Week 32 ended up being a week without one checklist entered, not even from our backyard! The heat was still punishing and we had family things that took up our days and evenings so we just opted to take a break and regroup. I’m spending quite a lot of time every day sifting through “needs alert checklists” from all the Eastern Provinces including Quebec to see what is being seen and where it is being seen. I finalized most of our travel plans and now we wait. It is frustrating as all the birds we still need are being seen out east right now but we committed to family things in August so our trip has to wait until September when some of these birds will likely not be around, certainly not in the numbers they currently are. It was another decision we made early on in the planning so that we would be available to help with our grandkids this month.
On Sunday I decided not to put in a blog with nothing to report and also forgot to post about not putting one in. We were supposed to have our grandkids on Monday but plans shifted and we had the day off.
Week 32 0 species added 397 species J&E
Monday morning we were lazy and still lounging in bed having our tea at 7:44 when the Discord chime came in on both our phones. I glanced down quickly at the notification and only saw Redshank and Cambridge. I jumped up saying we have to go, now, and Jerry jumped up asking me what was happening and I could only say something good, lifer, and then he asked where while already pulling on clothes and I said Cambridge but I don’t know, lets get in the car, the pin will be coming I am sure. We were out the door in about 10 minutes and we were 15 minutes to the bird. I started our checklist at 8:10 when we arrived and were looking at the bird. One of our fastest chases.
Nathan Hood, a young local birder was checking out a newish storm pond in a new subdivision Monday morning when he saw a shorebird that was very dark. Once he took pics and noted red on the bill and red legs his hands started shaking, he knew it was a Redshank, he checked ID pictures and realized it was a Spotted Redshank, a Eurasian species that breeds in the Arctic and travels across Europe. It is a major rarity with only 3 records in the last 10 years in North America and the last report in Ontario was 1998.
It was a World lifer for us and added, of course, to our Canada, Ontario and Hamilton Study Area Lists. Beyond exciting! For many birders it would also be a lifer. By the end of the day a few hundred birders had come to see the bird and submitted checklists. Many more would want to see it if it stayed.
Those of us there first in the morning stayed well back from the actual pond, up on the walkway so the bird was quite distant, none of us wanted to move closer and risk having the bird flush knowing how rare it was and how many people would want to see it. We stayed for almost 2 hours as more and more people arrived. It was very hot but it was a party atmosphere as we all shared in the excitement of this find with Nathan, the finder and Jude, #326 for his Ontario Big Year, Isabel her Lifer 400 in Ontario, bird 398 for our Canada Year, and many more just happy to see the bird and get pictures.
In the late afternoon we stopped in again on our way to Burlington and people had moved closer to the bird at some point without it flushing or showing signs of stress so we were able to get better pictures and video then we did in the morning.
Sadly, the bird was not found again the next morning and so many birders missed seeing this incredible rarity. This will likely be the “Bird of the Year” for Ontario and depending on whether we get to see the Steller’s Sea Eagle, another Eurasian species, out in Newfoundland, it might be our bird of the year too. The next three days we had all four grandkids with us so no birding took place again.
On Wednesday Jude had a Yellow-crowned Night Heron fly past him at Windemere Basin, a rarity that we tried very hard to find last year in August during our Ontario 300 Year. We were free Thursday afternoon after taking the grandkids home so we headed to the Basin and checked the canal edges and trees along the canal carefully in hopes of refinding the Heron but we did not. We checked out a few spots in nearby Confederation Park where we often see the expected Black-crowned Night Heron but we did not even see any of them. It was very, very hot and the birds might have been happy to be tucked back into the shadows. We hope the bird Jude saw might still be around and perhaps with a bit of cooler weather over the next week, it will be refound.
The ABA ( American Birding Association) has released their yearly revisions listing splits and lumps for various species and it would appear that we will get one “armchair” species this year. That means we will get a bird added without having to leave our armchair since we have previously seen both subspecies. If you recall last year we “lost” a bird when they combined Common and Hoary Redpoll into one species, Redpoll. This year they are dividing Warbling Vireo into an Eastern and Western species so we should get Western Warbling Vireo added to our list sometime in September or October since we saw them in BC numerous times this year. This will, of course, mess up the order of our birds seen and “change the numbers” but at this point it doesn’t matter except for the total. Technically we are 1 bird more than what I am currently showing but I will wait until ebird makes it official and the changes to my list are made.
Early next week is looking good for a lake watch and hopefully some Jaegers and the Buff-breasted Sandpipers should be making their way down from the north as well. It would be nice to head East with 400 species achieved.
Week 33. 1 mega species added 398 E&J