OFO Trip to Long Point / Norfolk County hotspots

Last Saturday was an incredible day. I was on call for only two canvassers through work, I knew my day was going to end at a birthday party for a dear friend, and I had the entire day to spend birdwatching with two great guys, as well as an enormous group of birders that were part of the OFO trip to Norfolk County.

eBird has made me far more aware of species abundance during particular seasons. Day lists are no longer presence/absences but now take a Christmas Bird Count-like approach of recording the number of each species in a particular area. This also ends up splitting day lists into regional/park lists. All of this is good. It makes you pay closer attention to common species, it increases your memory of parks and birding regions, and it also gives you a better idea of what can be seen in a specific area at a certain time of year in how many numbers.

Anyway, enough about the benefits of eBird. I could say other good things but I'll move on to my actual day.

We started on the road. It's pretty darn incredible how many Red-tailed Hawks you can get while driving if you just look. A while back, I was calling them out to a group of non-birders in the car and they couldn't believe how many hawks were around. It's actually pretty fun to keep a driving list...though counts quickly become an 'x' for the trip list. Do you really want to count every Canada Goose if it's not a CBC?!

Our first stop was Brantford Airport to try for Gray Partridge. This would be a lifer for me but we didn't have much time to look so we missed our first target. Oh, I was with Greg Stuart and Mark Field by the way (permission to use names granted). We then went on to the actual trip where the group met at St. Williams Nursery in Norfolk. The group was HUGE and the convoy of cars was HUGE but it still made for some good birding. I would go into detail about every stop we made but naahhhhh, I'll just give some highlights.

We had a really sweet-looking Canada Goose (hybrid? partial leucistic?). Its entire body was that of a regular CAGO but above the neck and head, usually all black on the neck and partially black on the head, the bird had a patchwork of white painted on. Boy did it stand out.

Got my first Killdeer for the year here. Also got my first Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles on the trip down. Wherever we were, there were always large flocks of Tundra Swans, one of the key target species for the trip and a sight to behold in Norfolk each early spring. Sandhill Cranes were in good numbers and we also got the third target species, Bald Eagle; two birds. The first was a 3rd? year bird with a transmitter on its back, a very interesting sighting.

Most of the areas where we expected ducks were frozen solid so the open fields were the place to look, especially where there was any standing water present. Good numbers of Redhead, Gadwall, American Black Duck, Northern Pintail, and Mallard along with Gadwall, American Wigeon, Canvasback, and (one of my favourite sightings for the day) a pair of Ring-necked Ducks.

Along the way we got Merlin and Great Blue Heron, a few Wild Turkeys, and later in the night (just before utter darkness), a single Short-eared Owl on the trip back. We were able to get it in the scope for a better look but the lighting made it fairly difficult to view. We had to be pretty patient for that guy, I tell ya. Waited for about an hour and a half in the cold and rain...only when we got back in the car did we drive by it and see it.

Passerines (including various feeder-birds) included Red-breasted and White-breasted Nuthatch, Song Sparrow, American Tree Sparrow, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco, Horned Lark in good numbers along the road, Pine Siskin, and American Robin, among others.

All in all a great trip. Wish I could have made the post more interesting but I'm going to try to update here more often this year so I wrote this quickly before going to zzzzzzzzzzzz...........