Monday instead of birding I stayed with Hannah who was home sick from school and Jerry had a doctor’s appointment. There was a Purple Sandpiper that had been reported in St Catherines and we hoped to try and refind it Tuesday but sadly it became dinner for a Merlin (falcon) on Monday. The winds Monday to Wednesday were from the NE so lake watch was on the agenda again too. Tuesday we decided to head to Niagara and try for the Black Vulture yet again and then head to a Lake Watch. The plan was to get there early so we could catch them leaving the roost but the Blue Jays (the baseball team) had other plans when they played to 18 innings ending at 3:00am. The alarm for 6am got turned off and we slept till almost 8 so we arrived in Niagara at 10. We have made at least 6 previous attempts always checking when visiting friends and making specific trips and we were hopeful that this time we would see them. Within 30 minutes we had 4 lovely Black Vultures flying from the US into Canada airspace giving us lovely scope views. Finally, we can add this bird! Jerry managed a few nice pictures and we enjoyed watching them fly around and down the river and back again.

We then headed to Port Weller to take a walk out to the lighthouse and check the rocky shoreline for possible Purple Sandpiper. This is the time of year when this sandpiper migrates through and it prefers rocky shorelines along Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. It was a lovely day with temps only around 11 but with the sun and out of the wind I was removing my coat and sweater on the way back to the car. When we arrived at Van Wagners for the lake watch it felt like another country – cold, windy and the sweater, coat and gloves went back on. Standing in the wind I quickly became chilled and we only stayed about an hour before heading home having seen next to nothing over the lake. It is not likely that we will get either species we still need, Long-tailed Jaeger and Sabines Gull, at this late date on a lake watch but sometimes Sabines will show up on the Niagara River in December so we will have to check there a few times in later weeks. I think Long-tailed Jaeger will be a species we miss this year. I had hoped to get it out East in September but that foggy day we didn’t take the ferry across the St. Lawrence was our only good chance.

The ebird taxonomic changes have finally taken place and so my ebird count is the “right” count and I updated my blog list to also reflect this. We are officially at 426 species in Canada. We still expect to get Purple Sandpiper, Redpoll, White-winged Crossbill and Bohemian Waxwing which will take us to 430. Any other rarities and a Boreal Owl or Gyrfalcon are also still possibilities. The birding has definitely slowed down and we are only managing to get out 2-3 times a week to chase or bird. I am still monitoring Quebec to see what is showing up there and a trip into Quebec in late November/December is probably going to happen. I might be switching to blogging every two weeks as we move into these final slower weeks.

I was asked to speak at the December OFO zoom meeting about our consecutive years and so I’m trying to put together a presentation for that. I have used powerpoint before but this is my first time using Keynote for Mac and it is proving a bit challenging to “teach” myself the basics LOL. Lots of google searches starting with “how can I”. The real challenge will be trying to fit 3 years of big year birding into 45 minutes…I could talk for hours!

We didn’t get out to bird again until Sunday for the Annual Alan Wormington Fall Count. It was a late start after the heartbreaking defeat of the Blue Jays Saturday night. We headed out around 8 and birded the trail in Harrisburg. We have done this area for a number of years so we know what birds we expect to see. Every bird we see needs to be counted and so it is challenging to make sure you pay attention to each Robin, each chip of a Sparrow and put in an accurate count. At the beginning of the count a Discord report of a Razorbill in Toronto came in. Normally that would be a bird we would want to see but we did see them out East so it is on our list. It would be a good Ontario bird but I have made the choice not to chase Ontario birds this year if I do not have to.

Week 44. 1 species added 426 E&J