Alcid Fever

 It was quite the day on Saturday! Friday (October 29) reports started rolling in of Alcids flying around Lake Ontario between Whitby and Niagara all day long! With a major case of FOMO, I decided to check Windy.com and low and behold the forecast had NE winds the next day too, yes! This could mean more migrating pelagic birds! 

So, me being as excited as I was decided to be at Lakeland for 10:00 AM, scope in hand and camera slung around my shoulder just in case. 

When I got there I am not joking there were probably 30-40 people lined up behind The Lakeview scopes/cameras at the ready. According to some reports I had missed out on 2 Black-legged Kittiwakes (DAMN) but the day was still young and I expected at least a little more movement through the day. Man, was I wrong... through the first 2-2.5 hours the best bird I managed to get on was a Common Loon flying strong just above the waves past the wave tower. This was going to be a long, cold day. 

Not long after noon a little bit of action starts to pick up, people yelling out at an Iceland Gull and some Great Black-backs on the horizon, a little more interesting... then all I hear from the large group is "ALCID!" Every person at that stakeout swivelled their scopes and low and behold my first Alcid! The striking difference between the jet black top and the white bottom of the bird was breathtaking even from the distance I was. I swore I got flashes of white from under the wings which suggested Razorbill but I didn't feel confident enough to call it for certain. Bobbing above and below the horizon line I eventually lost it and never saw the bird again. That got my heart pumping! 

Over and over people were calling alcids but I couldn't manage to get my scope on them, the screams were non-descript and muffled with the large group. A lot of others got on a bird that was confirmed as a Razorbill but unfortunately I and a group of others standing by me were lost in their description, "right of the four gulls" they said. But, here's the thing, this is Lake Ontario, WHAT FOUR GULLS? When we finally got on it, we decided the bird was a female Long-tailed Duck (which I know its hard to believe but in our defence, the waves were very high and we didn't get real good looks at the bird until someone snapped a photo). And by the time we had deduced the bird wasn't a Razorbill the actual Razorbill had flown off. 

I stayed for another hour and a half two hours past then but I never managed to get my eyes on another Alcid. Not only alcids but even Black-legged Kittiwakes were non-existent through the remainder of the day (after the 2 juveniles in the morning) and not a single Jaeger was reported that day to my knowledge. 

All in all, even though I was unable to get on any new life/year birds it was still nice to get out and actually lakewatch, it was only the 2nd time I was able to get out there this year. Hopefully, some of you got on the alcids!