Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Toronto Island plans and High Park list

So I just heard news that my trip to Center Island this Saturday might be affected by a music festival going on there over the weekend. Apparently it attracts hundreds of people but it is mostly restricted to the middle island, not Ward Island or those to the east where I plan to focus my attention. I'm also starting early and the festival doesn't start until 1 so hopefully I'm not drowned out by noise. The plan is to catch an early ferry ride across the bay to Ward Island around 7am and spend the morning and early afternoon birding. Hopefully I can get a decent amount of warbler species as well as some shorebirds on the beaches...mostly, I'll just be happy to get out and bird though. Thankfully the air show was last weekend or I would have been battling noise from the ground and the sky.

Since I didn't include it in my last post on High Park, I thought I'd put it in a new post instead of editing my old one (to create the illusion of almost-daily updates ;)

Great Blue Heron (3 - 2 adults and one first year juvenile)
Green Heron (1 first summer bird *note: greenish legs, dark green wings with no white spotting as in juvenile)
Black-crowned Night-Heron (4 adults)
Mute Swan (6 - 4 adults and 2 dark juveniles)
Canada Goose (many)
Wood Duck (many - mixture of adult males in eclipse, juveniles, and females)
Mallard (many - mixture of adult males in eclipse, juveniles, and females)
Red-tailed Hawk (1 adult)
Solitary Sandpiper (2)
Ring-billed Gull (many)
Rock Pigeon (many)
Chimney Swift (3)
Belted Kingfisher (2 heard)
Downy Woodpecker (2)
Northern Flicker (1 heard)
Great Crested Flycatcher (1)
Warbling Vireo (1)
Black-capped Chickadee (many - outnumber any other woodland passerines)
Red-breasted Nuthatch (5)
White-breasted Nuthatch (1 singing male)
European Starling (many)
Magnolia Warbler (2)
Black-and-white Warbler (2 females)
American Redstart (5 - 4 females and 1 first-year male)
Wilson's Warbler (2 males)
Common Grackle (many)
American Goldfinch (many - females and males in basic plumage)
House Sparrow (many)

Total Species: only 27 (granted, there are a few common species I may have forgotten)

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