Saturday, November 17, 2012

Delaurier Big Sit

Although I had to work this afternoon, I still made it to Pelee for the morning and did a Big Sit w/ Marianne at the Delaurier parking lot. I'm really starting to enjoy these sits. On a north wind, it's a great way to just stay in one spot and wait and see what flies over. We've had good success each time we've tried it.

Though there was a Cave Swallow seen at the Tip this morning just before I was leaving the park, I was still very happy to get 2 new birds for my Point Pelee list. They were Bohemian Waxwing and Red Crossbill, both of which were flyovers and seen by the 4 of us who were observing (Mike Tate and Bob Cermak joined us for a couple hours of the Sit). We also had a number of Common Redpolls, White-winged Crossbills, Pine Siskins, and American Goldfinches. Birds we hoped for but didn't get included Pine Grosbeak (long shot) and Evening Grosbeak. As I'm writing this, I see that Mike Tate posted our sightings to Ontbirds, which I'm happy about since Pelee gets under-reported this time of year even though it's a great place to be birding!

It was a chilly start and foggy (like pea soup fog) but once the sun broke up the haze, we had a decent day w/ bursts of birds flying over followed by periods of lulls where nothing seemed to be moving. Great day of catching up w/ two awesome Ottawa birders, having laughs w/ Marianne, and getting a good count of winter finches for Pelee.

Below is our eBird list from this morning as well as a smaller list from the beach at Pioneer. When we heard about the Cave Swallow at the west beach at the Tip, we tried the beach across from Delaurier to see if we'd be lucky getting a flyby...no such luck. I'll almost certainly be out again on Monday looking for the last remaining Cave Swallows in Ontario.

Delaurier list:  http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S12061436

Pioneer list: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S12061478

Instagram of Delaurier parking lot when we arrived. Beautiful morning.

Finally, here's a link to Marianne's blog post on our morning over at The Pelee Chickadee:  http://peleechickadee.blogspot.ca/2012/11/birding-in-morning-at-delaurier-parking.html

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the new Pelee birds, Jeremy!