2013 A Year to Remember

This was the first year in many that I spent all 365 days in Canada. Despite this I was able to see 359 species of bird, and submit 2333 eBird checklists while travelling all over the country.
After completing my engineering degree at the University of Waterloo in April I had 4 months to travel across the country before beginning a new degree in St. John's in September.

The year started off well with a Pink-footed Goose in St. John's the day before I left the province:

The next 4 months were largely uneventful. Things got exciting once school ended. In late April/early May I went to Long Point to band birds for a week where I enjoyed great looks at many migrants:

After a couple weeks in the Pelee area I travelled along Lake Superior with the Burrell bros, among the many great birds we saw was this Piping Plover:

In June I volunteered with the CWS to do shorebird-related work for 5 weeks on a small and remote island in the Mackenzie Delta region of the Northwest Territories:

A pair of Gyrfalcons successfully raised 2 chicks less than 500m from my tent:

During the 5 weeks we observed a lot of very neat behaviour:

Then I had 2 weeks to burn before heading back to Ontario. I joined Mira in Alberta and we drove to the Queen Charlotte Islands where we had the opportunity to study many seabirds and shorebirds:

In August I did another volunteer stint with the CWS - this time we were counting shorebirds on their southbound migration:

In late August I moved back to Newfoundland for good. Despite starting a medical degree at the local university (MUN) I've had plenty of time for birding. One of many highlights was finding 4 Northern Wheatears in September & October:

A Scissor-tailed Flycatcher was an amazing rarity to see on the island:

And this Virginia's Warbler was even more insane:

A self-found Forster's Tern in early December was fun:

As was this Yellow-legged Gull recently at Quidi Vidi:

All in all a great year, I learned a lot about birds got to see a lot of our country and realize how much more there is to see. I can only hope that it continues in 2014 even though I won't have nearly as much time for crazy travels. So far my plans for 2014 are pretty abysmal, but if the winter continues as it has been for the past few weeks, I may be eager to venture further South for a few days... We'll just have to wait and see.

Happy New Year!

St. John's CBC 2013

On Dec. 26 I joined Lancy Cheng, and Richard Thomas to scour my neighbourhood for any birds we could find. The weather was perfect, very little wind and crisp air made hearing birds calling very easy. Only problem was that there were not many birds! Usually this route turns up some autumn vagrants that make the fatal decision to try to overwinter. Last year we had a YB Chat, Nashville Warbler, Northern Mockingbird, Baltimore Oriole, & Hermit Thrush. Any of those birds would have easily been the best bird of the day had they been found this year.

This year my group had to cover the same route I've done for the last 3 years, but we also had to check all the local ponds. Usually that'd be a whole days task, but this year the ponds are all frozen and the only remaining bits of open water are at river outflows making the counting quick. Unfortunately, our group dipped on any wigeon. This is probably the first year in some decades that wigeon has not been seen on this count! Yikes. Temperatures have barely gone above zero this month, and we've had a massive dumping of snow over the last few weeks.

The highlights from my group this year were high counts of Tufted Duck and Common Grackle (75 & 36, respectively). Their numbers are obviously increasing in town, but if the winter conditions as they have been, it'll be difficult for them to survive!

Hard to imagine that these juncos are finding much food in the deep snow:

Flickers overwinter in decent numbers in St. John's - it's always nice to see this colourful birds but it's easy to take them for granted!

A Song Sparrow was trying to fit in with the gulls at Quidi Vidi:

My group also found a new male Common Teal (Eurasian Green-winged Teal) in town. This one didn't have a horizontal white line, but it had pronounced white facial lines, and was still moulting from its basic plumage.

Yellow-legged Gull... finally!

Ever since Bruce Mactavish found a Yellow-legged Gull in late October I've visited Quidi Vidi lake and nearby areas 18 times in hopes of seeing the bird. About 4 days ago, the lake froze over attracting several thousand gulls to roost there. The best chance and place to see most rare gulls in St. John's is on the lake when it's frozen, so I was optimistic that I'd find the gull this week... especially because I didn't have any lectures!

Today I decided to wait until the afternoon to visit the lake and my first stop was at the Rennies river outflow. The usual concentration of Iceland Gulls was there with one of the adult Common Gulls. After scanning those gulls a few times I drove over to the Virginia River outflow. While pulling up to a parking spot I started scanning the gulls that were bathing in the small bit of open water, to my astonishment in that quick scan I noticed a darkish gull with a bright white head and yellow legs!!! I hadn't even stopped the car when I had found the Yellow-legged Gull!

