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.