Did some birding in the Niagara region with Josh V, Dave B, and 6 other birders from the Guelph + Waterloo region.
We tallied over 60 species of birds, submitted 34 checklists, and saw 31196 individual birds (+/- 100000 birds).
Two main highlights for me were a heard only Fish Crow, and a distant Black Vulture.
No luck with the Slaty-backed Gull today - but there was an insane number of gulls on the river.
This hybrid had us confused - obviously has some Herring Gull in it (same size, only slightly darker mantle, pink legs). The darker mantle would point to Lesser Black-backed Gull or some were thinking it could be California Gull. I think the head shape is typical LBBG and others had a LBBG X HERG hybrid at the same location. May be a F2 generation (i.e. 1 grandparent is LBBG, other 3 are HERG).
What do you think?
4 Purple Sandpipers were an overdue first for my Ontario list:
Snowy Owl was pleasing the baiters:
At the Red-headed Woodpecker spot a certain someone decided to drive off the road. Took 6 men to push the truck back onto the road - but not after spraying us with mud in varying degrees:
