On Tuesday evening, Ray, Mike and I arrived at Point Pelee
(Phil will join us on Friday). The three
of us have all been here before but it has been a few years. After checking into our motel and a quick
dinner, we headed for “the tip” – mainland Canada’s southernmost point of land.
Brian & Mike at the tip (Red-breasted Mergansers flying in the background) |
The view is even more amazing looking north from the
tip. This is the view that many birds
have as they cross Lake Erie.
Looking north from the tip |
We had heard that the migration had been pretty quiet so far
so we weren’t expecting much on our walk.
Thus we were pleasantly surprised to see Nashville, Yellow,
Yellow-rumped and Chestnut-sided Warblers as well as a few other migrants. On the drive back to the motel, there were a
number of Raccoons on the road for mammal species #30.
On Wednesday, we headed for the tip again but this time the
pathways were filled with other birders.
We quickly added to our warbler total with Black-and-White, Palm and Black-throated Green Warblers all being reasonably common. There was also a Pine Warbler directly above the path.
Black-throated Green Warbler |
We had to work a bit but eventually had good
looks at the beautiful Blue-winged Warbler.
We walked all of the way back to the Visitor Centre (about 3 km) and
picked up a few new birds – Scarlet Tanager, Eastern Towhee and Blackburnian
Warbler.
Blue-winged Warbler |
The Visitor Centre had muffins and soft drinks which we
chose for lunch rather than heading back to town. While eating our lunch, Ray spotted a
Red-headed Woodpecker flying overhead.
We then made a couple of more stops in the park before heading to
Hillman Marsh.
Red-headed Woodpecker |
Hillman Marsh is known as the best shorebird spot in the
Point Pelee area but today the duck species (10) outnumbered the shorebirds
(3). We did pick up a few new team birds
at the marsh in Caspian Tern, Forster’s Tern and Black-bellied Plover. On the walk back to parking lot we were
pleased to see a couple of handsome Bobolinks.
After a brief rest & dinner stop, we drove out to the
tip again. New birds on this walk
included Eastern Bluebird, Savannah Sparrow, Northern Waterthrush and a cute little
Field Sparrow. There were also a couple
of Eastern Cottontails along the path.
Field Sparrow |
The sun was just going down as we finished our walk and we
enjoyed watching the bright red sun sink below the horizon.
Point Pelee sunset |
But we weren’t done yet … our last stop was the Delaurier
Parking lot to look for American Woodcock.
While waiting for the woodcock to display, we saw a single as yet unidentified
bat. For some reason, the woodcock was
not displaying in its usual area but we did get brief glimpses of it flying
high in the air.
All in all, we had a pretty good day (at least by our
standards) with over 100 bird species as well as 5 mammal species. With birding days lasting about 15 hours, it
will be difficult to keep the blog, the lists and the photos up-to-date. We’ll try to update the blog every couple of
days and get to the lists and photos as time permits.
No comments:
Post a Comment