Winter Birding in Ontario

I haven't contributed to the Year of Birds lately. This is not to say I haven't been birding; I just haven't had much to say about my winter birding. It struck me, though, that there are some strategies to winter birding in a northern location, like Peterborough, Ontario that I could share. If you want to see birds knee-deep in snow in the middle of winter, where do you go and what do you do? Here are my observations of winter birding in Peterborough:

Nova Scotia 2: Cherry Hill Beach

After seeing pelagic birds on a whale watching tour, I wasn't sure whether there would be other interesting birds for me to see while we kicked around the Southern Shore of Nova Scotia. We drove down to Cape Sable Island because we heard that this was quite a bird magnet. There were a lot of shorebirds there but they were all (with the exception of a few Willets) out of binocular range. However, we kept hearing about the Piping Plovers that nest on Nova Scotia beaches and I that decided we should try to track one down! I looked through my options and found a beach close to our rental cottage that looked promising.

Nova Scotia 1: Bay of Fundy

When we decided to go to Nova Scotia for a mid-summer vacation, I had visions of all kinds of north Atlantic birds dancing through my head. I would see new gulls, terns, pelagic birds, shorebirds; it would be bird heaven. And then I realized that many of these birds head to the Far North for the summer and that many others of these birds spend most of their time away from seashore. How would I have a chance to see any of these birds?

Point Pelee Pilgrimage

Point Pelee, Ontario. This is supposed to be a 'you have to go there' birding spot during spring migration. I have heard this from multiple people on multiple occasions. Point Pelee sticks out into the middle of Lake Erie and the birds like to stopover on their way further north and, because it has this narrow tip, it concentrates the birds into a small area, which makes seeing them easier. Point Pelee also concentrates something else: birding tourists. This was partly the reason for my hesitancy to make the pilgrimage down there, but then my wife encouraged the trip by pointing out the number of warblers and other birds I could pick up in a single day of birding there. And so we decided to take a weekend road trip down to Point Pelee.

Snow Geese in Quebec

I'd been spending a few days in Montreal and was thinking about new birds that I might be able to see. As I already had snow buntings, snowy egrets, snowy owls, I figured the next one to see should be a snow goose (well, that and eBird showed some recent sightings outside of the city). And by recent sightings, I mean flocks of between two and ten thousand up and down the St. Lawrence River. That was all I needed to decide that it was time to find some snow geese. 

Our primary objective: snow geese.

Gyrfalcon: The Great Snow Bunter

My kids had last week off for spring break. I don't know why 'spring' break in Canada is during winter and so much earlier than what I was used to in the U.S., but it was, so we had to find something for the boys to do all week. I took them skiing on Thursday and, after my snow-shoeing knee bruising, tube breaking finger cutting, and skiing induced aches and pains, I decided something more mellow was called for. So why don't we go bird-watching?!?! The kids were really excited by this prospect! Well, somewhat excited. Not really. But they had no choice.

Winter Birding at the Experimental Lakes Area

After enjoying a week of warm weather and birds in Louisiana, I headed off to the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) in northwestern corner of Ontario. Usually ELA is a place to visit in the summer when its not under three feet of snow and ice, but this year we decided that a winter sampling trip was in order. I packed my long-johns, wool socks, and extra-warm gloves and caught a flight to Winnipeg last Sunday.

Birdlooking in the Canadian Winter

Birdlooking? You did read that correctly. In the middle of the winter in Canada, we spend most of our time looking for birds and little of our time actually watching the birds. That is if you don't count the waterfowl on Lake Ontario. Besides the geese and mallards down on the big lake, you can take long walks through the park, woodlot, or forest and nary hear, let alone see, a bird. Where are all the birds?

Well, this is a story about migration. Many of the birds are living it up in warmer weather somewhere south having left us 'birdwatchers' wandering through the snow and ice looking for their fool-hardy kin. It was during one of these birdless walks that I arrived at a bright idea: There must be birds from farther north that arrive in southern Canada but go no further. These "Arctic" birds leave their summer homes in exotic places like Baffin Island and Nunavut and arrive in Kingston or Waterloo or Peterborough and think, "wow this is so much warmer, why fly another couple of hundred miles to someplace where it doesn't snow so much?"

There must be a few of them, and these birds could hold the key to me besting Damon on the year long bird count competition. You see, these are birds that Damon won't have a chance to see. Either he comes to Ontario from Pennsylvania for a mid-winter visit (probability<0.05 on this one) or he goes to the Arctic in the summer (no doubt that he would have a hard time selling that concept to his wife). Ok, so how many of these birds are there and who are they.