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| A typical birder on the Spit. Wearing an atypical little orange hat. |
To start with, we had house sparrows, robins, and a mourning dove at home; on the 10-minute drive to the Spit we saw starlings, grackles, and swallows.
The Leslie Spit, as we've mentioned in a previous post, is a construction waste dump, still in use as a dump five days a week year-round, but on the weekends it belongs to birders, walkers, and cyclists.
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| A typical pile of construction waste in the woods. |
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| Tree growing around concrete |
We started in the Warbler Woods at the north end of the park - lots of red-winged blackbirds, robins, grackles, goldfinches, and yellow warblers plus a lone chickadee (black-capped, of course) and a mallard who landed in the grasses near us. A bunch of chimney swifts flew overhead, a Baltimore oriole (the first of many) flew in, and song sparrows sang.
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| Baltimore Oriole |
We proceeded to the sweet spot of the Warbler Woods (one year we saw two women in lawn chairs just sitting there as one warbler after another appeared) - there were already about 10 people there stalking a Connecticut warbler. In the space of maybe thirty minutes we saw northern parulas, Blackburnians, magnolias, yellow-rumped, yellows, a black-throated green and a black-throated blue, lots of Tennessees, a Nashville, and redstarts, and heard a northern waterthrush.
We also saw catbirds, cowbirds, warbling and red-eyed vireos, a veery, a winter wren, white-throated and Linclon sparrows, and indigo buntings (only the second time we've seen indigo buntings up here - Kelly saw two or three the previous day in North York). We chatted with some of the people there - some, like us, avid but not extremely experienced, and a few who obviously knew the birds and this area like the back of their hand.
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| Gray Catbird. It sounds just like a ... cat! |
As we talked and looked and listened, one of the experienced guys was circling around a little thicket of dogwood. The Connecticut was finally showing itself, and a small stampede ensued. We got a good look (it was a life bird for us) and then moved out of the way to avoid trampling and to make the requisite Facebook posting.
After this we accepted the invitation of one of the experts to go find a Wilson's and a mourning. A small group of us walked along through the dogwood and got bay-breasted, chestnut-sided, a blackpoll, a common yellow-throat, and a palm, as well as more indigo buntings, some blue-gray gnatcatchers, Baltimore orioles, and a couple of scarlet tanagers.
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| Scarlet Tanager being fabulously scarlet. |
A little further on we saw a northern flicker in its nest (it obligingly came out for pictures) and a Wilson's warbler, and heard a cardinal.
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| The obliging flicker |
Luckily the red ants weren't out but the area has huge boggy patches and without rubber boots we had to do some circumnavigation - we re-joined the group in time to see a least flycatcher on its nest and a Cape May warbler (another life bird - and since it was a female, chances are we wouldn't have been able to identify it if we hadn't been with the group). Sara caught a glimpse of a raven flying by (identified by the wedge-shaped tail - thanks, Bill Hilton Jr); ravens are nesting at the Spit after about 150 years of absence. We finished off the Warbler Woods with another look at the Connecticut (no longer a life bird, Katdoc), and went out to find some watery birds. 12:30 pm. Good thing we packed Sara's vest with snacks.
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| Gull-Mallard stand-off. Notice all the discarded cable. |
The long walk down the Spit bagged us some barn swallows and a northern roughwinged swallow, hundreds of ring-billed gulls (there were probably other gulls in there too but we consider we're doing pretty well just being able to tell warblers apart right now), killdeer, lots of long-tailed ducks and double-crested cormorants, two spotted sandpipers, some red-necked grebes and gadwalls, and our third and final life bird for the day, a horned grebe.
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| Crappy shot but hey. Horned Grebe. |
We finally got to the inlet with the tern nesting platform: common terns, lots more cormorants, mallards, Canada geese, mute swans, and pairs of common mergansers, redheads, buffleheads, and canvasbacks. Finally got an eastern kingbird too, the first of many we saw on the way back out to the parking lot.
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| Artistically-minded Eastern Kingbird |
As we walked on to the little ponds where we saw the snowy owl a couple of years ago, we saw lots of tree swallows popping in and out of their nesting boxes. Kelly remarked that it would be great to get a bobolink (we saw one at this spot three years ago), and moments later, what flew across our path into the reeds? A bobolink.
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| Bobolink (North Dakota, 2013) |
It's hard to top a bobolink. Also, it was getting late and we were getting hungry. We left the park at 3:30 pm, approximately five hours after we'd planned to leave. We headed over to the Sunset Grill on Queen St East (feral pigeons/rock doves) and devoured massive "breakfasts" in less than 20 minutes. It seemed a shame we hadn't seen a kingfisher or any kind of heron, so we headed over to the sewage ponds at Scarborough Bluffs, where we'd seen these guys last year.
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| Gull gathering at the sewage pond. |
The Bluffs are also full of grackles, red-winged blackbirds, gulls, robins, mallards, yellows, yellow-rumps, Tennessees, song sparrows, Baltimore orioles, and warbling vireos. Also lots of pigeons - they love those cliffs - and mourning doves.
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| Scarborough Bluffs |
We finally got our eyes on a cardinal. Alas, when we got to our kingfisher/heron spot, it was staked out by gulls. Instead, we got a brown thrasher sitting on a snag. We also saw Canada geese with four yellow goslings. When we got to the parking lot we saw white-crowned sparrows and Sara saw a northern mockingbird.
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| Brown Thrasher in our yard last week. |
We still felt the need to get a hawk, some house finches, and maybe a hairy or downy woodpecker. And Kelly wanted a mockingbird. We drove to the Victoria Park Subway station for our hawk - Taylor Creek is right across the street, bordered by lots of apartments buildings with flocks of juicy pigeons. We parked the car, looked out the window, and there was our red-tailed hawk over the apartment buildings. Next, we headed to the Price Chopper parking lot to see if the mockingbird was hanging out next to the train tracks. He wasn't, but we got a couple of crows.
Home to get the house finches and woodpeckers. They were unobliging. However, a pair of chipping sparrows came in for some birdseed (and we saw a magnolia warbler and some redstarts in the tree next door). On Sunday morning we had a pair of catbirds, the chipping sparrows, and a northern flicker. Finally, at 8:20, the house finches showed up. The downy was late to the party (afternoon) so we couldn't count him.
By 8:20 am on Sunday, May 18, we had 74 species, including three life birds, 19 warblers, and 8 ducks/grebes. Thanks to all who donated to our birdathon - your money will go to Bird Studies Canada and to Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station. (And if there is anyone who might still like to donate, you can do so for the next couple months here.)
2 comments:
Listen to you, going on and on about this warbler and that warbler, like you know something! Dang! I'm still trying to get them to put on those sticky name tags.
competitive me - I dipped on the Connecticut
I am Linda, McClurg's next door neighb - she passed on your blog - I loved it - great to read and see pics - it was fun for me to read about almost everything I enjoyed down there yesterday and today -
if I had stuck with the crowd I might have seen the Conn. too!
I am contrary - more eyes are best.
I will try to remember to look for the orange cap to say hi -
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