motivation at all to go look for birds; after Indonesia and Ecuador, walking around Hamilton in the cold and the rain and not seeing much just hasn't seemed that enticing. My work schedule has filled up as well, leaving not as much free time for the birds.  Townsend's Solitaire - Point Pelee National Park, Essex County But, as is typical at this time of year, unusual birds have been reported on numerous occasions, and some have been too tempting to ignore. On November 29, a birdwatcher named Julie Belliveau discovered a very out-of-range Fieldfare in her front yard in Sturgeon Falls, Nipissing District. Fieldfare is a Eurasian species of thrush, one that I had seen previously in the UK and Turkey. It is a rare but consistent vagrant to the east coast (and occasionally the west coast) of North America, with Atlantic Canada receiving the bulk of the records. Ontario had three previous records of Fieldfare, from the years 1967, 1975 and 1981. Since it had been 42 years, this Fieldfare caused a bit of pandemonium.
It has been a busy autumn for me. Field work had occupied my time all summer and by September, I was off to Indonesia to lead a birding tour of Sulawesi and Halmahera for Quest Nature Tours. I was home for a couple of weeks and then off again, this time to Ecuador to lead a tour in the Galápagos as well as to spend a week on my own afterwards, in the lower foothills of the eastern Andes. (By the way, if you want to read about these international travels, I post regularly on my travel blog Explorations Of An Ecologist, linked here). However, since my return I have been trying to get out birding every now and then.  American Black Ducks - Colonel Samuel Smith Park, Toronto Most of my wanderings have kept me local. Where Laura and I are situated in Hamilton it is only a 10 minute walk to our local park, Falkirk Woods. This park has a lot of introduced plants and human disturbance so it is not exactly an area of high ecological value, but us naturalists can find interest in just about any space, no matter how pristine or degraded. Falkirk Woods is of sufficient size that, if nothing else, it's good for a nice long walk. Since moving here in June I have been keeping track of the total species that I have documented from Falkirk Park and I am closing in on 800 species. This includes over 150 plants, over 500 insects (of which ~60% are Lepidoptera, mostly from evening mothing sessions) and around 100 vertebrates. Nothing crazy, but it has been fun to document the biodiversity in an area so close to home.
The last month and a half has been a whirlwind to say the least. Laura and I returned from Brazil on April 27, just in time for the peak of spring migration here in southern Ontario. But of course, we couldn't just drop everything and go birding as our plates had been full with other important items. Finding a rental house, for one. Becoming gainfully employed, for two. And, most importantly, reconnecting with friends and family.  Orchard Oriole - Point Pelee National Park, Essex County (May 13, 2023) As I write this now, I'm sitting in the living room of our new place in Hamilton, Ontario, sipping coffee and enjoying a furry friend on the couch beside me, as I enjoy my first day off in 22 days. Over the past six weeks, Laura and I have successfully checked off the big items on the to-do list. Both of us have found more work than we know what to do with, the house-finding mission was surprisingly easier than we had envisioned, and we are settling into the next phase of our life. But even with all of the busyness of the last little while, there was always time for birding (there always is, somehow!).
It has been a long time since I have posted on this blog! Life has been busy over the last few years in the time since I started ONshore Birding. I just wanted to provide a brief summary of the history of Onshore Birding, what I have been up to, and what plans I have in store.  Selfie at Salinas, Ecuador Back in the summer of 2019, I was working as an ecologist for an engineering company while my wife, Laura, was employed as a veterinarian. We were living in Niagara Falls at the time and planning a big life change. That summer, we quit our jobs to travel, mainly in Latin America, for around two years. We both have a love for international travel (and international birding) and this would be a great opportunity to spend a lot of time in some really amazing places. Six months in, things had been going very well. We had undertaken private Spanish lessons in Ecuador and then traveled throughout Ecuador and Colombia. Our trip to Costa Rica had just begun when the pandemic hit and we were forced to retreat back to Canada.  Empress Brilliant - Mindo, Ecuador Once it appeared that COVID-19 would not be going away quickly, our international travels were put firmly on hold and I settled back into the Ontario birding and nature scene. I decided to start ONshore Birding that autumn. Guiding had been a passion of mine for years and I had led some tours locally in Ontario. Since 2015, I had also been working part time as a tour leader for Quest Nature Tours, having led birding and nature tours to far-flung destinations such as Galápagos, Colombia, Spain and Cuba. I saw a need for guided nature tours here in Ontario, and since I had the time, I created the company, set up the website, and led a number of tours throughout the remainder of 2020 and into 2021. But by the summer of 2021, Laura and I had the opportunity to continue our travels in Latin America; to finish what we had started. Therefore, ONshore Birding went on hiatus. Laura and I have been fortunate to travel without incident in the time since, and we have explored Panama, Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand since. Currently, we are in Argentina as we push through the final leg of our adventure. Our plan is to return home by the end of April. I am excited to focus much of my time to ONshore Birding during the upcoming years!  Selfie at Parque Nacional Huascarán, Peru This spring, I will be leading a number of small group trips to several birding hot spots on the north shore of Lake Erie including Long Point, Rondeau, and Pelee Island. Unfortunately, leading these tours at Point Pelee is not in the cards this year but I hope to include Point Pelee starting in the spring of 2024. Details about the spring tours can be found here. I will have some availability for private tours as well; available dates are shown in the link, above.  Blackburnian Warbler I also have details about two June tours to Carden Alvar on the website. I will be adding additional dates to other locations for the summer and autumn of 2023.
Thank you to everyone who has joined me on a previous tour, as well as to those who have helped to spread the word about ONshore Birding. Hope to see you in the field! |
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