Humber Bay East / West - Long-tailed Ducks

Just thought I'd write a quick post on my first trip to Humber Bay East/West Metro Parks on Saturday. They were much smaller than I expected, but there are a few great lookouts onto Lake Ontario to scan for ducks, the majority of which were Long-tailed (about 200-300 birds would be a conservative estimate). The East and West parks are split by Mimico Creek Estuary, a marshy area that contained many Mallards, Green-winged Teal, and American Black Ducks as well as a few Bufflehead. The marshes within the park contained these species as well as a number of Gadwall, American Wigeon, Hooded Mergansers, and two single birds, a female White-winged Scoter, and a female Redhead. Also on the lake was a single Common Loon, Red-breasted Mergansers, many Bufflehead, and a few Common Goldeneyes.

For other birds, I had a flock of 6 Snow Buntings fly over, a good number of Red-breasted Nuthatches, 3 Northern Mockingbirds, 1 Belted Kingfisher, 10 Killdeer, a ton of Chickadees, a few flocks of Goldfinches, many American Tree Sparrows, 2 Yellow-rumped Warblers, and an immature Black-crowned Night-Heron hunting along the estuary. I still haven't been lucky enough to have any winter finch flocks but I'll be checking out High Park this week and some areas along the lake to try my luck.

My final counts were as follows:

Green-winged Teal - 16
Bufflehead - 30+
Killdeer - 10
American Black Duck - 11
Redhead - 1
Hooded Merganser - 39
Gadwall - 28
Mute Swan - 29
White-winged Scoter - 1
Long-tailed Duck- 200-300
Common Loon - 1
Common Goldeneye - 3
Red-breasted Meganser - 30+

The highlight was the constant, musical OW OWeLEP! calls of the Long-tailed Ducks that I could hear all morning. The lake was also extremely calm and I had great, close views of this handsome species.

Here's a short video where you can hear the Long-tailed Duck calling.