eBird Global Big Day 2021

Yesterday was eBird's annual Global Big Day, which coincides with World Migratory Bird Day. As per usual, I like to do what I can and see how many species I can see. While in a normal year I would have likely gone down to Rondeau or Pelee, in this day and age, I decided to stick right around Middlesex County, like I did last year. Throughout this pandemic I have had an increasing interest in Middlesex birding, so I figured it would be fun! My camera was acting up unfortunately, so not many photos today. 

I threw together a rough plan for the day before I went to bed on Friday, and went to sleep dreaming of the success I was hoping to find. 

I woke up around 5:00am, and after throwing some stuff in the car, was on my way. My first stop was Fanshawe Lake to get Common Merganser. I only stayed for a few minutes, but was successful with my quarry! 

By 6:00am, I arrived at Kilally Meadows in North London, which has been in the birding news as of late for a rare visitor! It has also been one of the best birding locations in the city this spring, likely in part because of its proximity to the river. 

As soon as I got out of the car, I heard a Northern Waterthrush, an excellent bird to start the day. It was one of three I found here. Several other species of birds were vocalizing, and my day list was growing by the minute!

I stopped to check a tree in which a Whip-poor-will had been hanging out for a few days, and was pleased to find it in the same spot! Day tick.

I continued on my way hiking the trails, picking up many of the typical spring birds, although it seemed much quieter than previous days. It wasn't until a couple hours in did I get my first Palm and Yellow-rumped Warblers! In all, I ended up with 15 species of warblers here, a respectable count, with highlights including Magnolia, Tennessee, Blue-winged, Black-throated Green, and American Redstart.

As for some other miscellaneous highlights, there were several Least and Great Crested Flycatchers, Warbling and Blue-headed Vireos, Veery, Hermit Thrush, Tufted Titmouse (I've had at least four in London this year so far, pretty crazy), Merlin, Common Loon, and Purple Finch. 

On my way back, I came across a group of birders, and they had the Blue Grosbeak which has been around since at least Tuesday (I'll get around to writing a post about that soon). This bird has been pretty tricky to nail down because of its secretive habits, so I was quite happy to see it on this day! I got a couple record shots, nothing to write home about.

I stuck around a bit longer to help others see the grosbeak (some of which this was their fourth attempt trying to see it—that's how elusive it is!), but was eager to carry on my way. Just as I was pulling out of the parking lot, with my sights set on heading up Thorndale way to check out some ponds, I got a call from Pete Read...he had a Black Tern at the ponds at Komoka Provincial Park! This a rare species in Middlesex County nowadays, although a few decades ago it was a bit more expected. Needless to say, plans changed, and I zipped over there about as fast as I could go without getting pulled over. 

I pulled into the parking lot at Komoka, and made my way to the back pond, where it was last seen. On the way, a pair of Trumpeter Swans flew over. This pair has been seen with some regularity in the Komoka area for the past couple months, and they appear to be attempting to breed. This may be the first breeding record for Middlesex, but don't quote me on that.

I met up with Pete, and the two of us scanned the ponds, but were unable to come up with the tern. Darn. He mentioned that perhaps it has gone over to one of the other gravel pits in the area. I didn't really feel like driving around searching them all, so out of desperation, I pointed my spotting scope towards the nearest pit, which you could just barely see from where we were standing. There was a Bonaparte's Gull flying around. Nice. Then, a couple seconds later, I saw the Black Tern! Pretty sweet county bird! It ended up sticking around all day for everyone else to enjoy.

I took a more leisurely walk back to the car, and picked up such birds like Eastern Bluebird, Grasshopper Sparrow, Mute Swan, Double-crested Cormorant, and Eastern Meadowlark. By the time I finished up in Komoka, I was sitting around 90 species for my day list. 

My next stop was Skunk's Misery. Along the way I picked up Savannah Sparrow, Horned Lark, and a Bobolink. I took a drive down Centreville Drive, but overall it was pretty quiet. I did come across a group of warblers, which included my first Pine, Black-throated Blue (actually a FOY), and Chestnut-sided Warblers of the day, as well as a couple Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. I didn't get any Hooded Warblers, but it was midday and overcast/cool, so perhaps they just weren't singing. 

I saw a lot of Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida). The "petals" aren't actually petals at all, but are bracts! The genus Cornus has undergone a taxonomic shift, so perhaps the more proper name for this species is Benthamidia florida. 

I began my way back towards Strathroy along some of the backroads. I had originally intended to take highway 80 up to Calvert Drive, but opted last minute to take Old Airport Road. Glad I did! As I stopped at the stop sign at Carolinian Drive, I noticed a sparrow-like bird fly into a dead tree. I snapped a few (terrible) photos, and was shocked to see it looked like a Dickcissel! After a moment, it flew down towards the abandoned house, and I couldn't find it again. Shame that pesky branch was in the way.

Not a bad bird for #100.

I stopped into the Sydenham River Nature Reserve for a brief moment. Not too many birds, but I did hear a Yellow-throated Vireo. 

Lots of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) in bloom. I'd be lying if I denied that part of the reason I made this detour was to see these plants. 

I made a quick stop at a spot for Upland Sandpiper (which I didn't see), before continuing onto the Strathroy Sewage Lagoons. Here I added such birds like Sora and Virginia Rail, American Coot, Common Gallinule (stuck around!), Cliff Swallow, Purple Martin (a FOY), and a variety of ducks and shorebirds. Seems I missed a Dunlin and Semipalmated Plover, but can't get them all I guess. 

It was time to head up to the northern part of the county. Along Sylvan Road, I found the pair of nesting Common Ravens, a nice addition to the day list. I then went to the Ausable River Valley Trail, which proved to be rather quiet, although I did get Eastern Phoebe, Pileated Woodpecker, and my main target here, Vesper Sparrows. They weren't new for the day list, but I also had a pair of Yellow-throated Vireos It was a nice walk anyways, and I saw a great variety of plants. Hopefully I can try to get my camera back in working order and come back to properly photograph them. 

I opted to skip out on Parkhill CA to try for Ruffed Grouse (partially because of running out of time, and partially because my phone battery died), so I made a beeline for Thorndale to check out those ponds I had not gotten a chance to go to earlier in the day. 

Birds were getting harder and harder to add, and when I arrived at one of the ponds, I saw they were doing work with heavy machinery on one of the hedgerows in which I had a variety of would be new birds for the day list the night before. All I managed to add at that one spot was Hooded Merganser. 

At the next spot, a gravel pit, I scoped for ducks, but was only able to find a single new bird, a lingering black duck. As I tried to find a place to turn around, I had my first and only White-crowned Sparrow of the day fly across the road. I let out a whoop when I saw that one. 

I stopped briefly at a spot where I had a singing Golden-crowned Kinglet earlier in the week, but I didn't find it. I then went out of my way to get an Osprey by scoping a known nest. A bit later one would fly over me, so I guess that was for naught...

I finished my diurnal birding by hitting a spot in the neighbourhood, which is where I got Green Heron, Cooper's Hawk, and Swamp Sparrow (good thing I know that spot well, I had to go to a pretty out of the way place to get that sparrow!). 

A couple hours later, I went out for woodcocks, but for the first time in pretty much all of my spring big days, I couldn't for the life of me find one! Over the course of an hour I checked five or six locations, each one of them coming up empty. Very strange, perhaps all the new development in the area made them move on. As a consolation, I still added two last birds to the day list: Great Horned Owl and an Eastern Screech-Owl.

At the end of the very tiring day, I ended up with 128 species all within the borders of Middlesex County. Sure beats last year's total of 94, and my total of 101 from earlier in the week. Had it been a bit later in May, and we were seeing more migrants move through (overall it was a pretty cold, windy, overcast day, and it hadn't been great for migration in the days leading up), I probably could have even tallied a few more! Of course, there were some quite notable misses, excluding woodcock, such as Eastern Kingbird, Brown Thrasher, Chimney Swift, Indigo Bunting, Northern Parula, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Cedar Waxwing, and Herring Gull.

It was a really fun day, and I saw some great birds. I live for this kind of stuff! 

eBird Global Big Day 2020

This past Saturday was the eBird Global Big Day. Before Covid-19 hit, the plan was to be down in Point Pelee for that day, but obviously that was not to be! I sure will miss going this year. It seems that provincial parks are opening up this week however, so maybe I can still make a short trip to Rondeau. Who knows.

 After staying put around home for about a month and a half, I was looking forward to getting out a bit further afield for the big day. I didn't really have any goals in mind, just a few places I wanted to check out around London. Normally, we should be seeing good numbers of migrants by now, but the weather has different plans. It was obvious while looking at the radar from the night prior there weren't going to be many (any) new arrivals!

No birds!

For reference, here is a night with lots of bird migration (from earlier this month, I forget when, maybe May 3rd?). Birds show up on radar as circles around radar stations.

I started off the day in my neighbourhood, as usual. I managed to wrack up just over 40 species before 7:30. Hardly any highlights, just the usual stuff! I then went to Gibbon's Park in London, in hopes of seeing the Summer Tanager which had been found the day prior. Turns out I had just missed it, as it was seen only a few minutes before I got there. Darn. Its turning into a bit of a county nemesis, as I have missed three in the last six months. At least I scored a few new birds for the day, including my first Least and Great Crested Flycatchers for the year.

After unsuccessfully searching the park, I went back to my neighbourhood for a couple hours. It seems that the screech-owl has gone AWOL! At least I saw a Green Heron...

I should mention that the weather was super weird. One moment it was nice, and the next it was snowing quite heavily! This morning I awoke to snow on the ground. I contemplated going out, but opted to go back to bed!

In the early afternoon, I went back out. I stopped into Gibbon's Park again briefly, before heading down to the Westminster Ponds. Here I hoped to see the Common Gallinule which has been reported. It took a bit, but I finally spotted it. A new bird for my Middlesex county list! I saw a Pileated Woodpecker as well.

Common Gallinule

In the south end of the city, I checked out the Dingman wetland. Lots of yellowlegs of both species, which was nice to see. I certainly have missed their vocalizations!

I drove through the town of Komoka, ticking five swallow species, a Chimney Swift, and a few Mute Swans. My last stop of the day was the Strathroy Sewage Lagoons. A nice variety of ducks and shorebirds were seen. Several Sora and Virginia Rails were heard.

Dunlin and Lesser Yellowlegs

I finished the day in my neighbourhood with an American Woodcock, my 94th species that day. Not too bad!

I'll tack on this sighting from yesterday, a Sora in my neighbourhood.

Looks like later this week may be a turning point for migration! Stay tuned.

100 Posts, 1000 Checklists

Yesterday I reached a milestone for 2017...I submitted my 1000th eBird checklist for the year. About 600 of them were complete checklists, and the other portion were "incidental" checklists. For those who don't know the difference, a complete checklist is when your main purpose is to go out birding and you report all the species you could identify. An "incidental" checklist is when you just note a bird while going about your daily routine (or driving 1600 km from London to Thunder Bay).

While there are people out there who have submitted well over 8000 checklists this year alone, I am proud of my accomplishment given the circumstances I am in. For one, I am a student who must legally be in school, so that right there cuts down the amount of birding time I get. Second, I can't drive, so there goes trips on which I could submit lots of checklists. Lastly, I only got a phone this past August, so submitting checklists was a whole lot harder before eBird mobile!

So, what made me submit double the number of checklists that I have submitted since I started eBirding? Well, early this year, eBird came out with the "Checklist-a-Day" challenge. Basically, the challenge was to submit at least one checklist for each day in the year, for a total of 365 checklists. Well, eBird didn't exactly make it clear that you just need 365 by the end of the year, so I made a point to submit one EACH day, which from what I hear, a lot of people did. After awhile, it was just habit, so I easily surpassed 365 checklists early on, and I didn't stop there! A fun little challenge morphed into a full blown addiction. This year, eBird is doing another "Checklist-a-Day" challenge, so I guess I won't be able to rest!

Now, for the 1000th checklist of the year.....

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S41245311

Okay, so maybe not the most exciting list species wise, but what can you do? It is the middle of December, and I only had 10 minutes before I had to catch my bus...

Here is the checklist that started it all.....

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S33350518

I find this one a bit more exciting though....

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S33347151


This blog post also marks the 100th post of the year, so I though that was pretty neat to tie these two accomplishments together. I would like to thank you, the reader, for taking the time every once in awhile to sit down and read about my adventures.

I am looking forward to what the future has in store!

#myebirdhistory: 5 months later

Back in February I heard about a way to map everywhere you've eBirded. It is a cool way to visualize everywhere that you've submitted an eBird checklist. I found is especially interesting to see where on the map I submitted a checklist while travelling using the eBird mobile app.

To learn how to map your data, click here.

Here is my eBird data from last time, 5 months ago.

Now, here is my most up to date data.

Quite the difference! I guess I got my parents to drive a lot...

I am most proud of how many more places that explored in Algonquin Park.

I also apparently submitted quite a lot of eBird checklists while up Thunder Bay way.

Here are some of the points from my trip to Virginia in March.

As expected, I birded a lot in Southern Ontario. Many new places were explored.

Another feature of eBird that is cool is the interactive map on the eBird profile page. It is a neat way to see your stats for an area (county, province/state, country, world).

I’m sure that I’ll add many more points before the year is over!

Spring Migration is a Go!

With the recent warm weather we've been having, it's no surprise that there has been a recent influx of migrants returning and resident species starting their mating rituals.

American Robins have started their "cheery-up" song

My first Red-winged Blackbird of the year was seen on the 18th down at the local park. I didn't see any for a of couple days, but then on the 21st, there was a group of 10 that flew by. In the following days, I found about 8 or so singing males.

While this species isn't unexpected at this time of year, the numbers in which they are being reported is quite unusual. Here is the eBird map for the month of February (red is within the last 30 days).

Grackles are also starting to come back, and on the 24th I saw at least 19 at Virginia Park.

They usually aren't around in large numbers until mid-March. Again, here's the eBird map for February.

Killdeer are also starting to appear.

There are numerous records of Killdeer in February, but as with the Red-winged Blackbirds, the numbers in which they are being found are exceptional.

American Woodcocks are also returning. In fact, they've already started displaying.

Turkey Vultures are migrating in small numbers, and I'm sure we'll start seeing them regularly in the next couple of weeks.

Perhaps one of the best early records so far this year was a Greater Yellowlegs near Long Point in Norfolk county.

www.njaudubon.org

In fact, it's a PROVINCIAL record early by about a week.

So far, 2017 looks like it's going to be one hectic year!

#myebirdhistory

Recently there's been this cool thing going around where you can plot all of the places you've eBirded. If you want to learn how to do this, just check out this link.

It is surprisingly easy to do, and it only took me a few moments.

Here's my eBird location map.

As expected, most of my eBird activity is around my home in Middlesex.

However there also seems to be a lot in the Lambton, Chatham-Kent, and Essex region.

Hopefully I'll be able to add a few more locations in the coming months!

2016 So Far...

It is already over half way through the year, and birding is anything but slow. A few days ago, I posted 2016 Life List Goals. I thought that since I was looking ahead, why not look back? So, I have written a post about the birding in 2016 up until mid-July!

As some of you may know, my life list is 208 species. This means I added 49 lifers since the end of 2015 (I finished the year with 159 species, adding Great Horned Owl just six hours before midnight!)

My first "real" outing was on January 1st, with Nature London. This was also my third eBird checklist of the year. We saw a respectable 18 species, including a very early (late?) Pied-billed Grebe. Click Here to see it.

My FIRST checklist of the year is from my backyard. It was the first eBird checklist in Middlesex, in the top five for Ontario, and in the top ten for all of Canada! Click Here to see it.

The next big highlight of the year was on January 3rd. I observed this female Snowy Owl west of Strathroy.

This picture actually made it's way into The London Free Press in a weekly nature column my friend writes. View the article Here.

Fast forward a month to February 7th. On another Nature London hike, we spotted the continuing Greater White-fronted Goose. This was months before I got my 600mm lens, so I was using the 250mm. The photo isn't cropped, so I got really close!

That same day, I managed to get my first photographs of a Golden-crowned Kinglet.

I was really happy with what I got...until two weeks later when I captured this.

The kinglet is not the only small bird I photographed that day. Black-capped Chickadees and White-breasted Nuthatches got their time in the view finder as well.

In late February up until mid-April, a Gyrfalcon hung out in east Lambton. I managed to see it once.

Another bird showed up in Lambton a couple weeks later. I didn't get any clear photos, but I did see an Eurasian Wigeon. Northern Pintail was a lifer that I saw at the same location.

Mixed Waterfowl

Of course, who can forget the immature male Harlequin Duck that hung out at Springbank Park (Middlesex) for at least three months.

You can read more about Harlequins Here.

There was a Great Horned Owl nest near my home in north London (I'm not going to give the location in case they return). That entertained me for some of April.

I really enjoyed my trip to Point Pelee at the end of April. I finally saw a Pine Warbler!

May 7th was the day I was waiting a long time to come. This was the day I did my "big day" within the Pelee Birding Area. Unfortunately, the day was rather slow and I only recorded 84 species. This is the second year I didn't complete the 100 species challenge!

This is worth getting up at 1:30 am

As most blog readers already know, I went to the Bruce Peninsula with Nature London on May 2-4 weekend (to read about it click Here for part one, and Here for part two). It was this weekend that I saw 36.7% of my current 2016 lifers.

A couple weeks later, I went to Skunk's Misery (Middlesex). It was here I saw/heard my first Hooded Warbler (finally!), Acadian Flycatcher (Long Awaited!), and Cerulean Warbler (Awesome!).

This bird was making a weird vocalization!

Finally, a week after that, I saw the Dickcissels west of Strathroy! I wrote a blog post on them as well, which can be viewed Here.

It is only July 17th, so there is plenty more time to see some extraordinary birds. I will most definitely do a "2016 Review" at the end of the year. Until then, I will spend time finding birds!

Good Birding!