James Bay - short summary and photos

Earlier this month, I was given the opportunity to help w/ a Red Knot study on the James Bay Coast: 2 weeks in a remote camp counting shorebirds. So rewarding and a study I would love to take part in again. Many thanks to Mark Peck of the ROM for the opportunity and Christian Friis of Canadian Wildlife Service for arranging my safe arrival and departure to the project. Also many thanks to the Moose Cree First Nation for renting our their camps for the study and their support of the project.

Major highlights:

- Having a Gray Wolf walking unbelievably close to Mark P. and I at the end of our 20k walk from Little Piskwamish Camp to the Longridge Camp. I will never forget that moment.

- A family of Beluga Whales with two adults and one juvenile at Beluga Bay. I spent many days scanning for Belugas so it was such a reward to get relatively close looks of them just off the coast.

- A huge flock of White-rumped Sandpipers flying and separating around me so that I could hear their wingbeats as I was surrounded.

- Successfully reading the tags of Red Knots and seeing 250+ birds in a single day.

- The sense of accomplishment of finishing the 20km walk from Little Piskwamish to Longride with Mark P. even though I had an injured knee and terrible heal sores.

- Seeing my first Sharp-tailed Grouse from the Polar Bear Express as it perched on the hydro wires next to the tracks.

- A spectacular show of Northern Lights. Huge sheets of green waving and shifting across the sky looking like a portal into another universe. I literally gasped.

I wanted to share a few of my pictures on my blog from the trip as well.

 Our helicopter into camp. My first helicopter ride.

 The gorgeous James Bay Coast at low tide. You could get kilometers away from shore and still be in shallow water. The feeling of total isolation is amazing.

 Our study bird, the Red Knot. We were getting counts on adults versus juveniles and also tracking banded birds.

 The Gray Wolf. A truly beautiful moment.

 Another example of the coast. 

 Hudsonian Godwit juvenile - one of 3 new year birds for my 300 year. I came back from James Bay sitting at 299. 

The Team:

 Left to right: Mark Peck, Alex Howard, Aus Taverner, myself, Mark Field, and Greg Stuart.

 When wildlife entered the camp, the cameras came out.

One of my favourite mornings. So quiet and calm and those colours spilling over the horizon.

 View of the coast from the chopper ride back to Moosonee. We flew over flocks of Sandhill Cranes, Canada Geese, and Snow Geese.

Sunset while riding the Polar Bear Express.

Our Big Little Sit at Delaurier

On Thursday evening, Marianne suggested we do a Big Sit at Delaurier parking lot in Point Pelee on Friday morning. The weather report called for north winds, useless for jaegars or Sabine's Gulls at the tip, so Marianne thought it'd be cool to do something completely different. I'm glad she did.

A Big Sit is where you park your keister onto a Muskoka (or lawn) chair and let the hours pass by, recording every bird you see or hear. You'll want good company, a notebook or the eBird BirdLog app for keeping track (+ a cell charger cause the app sucks the battery life from your phone like a starved lamprey on a succulent Yellow Perch), sunscreen/hat, etc., food, bins/scope/camera, and a cooler of beer to really get some interesting sightings (we of course could not have an obvious cooler of beer sitting there since we were in a national park...we brought flasks*).


*we did not actually consume alcohol.

We began our Big Sit at 8am, enough sleeping in to recover from my hangover (ok, I promise that's my last joke about alcohol...I'm 10 characters away from an intervention here). We sat until 12:30pm, a total of 4.5 hours. Big Sits are usually a day-long affair but we decided to go for just a morning Sit. The day started off pretty well with flyover flocks of Pine Siskins, American Goldfinch, and House and Purple Finch. (Totals: PISI - 29, AMGO - 30, HOFI - 5, PUFI - 8).

Lots of blackbirds flying over with 3 Red-wings identified and 2 Brown-headed cowbirds w/ flocks of unidentifieds totaling 150 (conservative). The highest count for the day was European Starlings w/ a total of 1,495 birds. Next highest was of course Blue Jays, which are in full-force migration right now. We counted 690 birds but there were likely more. One thing that is difficult about doing a Big Sit at Point Pelee is that the peninsula funnels migrants (hawks and passerines) toward the lake and many turn around and fly back north, complicating counts to a degree since you don't always know if you're counting the same flocks over and over again! Our general rule was we counted birds flying south but not north.

As the morning went on, raptor flights started to pick up. Highest count was Turkey Vulture w/ 35 birds followed by Sharp-shinned Hawks - 28. Other raptor totals: Bald Eagle - 6, Red-tailed Hawk - 16, Northern Harrier - 10, Broad-winged Hawk - 4, Cooper's Hawk - 2, and American Kestrel - 2.

iScoped Instagram of a Sharp-shinned Hawk perched near Delaurier parking lot. This individual had a Northern Flicker and Blue Jays really riled up.

