Winter Birding Change of Heart

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! 

This clean-rumped, smooshed-faced Redpoll was my first Photographed Hoary! - Elgin, ON

Although not the greatest shot, these were my first Gray Partridge - Brant, ON

Super cool bird on such a small river! - Middlesex, ON

This Hermit Thrush sat nicely on a bunch of sumac - Norfolk, ON

Even the stick in the way can't hide the IDing feature of this woodpecker - Niagara, ON

So many of these little sparrows around this winter - Middlesex, ON

Little ways off course it seems, this Spotted Towhee may need a map...- Middlesex, ON

Almost 275

A few weeks ago was quite interesting for the Niagara Region. Found the week before, a local birder found a Townsend's Solitaire and at least a pair of Red-headed Woodpecker in one spot around Pelham! This is amazing and of course, with me being at 274 species of bird seen in Ontario, I went to look for the Solitaire to make it number 275! 

I decided the Thursday before that I would go and look for the bird on Saturday morning, and from what I was told it was an easy find. I figured I'd be there for 45 mins to an hour max, well, that was not what happened! 

When I got there there were about 15 people there already, including a few familiar faces. That being said, I talked to one of the birders I knew there and he said the bird had not shown up yet. With that being the case, he and I decided to look for the Woodpecker, which did not take long.

With the number of eyes, it took a total of about 15 minutes for someone to find it and me to snap some okay photos. 

Typically not wintering birds, Red-headed Woodpeckers are always a treat! 

After the Red-head not too many birds showed up. A couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches showed themselves which surprisingly was my first of the year, but the remainder of the trip, just one big oof...

At first, I was hopeful, but after about 2 hours, my hope faded into doubt. The Solitaire has not been found since the Friday before I showed up (to my knowledge). The landowner believes it was scared off by all of the birders, which could be possible. Another possibility is that it was eaten by the Cooper's Hawk that was hanging around the area. Both good hypotheses, but I guess we will never know! 

Congrats to all of those who got out for it! Maybe I can get out sooner next time! 

Finalizing 2020

 So as some of you know, last year I kept a tally of the birds I see in one year month by month with totals of species seen and individuals. Well, I decided to do it again in 2020, but this year with eBird making a change to their summarize observations (i.e. removing it altogether) it has taken me a little longer than usual to complete this last year, I also moved it over to Google Docs rather than an excel sheet so there was a little getting used to there! 

This year I decided to do some pie charts as well to visualize the data, and share what birds made it over 1000 birds seen! 

I get asked why I do this from time to time, and it's so I can see my total birds seen and how many I saw of a certain species and when on a quick and easy look instead of the long way of going through every bird in eBird. I also like displaying my sightings with charts to represent the birds I've seen and like going back through the year on what good times I've had in the last year (even this year with COVID).

This data is also going to go into a spreadsheet with my totals for 5 and 10-year intervals to see just how many species and individuals I've seen in that time period, so keep an eye out for that in my 2025 and 2030 year-end posts! 

In 2020 I amassed 262 species and counted 135,454 individual birds! A personal high on both fronts! 

Here are the top 5 species I saw in 2020: 

1. Number 1 at a crazy number was Double-crested Cormorant at a total of 21,307 individual birds! This is mostly due to monitoring the massive colony off the coast of Rock Point PP which can number over 2,000 individuals at 1 time! 
2. Not really a surprise for a Southern Ontario birder like myself, number 2 was Canada Goose at a total of 13,794 birds! I expect to surpass this in 2021. 
3. Number 3 follows suit with the water-bird theme here, a really common bird off the coast of Lake Ontario every winter, Long-tailed Duck at a count of 13,128 birds. 
4. Taking away from the water birds this is the only invasive species on the list, European Starling, with a count of 10,448 birds, which does not seem very big and will probably be bigger in 2021 with the Breeding Bird Atlas keeping more on the look for any breeding birds in my square. 
5. Finally, we dip back into the waterfowl for #5 with Red-breasted Merganser with a count of 7,496 individuals! This is one I never expected to reach the top 5, possibly top 10 but the top 5 is exceptional! 

These birds made up just less than 50% of all the birds I saw in 2020, and 16 other species topped 1000 individual birds seen each which included: 

1. Red-winged Blackbird (6,940)
2. Ring-billed Gull (6,470)
3. Mallard (4,509)
4. Common Grackle (3,412)
5. Greater Scaup (3,313)
6. Redhead (2,743)
7. Bonaparte's Gull (2,449)
8. Common Goldeneye (2,213)
9. Tree Swallow (1,689)
10. American Robin (1,501)
11. Bufflehead (1,349)
12. White-winged Scoter (1,318)
13. Surf Scoter (1,097)
14. American Goldfinch (1,085)
15. Song Sparrow (1,013)
16. Killdeer (1,001)

Some of these birds may change spots in 2021, which I'm excited to see what ones fit in where within the next year!

Chart showing the Total Species I saw for each month in 2020 (p.s. I've already eclipsed January's total from 2020 this year). 

Chart showing the Total Individual birds I saw for each month in 2020 (p.s. I've already eclipsed January's total from 2020 this year).