I quickly opened the door and took a few pictures in case the gulls flushed. Thankfully they didn't and I was able to study the bird for the next 45 minutes.

In some pictures it looks like there is a bit of grease above the eye, but I think it is just displaced feathers because I didn't see the darkness when it was roosting.

There did appear to be a few faint streaks on its nape (not visible in these photos) that are remnants from its basic plumage.

Notice the stout bill with obvious orbital ring around the eye:

The white trailing edge to the secondaries are visible in this photo:

 Bright yellow legs:

The mirror in p10 is visible here, a minority of YLGU's have a mirror in p9 as well, p5 has a slightly larger white apical spot than the other primaries:

The red gape is very obvious in this photo (it seemed to be more concealed on the birds left side):

Even when the bird was roosting it stood out from the several Lesser Black-backed Gulls due to the white head and slightly paler mantle:

It was nice to see that the bird is actually quite easy to pick out from a large flock of gulls, I was getting worried after several visits to Quidi Vidi that the slightly paler mantle than a LBBG would make it hard to find.

To my knowledge this is only the 4th time the/a Yellow-legged Gull has been seen since Bruce first found it in October. It'll probably be seen more often now that Quidi Vidi is frozen over!


Now I can finally go to Quidi Vidi and not worry about looking for the YLGU, and instead can focus my attention on other gullzz.

Ferryland CBC 2013

Yesterday 8 birders covered areas between Cape Broyle & Bear Cove for the Ferryland CBC. I joined Anne Hughes to cover Admiral's Cove, Cape Broyle, & Calvert (the Northern area of the count). This was my 3rd year doing the count.

The weather was very cold but started off great with no wind. The wind became stronger throughout the day making the birding increasingly difficult. We were hoping that the recent snow fall and cold temperatures would force birds into concentrated areas (around feeders, or any bit of open water they could find) - to a certain extent that did happen but not as much as we had hoped.

Highlights for my group were a single Orange-crowned Warbler in Admiral's Cove, and a female Wood Duck living it up in a roadside ditch (can you find the duck):

Other highlights were a large flock of Cedar Waxwings: 

And a Sharp-shinned Hawk vs Hairy Woodpecker chase, that ended with the woodpecker getting away:

Empty taloned

Species Name	Dec 14	Dec 15	Dec 16	Dec 17	Dec 18	Dec 19	Dec 20
Wood Duck	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
American Black Duck	21 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Greater Scaup	2 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Common Loon	5 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Great Cormorant	4 (2)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Sharp-shinned Hawk	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Northern Goshawk	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Bald Eagle	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Black Guillemot	7 (2)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Herring Gull	13 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Iceland Gull	3 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Glaucous Gull	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Belted Kingfisher	3 (2)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Hairy Woodpecker	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Northern Flicker	3 (2)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Blue Jay	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
American Crow	30 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Common Raven	5 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Black-capped Chickadee	25 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Boreal Chickadee	15 (2)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Golden-crowned Kinglet	22 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
American Robin	4 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
European Starling	210 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Cedar Waxwing	55 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Orange-crowned Warbler	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Song Sparrow	16 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
White-throated Sparrow	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Dark-eyed Junco	270 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Pine Grosbeak	3 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Purple Finch	15 (3)	--	--	--	--	--	--
Pine Siskin	1 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--
American Goldfinch	13 (2)	--	--	--	--	--	--
House Sparrow	2 (1)	--	--	--	--	--	--

Snowy Owl invasion

Everyone probably knows about the Snowy Owl invasion we are currently experiencing in Eastern North America. It filled an entire page in The Telegram (local newspaper), has been on CBC news a few times, and I've been approached by several non-birding friends & strangers asking me where they can see them!

There seems to be a lot of conflicting information about aging Snowy Owls on the internet, no surprise there. From what I can gather, one can only confidently ID very white birds as adult males, and very dark birds as young females. Everything in between could go either way in terms of aging/sexing.

Despite seeing 125 Snowy Owls on Saturday, I didn't see any that lacked any noticeable barring. Which is a good indication that there are very few or no adults around. However, there was considerable variation in the birds we saw.

Instead of ordering the photos chronologically, I decided to try to order them from darkest to lightest. Just click on the first image so that it fills the screen and then you can scroll from image to image.

All, except 3 of these photos, are of different owls.

Same bird as previous one:

Same bird as previous one:

Same as previous one:

  

Some group shots:

This bird was at the very tip of Cape Race:

Snowy Owls weren't the only white dots on the barrens, we saw over 50 Caribou that day:

This tame female kingfisher was at Quidi Vidi recently:

Cape Spear just before sunset: