2012 Toronto Bird Review

We had some pretty birdy times in 2012: we went back to New River Birding and Nature Festival in West Virginia, where we had beautiful birds coming out our ears ("Oh wait, it's just another indigo bunting..."), and we visited the Thompson-Zickefoosen in Whipple, Ohio and spent a few great mornings in their observation tower, and on the way home spent a whole day at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh.

Sara, Chet Baker, Julie and Kelly in front of the tower. Photo by BT3.

A cutthroat finch at the National Aviary

The most amazing birding of 2012, though, was in our own back yard, both literally and figuratively. I, who noticed only a handful of species before (robins, sparrows, blue jays, cardinals, pigeons, gulls), am still amazed at what I can see in my back yard or around the corner. Here are some Toronto bird highlights of 2012:

January: Ducks galore. Mallards, redheads, long-tailed, red-breasted mergansers, common goldeneyes, buffleheads, and greater scaups at Tommy Thompson park. The big deal in January, also at Tommy Thompson: a snowy owl.

March: A flock of trumpeter swans at McLaughlin Bay, about 45 minutes east of Toronto. Also in March, Sara's kestrel returned to the tree outside her office window in downtown Toronto for the fourth year in a row.

Sara's kestrel

April: Northern mockingbird in a tree next to our grocery store. It did a cardinal, gull, and train whistle among other things (the grocery store being right next to the train tracks). We continued to see it, or at least hear it, through May near the train station. Also in its repertoire were a killdeer and a car alarm.

May: Warblers! In our back yard: yellow-rumped, palm, pine, black & white, chestnut-sided, Blackburnian, and maybe Nashville, yellow-throated and black-throated green. A little east of Toronto, in Thickson's Woods, we saw our first Wilson's and blackpoll along with lots of yellow warblers, magnolia, Canada, and American redstarts. In Tommy Thompson Park we added bay-breasted to our month's list.

We had other great birds in our back yard in May, too, in addition to the usual mourning doves, robins, goldfinches, blue jays, black-capped chickadees, cardinals, downy and hairy woodpeckers, red-breasted and white-breasted nuthatches, and house finches: white-crowned and white-throated sparrows, scarlet tanagers, Baltimore orioles, grey catbird, hermit thrush, Swainson's thrush, and cedar waxwings.

Another May highlight happened as I was walking home across a "field" by a subdivision; I saw (and heard) a killdeer with baby chicks. It even did its broken wing trick for me -- killdeer nest on the ground and when predators get too near the nest they will try to distract it by appearing to be injured and weak (and therefore better pickings for the predator).

June: One of my birthday presents was a spectacular show of two Baltimore orioles taking turns breaking into a wasp's nest and pulling out the grubs.

Oriole breaking into the wasp's nest

A nice juicy grub to go

August: Mourning doves - seven in our back yard at one time. Another morning, we had about 50 grackles and red-winged blackbirds.

September: Four Carolina wrens in the ravine near our house. A northern flicker at Thickson's Woods. A juvenile Cooper's hawk on the telephone line at the back of our yard; everything went very quiet all of a sudden! On September 22 we had a record number of species from our back yard: 23, almost half of all the species we've ever seen from here.

The birds started getting a bit scarce in November and December, and by the time Project Feeder Watch started in mid-November, we were seeing mostly house sparrows with a few chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches. But I got a nice present on Christmas morning, which dawned with a fine dusting of snow and a single junco. When I went out to fill the feeders and clean the birdbath, a red-breasted nuthatch landed on the feeder next to me, and I saw male and female cardinals, chickadees, and two huge Vs of honking geese overhead.

Later, when we opened our presents, I unwrapped this picture of a beautiful wall-hanging quilted for me by our friend Murr, showing some of my favourite birds. A very special end to a birdy year.