It wasn't too long ago that winter birding seemed like a dead-zone for me. Very little bird activity and the birds I did get were in low numbers and seemed slow and tiresome to search for. Of course, this was a time when I could not travel even to other parts of the province and I was young and restless, wanting the birds to come to me. But, as I have grown so has my patience and my abilities in birding to find these little pockets of birds.
Well, this year I knew it was going to be different, and not only for the finch irruption in 2020, but this year I felt more motivated to get out birding and count all the birds I can possibly see anywhere I was. With this, I have demolished my counts for a lot of birds last year in 2 months...
January started off slow, the lock-down made it very hard to get out of Haldimand, me airing on the side of caution after hearing people getting fined for not following the guidelines. The one thing that was very good was the number of raptors. I recorded 9 species of birds of prey in 10 days, with lots of Rough-legged Hawks and Kestrels around patrolling the fields. After this I went on my first twitch of the year, for a Townsend's Solitaire in Niagara, which I dipped on really badly, I did, however, find the Red-headed Woodpecker, which knocks my previous FOY record for this species out of the water by 3-4 months.
I ended the month with 95 species, just short of my goal of 100. I also added 1 lifer in January with spotting my first Hoary Redpoll! With the irruption, more and more finches are being accessible to birders in Southern Ontario, so this was a long-overdue bird for me, and only the 4th record for Haldimand County on eBird.
February was much easier for me to get around, restrictions dropped and birds still hanging around. Early on I didn't get too many new birds, but the ball rolled with an oddly late Shoveler and moved onto a lot of birds coming out of my few trips to Long Point. A couple field birds in Savannah Sparrow and Eastern Meadowlark, and grabbing a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Hermit Thrush at Old Cut. These are all great winter birds, no doubt, but the best trip was going out to London, Liam Thorne came along with me on this trip and we managed to muster up 5 local rarities, 2 Southern Ontario rarities, and 1 Provincial rarity (Local: Green-winged Teal, Greater Scaup, American Coot, Ruddy Duck, and Savannah Sparrow. S.O: Hoary Redpoll, and Harlequin Duck. Prov: Spotted Towhee). We also swung by Long Point on the way back and I picked up my first American Wigeon for the year, an early Killdeer, and ticked Golden Eagle off early with a scoped view of one flying over Lakeshore Rd.
Ending the month with 15 new species I ended up county 110 species in just under 60 days and a personal record for me in the first 2 months of the year! I also grabbed 3 lifers this month; Gray Partridge, Spotted Towhee, and Harlequin Duck!
I got a lot of great responses from my post about summing up my last year, so I'd like to nod to that at the end of March, do kind of a 3 month summary of where the numbers look compared to last year. If you would like to see more specific content including the stats like that just let me know via social media @bassindalebirding on Instagram or you can email me here: bassindalecody@gmail.com. I really appreciate the input of others!
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| This clean-rumped, smooshed-faced Redpoll was my first Photographed Hoary! - Elgin, ON |
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| Although not the greatest shot, these were my first Gray Partridge - Brant, ON |
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| Super cool bird on such a small river! - Middlesex, ON |
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| This Hermit Thrush sat nicely on a bunch of sumac - Norfolk, ON |
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| Even the stick in the way can't hide the IDing feature of this woodpecker - Niagara, ON |
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| So many of these little sparrows around this winter - Middlesex, ON |
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| Little ways off course it seems, this Spotted Towhee may need a map...- Middlesex, ON |
