Sunday 3 February 2013

Birding Eastern Ontario

This weekend I joined the Burrell family + a few others from Waterloo for some birding between Kingston and Presqu'ile.

The well tamed Amherst Island chickadees were eager for handouts:

It wasn't long before Mike found a Northern Saw-whet Owl:

Later in the day we drove around Wolfe Island through some thick snow. About 20 cm of snow was on the roads by the end of the day making the sideroad driving a bit questionable at times.

We did manage to find 5 Snowy Owls on Wolfe Island alone:
Amazingly, the only other raptor we saw on the island was am American Kestrel right at the ferry dock.
I wonder how many more we would have seen if it hadn't snowed so much!

Snow:


On the ride back to Waterloo from Presqu'ile this morning/afternoon, we counted 73 Red-tailed Hawks along the 401! That's one Red-tailed Hawk for every 3.3 kilometers!
One 10km stretch had 10 Red-tailed Hawks alone.

What's your record Red-tailed Hawk count in a 10KM stretch along the 401?

The eBird high count for this species in Ontario is 1800 - so it should be easy to beat 10 later in the year :p