Close to our Sit end, Marianne stood up from her chair as a corvid approached. It was large, soaring, had a wedge-shaped tail...this was looking good for raven, a difficult bird to get for the Pelee Birding Circle. There are few records in Pelee since the 70's so we were excited when the bird flew directly overhead confirming Common Raven. This was a new species for my Pelee list so I was excited at the sighting. It flew over us heading south and not long after flew back north, calling. 

I was quite pleased w/ our count of Chimney Swifts, which were migrating south in good numbers. We counted a total of 59 birds just in the morning. We ended up w/ 29 Tree Swallows and a single late migrating Barn Swallow though I see from eBird that they are still being seen throughout southwestern Ontario. I wonder who will have the late date for BARS in Pelee?

Other #'s: 

Canada Goose - 15

Mallard - 2

Wild Turkey - 3

Double-crested Cormorant - 12

Great Blue Heron - 1

Sandhill Crane - 2

Killdeer - 10

Greater/Lesser Yellowlegs - 1

Ring-billed Gull - 8

Herring Gull - 1

Belted Kingfisher - 1

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - 2

Northern Flicker - 4

Downy Woodpecker - 2

Eastern Phoebe - 2

Horned Lark - 1

Black-capped Chickadee - 1

Red-breasted Nuthatch - 4

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - 1

Golden-crowned Kinglet - 2

American Robin - 4

Gray Catbird - 1

Brown Thrasher - 1

Cedar Waxwing - 17

Yellow-rumped Warbler - 3

Song Sparrow - 1

White-throated Sparrow - 1

Dark-eyed Junco - 11

Rose-breasted Grosbeak - 1

iScoped Instagram of an Eastern Phoebe perched on a dead tree in the fields just south of the Delaurier parking lot.

Someday I'd like to do a Big Sit right at the end of Point Pelee and see what the day brings.

Later in the afternoon, we headed back to Marianne's place for lunch where we found a lifer for me, an "Eastern" or "Yellow" Palm Warbler. It had a bright yellow wash down its front, especially around its belly. Its throat was yellow and the supercilium was yellow as well. We found it w/ 2 other "Western" Palms so had a good comparison of the extent of yellow. This was my favourite bird of the day and one of many new lifers for my year. 

300

On September 23th, I hit a milestone in my birding career when I saw a Red Phalarope at the tip of Point Pelee. This species took my year list for Ontario to 300, my personal goal I set out to do in February of this year.

I hate to sound pretentious but this, of course, means that I will now be a complete superstar, a celebrity birder joining the ranks of the ornithological A-list, and yes, let's be honest here...become world renowned. I have no doubt that I will be signing a contract later this week for a new hit reality series on birding and polishing an Emmy by next year.

**crickets chirping**....

In all seriousness though, It's been an exciting year and hitting 300 was a great accomplishment for me, something I thought I'd be struggling to do in December. So to hit my target in September and still have a few months to add additional species feels pretty good and makes all the traveling and expenses worthwhile.

I couldn't have asked for a better experience for my 300th bird. Steve Pike, Marianne Reid, Blake Mann, Michael Agueci, myself, and a group of other birders all arrived at the tip to see a group of Sanderlings running along the beach at the end of the tip trail. Steve called out that there was a phalarope with them and while eyes were getting on the bird, he called it Red. The consensus was quick. My heart was pounding and after observing the bird long enough to identify it to species myself, I turned to the group and said, "Guys, I just hit 300."

In the time it took for my eyelids to complete half of a blink, Steve had glomped* me 10 feet into the ground, making me wish I hit 300 more often. Marianne and I then screamed incoherencies at each other and embraced, surprisingly not scaring the phalarope away. Though I didn't see their faces, I imagine the rest of the birders at the Tip looked on with expressions of horror and incredulity.

* v, to glomp

- A glomp is often preadatory and lies somewhere in the grey area between a caring embrace, and a flying leap to tackle someone (sic) - Urban Dictionary

We didn't have to worry about being loud since this had to have been the tamest Red Phalarope on the planet. It was on the sand, which was already surprising (my last Red Phalarope was a distant bird on the lake disappearing behind waves), but as we watched it, the darn thing walked within about 15 feet of us! Later, when Steve was photographing the bird while sitting in the sand, it was within not much more than a meter of his camera. I can't wait to see those shots.

Every new bird from now to the end of the year will be icing on the cake. I would like to try for 305 if I had to set a realistic goal but some optimistic folks think I should push for 310. The birder in me says, "Come on! Go for it! Go for 310, YOLO!" but my bank account says, "Get a job, you idiot." Time will tell.